is a Japanese

association football Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...

manga series written and illustrated by Motoyuki Tanaka. It was serialized in

Shogakukan is a Japanese publisher of dictionaries, literature, comics ( manga), non-fiction, DVDs, and other media in Japan. Shogakukan founded Shueisha, which also founded Hakusensha. These are three separate companies, but are together called the H ...

's ''

Weekly Shōnen Sunday is a weekly ''shōnen'' manga magazine published in Japan by Shogakukan since March 1959. Contrary to its title, ''Weekly Shōnen Sunday'' issues are released on Wednesdays. ''Weekly Shōnen Sunday'' has sold over 1.8billion copies since 1986, ...

'' from January 2011 to October 2022, with its chapters collected into 49 ''

tankōbon is the Japanese term for a book that is not part of an anthology or corpus. In modern Japanese, the term is most often used in reference to individual volumes of a manga series: most series first appear as individual chapters in a weekly or ...

'' volumes. In 2015, ''Be Blues!'' won the 60th

Shogakukan Manga Award The is one of Japan's major manga awards, and is sponsored by Shogakukan Publishing. It has been awarded annually for serialized manga and features candidates from a number of publishers. It is the oldest manga award in Japan, being given since ...

in the '' shōnen'' category.

Plot

Ryū Ichijō is a prodigy football player who dreams of becoming a professional player and member of the Japan national team (the "Blues" of the title) by the age of 18. He excels as he proceeds through his schooling, but just as he prepares to start his junior high school he suffers a fall leading to really serious injuries, and has to go through a long period of rehabilitation. Two years after his accident, he is able to play again and starts working to get his skills up again, and to improve so as to achieve his dreams of making it to the national team.

Characters

; ; ; ;

Publication

''Be Blues! – Ao ni Nare'', written and illustrated by Motoyuki Tanaka, was serialized for eleven years in

's ''shōnen'' manga magazine ''

'' from January 26, 2011, to October 12, 2022. Shogakukan collected its chapters in forty-nine ''

'' volumes, released from June 17, 2011, to November 18, 2022.

Volume list

Reception

''Be Blues!'' won the 60th

in the '' shōnen'' category in 2015.

References

External links

* * {{Shogakukan Manga Award - Shōnen Association football in anime and manga Shogakukan manga Shōnen manga Winners of the Shogakukan Manga Award for shōnen manga