Round 1
Michael Kaiser (Blue Lock) vs Asahi Azumane (Haikyuu!)
Michael Kaiser
Sport: Soccer
Appearance: Blonde hair with blue streaks, light blue eyes, German
Propaganda: Kaiser is a character that most people hate at first, only to later reluctantly accept how amazing he is. He is arrogant, but he has every right to be so. He’s a prodigy forward in the under-20 division and is regarded as one of the top 11 best players in the world in his age group. He has amazing spatial awareness and great shooting skills. In one chapter of the manga, he literally kicked the ball in midair with a bicycle kick (where you’re upside down), and the ball then passes under a defender before landing into the goal. With strength like that, you can’t help but close an eye on him being an asshole. But although I keep roasting his personality, he also has his good points. He is quite charismatic when you’re on his side, and this is best displayed in his relationship with Ness, his partner midfielder. In one match, Ness was on the verge of breaking down in fear of losing, but Kaiser easily pulls him back up. He tells Ness to just move like how they practiced and leave the rest to him. And seriously, who wouldn’t feel relieved when someone offers to remove the pressure off their shoulders and tells them, “And believe. For me, nothing is impossible.” Kaiser is such a complex character that even my feelings for him are complex. I hate how he treats Ness like trash most of the time, I hate how he keeps getting in the protagonist’s way, and I hate how he’s always so full of himself. But at the same time, like Ness, I can’t help but be drawn to him. Aside from being an insanely good player, he’s also a very compelling character. We are yet to get his backstory, so I really wonder how his superiority complex came to be. Right now, I am following the manga, eagerly waiting for the moment I see him break and lose it.
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Asahi Azumane
Sport: Volleyball
Appearance: Brown hair, brown eyes, Japanese, built like a brick shithouse
Propaganda: my sportsball anime blorbo... he deals with so much anxiety and yet!! he continues to try so hard!! I read Haikyuu at a time in my life where I was also struggling really hard with anxiety and untreated mental illness and Asahi and the support he got just meant so much to me.