Have you ever sat down with yourself and asked what are you trying to accomplish?
If so, what's holding you back?
What's keeping you from pursuing that dream, that passion, that whatever it is?
I've asked myself this many, many times before and sometimes the answers aren't too clear.
As much as we'd like them to be.
But today, we're going to get some clarity through the eyes of today's character.
I'm covering for Blue Lock and that's the chameleon, Reo Mikage.
So what's going on? My name is Nate and you're listening to the Otaku Liberation.
A show where we help you break free from the chains that are holding you back in your life
by connecting biblical principles with things from your favorite anime.
Now a warning to all my anime-only listeners out there.
I will be covering some things from the manga.
So again, if you haven't gotten that far, this is your spoiling warning right now.
So without further ado, let's get into it.
So Reo Mikage, or better known as the chameleon in Blue Lock.
He's an interesting character, at least for me.
At first, I thought he was just another side character who was really just there to introduce us to Nagi.
Who's the boy genius or whatnot.
But the more I watched, the more I was seeing his growth.
Again, from reading the manga and just really looking into him.
Reo's a different type of character compared to the rest of the Blue Lockers.
And the fact that he wasn't an egoist at the beginning.
And even after he became one, it was due to different reasons.
So again, for those who haven't been keeping up,
Blue Lock is designed to create the best striker in the world.
In Reo's case, Reo's initial goal wasn't necessarily to be the best striker.
He just wanted to win the World Cup.
And by whatever means necessary.
And so he was always content to just feeding passes to Nagi.
So Nagi could score all the goals because they were the dynamic duo.
And to give that some context, let me go back a little bit to Reo's early life.
So Reo's family is rich.
His father owns a company.
And essentially, Reo was given everything from a young age.
And whatever he wanted, even the stuff that he didn't ask for,
his parents gave it to him just because.
And that led to a sense of boredom and restlessness within him.
That I think some of us can relate to.
Maybe not the rich part, right?
But the whole idea that if everything is just given to you,
if everything is just handed to you in life,
you can grow bored of it because you never had to work for anything.
You never had to express yourself.
You never had to really push yourself to try to accomplish anything.
And that can either A, lead to a sense of entitlement,
or B, can be a sense of boredom and restlessness like Reo, or C, both.
You can feel entitled to the things that you didn't work for,
and then you can easily become complacent
and not understand the value of what's been given to you.
And that can be easily said by any of us, right?
It doesn't have to be everything,
but some of the things that we're given,
or the blessings that are given to us by God, right?
Sometimes it's a new car or a promotion that you didn't necessarily work hard for.
God just shows to bless you in that instance.
And we can easily take that for granted.
We can easily say, oh, okay, well, this happened to me because I deserve it,
or something like that, where it's like, okay, no, you didn't work for this,
so you were given this because your father loves you.
And that's the same thing with Reo.
And granted, Reo, he didn't take it for granted, at least in that sense, right?
He just, he wanted to do something that was original to him.
He wanted to pursue a goal, a dream that was meaningful to him,
not just because his parents told him he was going to do this or that he needed to do this.
He wanted to do something that was his own unique idea
and how he wanted to make his mark on the world.
And he chose soccer, right?
He chose soccer, and he chose to pursue the dream of winning the World Cup.
And at the time, he didn't know much about soccer.
I think he dabbled with it a little bit.
But when he finally decided to go all in on it, he went to the practices,
he trained and honed his skills, but he still felt like he was missing something,
missing the last piece.
And that piece was what he calls his treasure in Nagi, another character,
again, the boy genius.
And once Reo found Nagi and understood Nagi's potential,
he felt he was unstoppable at that point.
And that's why both of them entered Blueloft.
And again, to kind of put in the context for the rest of the characters in the series,
the rest of them are striving to be the best of the best,
to be the best strikers and to essentially prove that they're better than the rest of the guys there.
Reo's more focused on essentially just proving his existence,
proving to himself that he can accomplish what he wants
and not necessarily just be a puppet for his parents
and to be the businessman that they want him to be.
And that's why for him, Blueloft is just a different outlet.
And I know for me, I was a long time trying to figure out that outlet for myself.
So, okay, what is it that I want to be?
How can I prove my worth to the world?
What is it that I can bring to the table?
What can I do to, you know, just to do more, you know,
just do more than just be living here each and every day,
just kind of going through the motions of life, right?
You know, do the whole college thing and I get a job and just say, okay, what's next?
What's more that I can do?
Because I don't want to be stuck in the hamster wheel of life.
And I know a lot of us can sympathize with that, you know.
You wake up, go to work, you know, come home, maybe you have some time with your family,
maybe you don't have a family yet and you're just, you know,
watching TV or you're doing your hobbies, something like that.
It's just the same thing over and over and over again.
And it's countable wonder, okay, there's more to this.
There's more to me and more to my skill set and what I can bring, what I can do.
And it's just more about figuring that out, trying to figure out how to navigate that.
And that's what Rayo was trying to do with Blue Lock.
So after the first selection, after all the guys played against each other
and new teams had to be made in the second selection,
it started off with teams of three.
So of course Rayo and Nagi were going to be together and then they get to find a third person.
Well, once they saw Isagi and Bajira, Nagi made the decision that he wanted to go play with Isagi
because again, Isagi is the one who beat them during their last match.
And that was Nagi's first time chasing defeat.
So he wanted to see, okay, why did this guy beat me?
And that decision broke Rayo in a way that he even understood.
And he felt betrayed because again, he's the one who found Nagi.
He's the one who introduced him to soccer in the first place.
And they both agreed to win the, they were going to win the World Cup together.
So Nagi decided to go play with somebody else and without Rayo, really it broke them essentially.
And he began to resent Nagi because again, he felt like he owned them.
He felt like without him, well, he felt that if Nagi didn't have Rayo,
then Nagi shouldn't have amounted to much.
But I believe this is a point that one, all of us need to go through,
but it was a turning point for him because of him being broken by Nagi,
and then Rayo went back and looked internally, looked into himself as to figure out really why,
why am I so fixated on him?
Why am I so caught up in what Nagi's doing?
At first he was asking himself, what does Isagi have that I don't have?
And again, back to Isagi's episode, right, the whole idea of comparison
and comparing yourself to what other people have, other people's gifts,
other people's talents, other people's personalities and things like that,
and comparing them to your flaws and shortcomings,
again, that imbalance happens and then that self-loathing and that resentment
and just all the negativity and that was bringing down Rayo's mentality.
Until he got out of the second selection himself,
after losing a couple of games and fighting his way back up to the top
and to get to the point where they are in the manga and the Neo-Egoist League,
and he's really coming to his own.
So throughout this time of wanting to prove his existence,
and now he had to prove his existence without Nagi, without that person or thing
or season that he was holding on to, that he felt like he needed to have that
in order to succeed.
But now he realizes, okay, I don't need him.
Same thing with Bajira, that's why I kind of want to do these episodes back to back,
because both Rayo and Bajira had a similar mentality,
is that they think they needed somebody else, they think they needed something else
in order to accomplish their goals, in order to be the best that they could be.
But in reality, all they had to do was to look internally and to figure out,
okay, what is it that I can do, how can I push myself to get to the next level,
to get to the next season in my life, and to really get the most out of my life.
And for Rayo, it was letting go of his reliance on Nagi
and then really pushing his own gifts to the max,
to stand on his own two feet, so he can pursue his goal
without necessarily relying on something else.
And that was shown when he got his moniker, the Chameleon.
Again, for those who've been keeping up with whether the anime or this podcast,
the Blue Lockers each have their own weapon that they've honed
and trained to help them get to the next level.
And Rayo's weapon is his ability to essentially copy other people's weapons
within a certain degree.
So the way to kind of break it down is if you're a video game character with different stats,
and if somebody's, say, ball control stat is at like 100,
but their defense is at 80 or something like that, their shooting power is at 75, things like that,
then Rayo's is at pretty much 90 all the way around.
He's considered the perfect all-rounder.
He can play pretty much any position.
He can set up plays. He can finish plays.
A lot of the teams that he's a part of, their plays start or end with him and mine.
And that just shows that his tactical mind, everything like that,
everything is just, he's essentially the quote-unquote perfect soccer player.
And his ability allows him to do that.
He looks at other people's gifts and analyzes them,
and he essentially puts his stats to 99 out of 100.
So, for instance, I'll take Nagi's gift, for example,
Nagi's gift of his supreme ball control and first touches.
He can never replicate the entirety of what Nagi can do.
For certain passes and certain shots, he can replicate with 99% accuracy.
And that goes for any character in the series whose gift isn't something unique to them.
Their physical size or something like that.
He obviously can't grow, but the technical aspects of it,
ball control, certain shots and things like that, he can copy with 99% accuracy.
And in realizing that about himself, Reo was able to once solidify himself on the Blue Lock 11 team
and really come into his own and figure out, okay, this is what I can do, so let me be the best at this.
And when he finally decided to let go of Nagi and decided to pursue his own gift
and really strengthen that aspect of him,
he became one of the few characters on the pitch that one can keep up with Isagi and his insane growth.
Because Reo acquired an ability that Isagi himself just acquired without too much effort.
Now, granted, Reo doesn't understand how to use that ability all the time.
And I'm talking about meta vision, which is, if you read the manga, you know,
I'm not going to spoil too much for the anime onlys,
but essentially it's a really cool ability. It's kind of busted in terms of soccer.
And Reo would have never, never gotten to that point if he was always just hanging on to Nagi's coattails, right?
And for those of us who are basically just stuck in the previous season of our lives,
who are stuck on that previous person, that thing, that the good times, right?
One, the good times that you remember aren't as good as you remember them,
because we don't remember everything with 100% accuracy.
But that doesn't say that it didn't happen, doesn't say that they didn't make you feel good,
that they, you know, that you wouldn't mind going back to there, but time doesn't move backwards.
And if you get stuck there, you will miss all the wonderful blessings that lie ahead of you, right?
And because again, our guy works, he works in seasons, he works in seasons.
And one thing I know that a lot of people don't understand,
and I know I didn't understand for the longest time, is that, you know,
every good season is going to come with a bad season and vice versa. They come together, they're a pair.
And just because the current season you're in may be a bad season,
it doesn't mean that there isn't any good seasons to come.
And typically, the next good season is going to be better than the previous good season.
So that gives you something to look forward to.
But we all are going through this life, you know, taking the day by day, step by step, you know, season by season.
But if we decide to get hung up and stuck on one season, then we're going to miss the blessings of the next.
And that's pretty much the biggest thing I want to kind of drill home with you guys today,
is that don't get caught up on the past. Don't get stuck there.
Now, remember it. Learn from it, definitely.
Always try to take something from your previous, I'm not going to say failures, previous learning opportunities.
You know, you get to learn more about yourself and the people who you deal with, who you're around,
the kind of people that you'd like to be around, the kind of people you don't like to be around.
You know, learn from your previous season. Take what you can. Take the best from the previous season and learn what you can.
And bring those pieces into the next one.
But don't get stuck in the past. Don't get stuck in the, you know, woulda, shoulda, coulda's.
Because I'm raising my hand right now. I speak from just all types of experience with that,
where I get so caught up in my head about maybe I shoulda done that, maybe that wasn't the right decision,
maybe I shoulda done this instead. And it causes, one causes fear and panic, but also causes paralysis.
Like you get stuck there. And you get stuck, and I don't know where to go, what to do.
And it's such a, it's a terrifying feeling.
And you know who's been there, you know, and you know who hasn't, I pray that you never have to experience it.
And just the uncertainty of it all, and just constantly worrying, constantly stressing, constantly, you know,
think, just having this feeling of regret.
So, again, I just want to encourage you all just to be more like Rao, right?
Read more like Rao and just let go of your reliance on the previous season.
You know, take, take what you know. Take what you can learn from the previous season and push forward.
As, as hard as it may be, as hard as it may seem, I guarantee you it's not as hard as you, as you think it is.
Because with our minds, we have a tendency to build things up, good and bad.
And when the reality is, it's nowhere near as good or bad as we make it out to be.
So I just want to encourage you to take that first step and then take the next one, and then the next one.
And really build on the momentum to truly walk into the next season of your life. And, and again, like with everything,
just, just give it to God. Pray on it. Give it to Him.
And then go back and think about, OK, what are some actionable steps that I can do?
And now that I've given it to Him, He, and God's a, God's a good God. He always provides.
So once I give it to Him, what, what are some steps that I can do to make sure I'm still, I'm walking in the right way
and I'm not getting stuck? And hey, maybe that's, you know, pushing, pushing your stats to 99, right?
99 out of 100 or, you know, just, just whatever, whatever the next season looks like for you.
I don't, I don't know what that is. You may not even know what that is, but I just encourage you, no matter what,
no matter what you do, don't, don't stop moving forward. Just keep going.
So, I mean, that's all I got for you guys today. So again, thank you for tuning in to today's episode.
I pray that you got what you needed out of it, and hopefully you learned something new about yourself,
because I really want everyone to take the time of reflection and just really take these things to heart.
You know, I know I'm just another guy on the Internet. You're just Miranda guy's voice.
But I mean, there's some stuff that I had to go through personally, honestly, sometimes every day,
to remind myself that, OK, I can't, I can't be stuck here. I can't be afraid of change.
I can't be afraid of what, of the unknown, because if I am, I'm never going to go forward.
So hopefully you had the kind of revelation about yourself. And if you did, feel free to leave a review.
You can subscribe to the podcast and just leave some comments now, what you guys liked, what you didn't like,
you know, what you absolutely hated and loathed and what you, you know, loved, what you loved about it.
Because again, my goal is to get better with each and every episode.
And I'm going to read all of you guys' comments and really, really dive down into this and try to get better each and every episode.
So again, always remember you are the main character of your story, and that story doesn't end until he says so.
All right. Peace.