After some dithering, I finally read the deeply weird Blue Lock Vol. 1.

Ever since I finished reading the last volume of Haikyu!!, I've been casting about for a replacement series of sorts. In part, I've been curious about how typical Haruichi Furudate's volleyball manga might be of sports manga. Like, is it a truly exceptional example of the genre, one that transcends interest in volleyball or sports in general? Do any other series offer such strong and compelling characters, and manage to be dramatic and suspenseful enough to suck a reader into caring about something a relatively trivial as a high school volleyball game?Writer Muneyuki Kaneshirto and artist Yusuke Nomura's soccer manga looked like a good candidate. While the high school sport being played differs, it too is a popular comic originally published in a weekly shonen book, and it is apparently pretty popular. I see tankobon volumes of it coming though the library on a fairly regular basis, and it seems to have lasted quite a while, as I've seen numbers in the twenties on the spines (It looks like there have been 39 volumes released in Japan to date, and Kodanasha Comics just released volume 32 in the states last week). When I've flipped through them, the soccer action seems incredibly int...