Highlights
- Inter Milan collaborates with manga franchise Blue Lock to celebrate their Japan tour, merging manga and football to create something great.
- The Blue Lock manga series follows a rigorous training program to find Japan's next striker for the national team.
- Inter's collaboration with Blue Lock includes visuals of the manga characters dressed in Inter's official season kits and various collaboration events throughout the season.
Italian football club giant Inter has announced a collaboration project with the football-centred anime and manga franchise, Blue Lock. The team has been getting ready for the upcoming 2023/24 season with the customary preseason preparations taking Inter to Japan. The Blue Lock collaboration project is a celebration of Inter's Japan tour, and is a significant marker of the continuing acceptance of anime into the mainstream.
The Inter Milan Japan tour ran from July 23 to August 1, concluding in a 2-1 victory against French giant Paris Saint-Germain on the last day. The collaboration project is seen by Inter as the "merging of the art of manga, and football, to create something great."
Blue Lock is a manga series created by Muneyuki Kaneshiro and illustrated by Yusuke Nomura that follows the Japanese Football Association's creation of a rigorous training program to locate and nurture the next striker for the national team. 300 youths enter, but only one can come out on top. The original manga series is serialized in Kodansha's Weekly Shōnen Magazine and has run for 25 volumes since its inception in August 2018.
The Blue Lock anime adaptation has one season out so far, which ran for 25 episodes from October 2022 to March 2023. Assuming a new visual identity based on manga, Inter's collaboration with Blue Lock saw the release of various key visuals, including images of Blue Lock main characters dressed in Inter's official 2023/24 season match day kits, both Home and Away.
Throughout Inter's preseason, their social media channels were draped in various Blue Lock-themed visuals, with the first match against Saudi Arabian team Al-Nassr featuring a matchcard celebrating Inter's new Away kit. There was also a dedicated installation in Tokyo, where Inter midfielder Nicolò Barella got the chance to meet Blue Lock authors Kaneshiro and Nomura, with the former getting his own Inter Home shirt featuring his name and the number 23 – a nod at the year, but also a number worn by various notable players in history.
Over the course of the 2023/24 season, various collaboration events are expected to take place, accompanied by the release of original collaboration content, with a special Inter x Blue Lock shirt expected to hit the market over the coming weeks. As Inter puts it, the Blue Lock collaboration brand's journey into exploring areas of art and culture to reach new fans across the globe.
Blue Lock is available to stream on Crunchyroll.
Source: Inter Official Site