Blue Flag is a Japanese manga written and illustrated by KAITO. The manga has a total of eight volumes. The manga's English release was met with rave reviews and the series was a finalist for The Los Angeles Book prize. It also made the list for best graphic novel of 2020 for teenagers.
Two best friends have know each other since youth. Now they're in high school where one has become a popular baseball player among his peers while the other is a nerd who only has a small group of friends. One would like to think that they aren't as close as the use to be since they exist in different social circles but their friendship never changed due to buried feelings brought to light when a girl asks for help getting close to his childhood friend.... High school has never been a breeze that blows a flag easily in the wind.
Blue Flag is a high school slice of life manga down to it's core. The target audience is actual males since the manga labeled under Shonen(which typically is a genre of manga that's geared toward males.) I know this might surprise some readers as there's a debate that Blue Flag is a LGBT or BL manga. To me, Blue Flag has LGBT elements in it's story however, I wouldn't consider Blue Flag Yaoi(Usually sexual gay themed manga geared toward females.) because the manga doesn't take the effort to make a big deal out of the subject of being gay. What's seen has a bigger conflict in the story is the miscommunication, thoughts of what other people will think, and keeping secrets from loved ones. Blue Flag simply glosses over the whole "showcase of gayness" that other manga tend to make into a slight mockery. Instead this manga highlights the growing pains of owning up to who you are in the face of a Japanese society that's extremely judgmental inwardly. You watch as most of the characters are at a lost when met with the decision to be who they want to be on matter what. A lot of the times the main character had the most negative thoughts about the outcome of a situation that I was screaming at the pages, "JUST GO AND TALK TO THAT PERSON FOR GODS SAKE!". It's never a good idea to avoid a person as this causes the problem to fester over into something even worse than what it was originally. This creates misunderstandings when you could have gotten all your feelings out in the open no matter the reaction of the other person. At least there won't be any confusion with where your feelings stand. Most of the series shows situations like my example above indepth detail through the main character's though process. He learns soon after all his mopping around that everyone has problems. The so called popular kids included. Everyone attempts to work through their problems mostly using preachy dialogues in debate format. I liked the arguments brought to the table in these moments of the manga but this won't be for everyone. If you want a manga that's just life as we know it then give this a read. The final chapter was as real as you would get with the story. Time waits for none. Feelings can change in time too. Only time will tell. The final few pages was this message in a nutshell and I loved it.
Let's talk about the art of Blue Flag, shall we? The pros are that the covers for each volume are absolutely gorgeous! This alone makes the series one that you would want to collect on your shelf at home. I wasn't too big a fan of the art on the inside during the comedic panels. Marshmallow heads and bodies all around does't appeal to me, nor did I really laugh when reading this Manga. There was an essence of maturity in the serious panels latter on in the story. Gotta love how Tomo is bigger than all the other characters in the story. On top of that the character appearance changes along with the character development which I liked. Without giving too much away, One volume shows a whole three sixty of a side character who I didn't like at first but ended up loving her in the end. Her who monologue about the expectation but on females who just want to be friends with guys but are seen in the wrong light by others was golden content. I believe that was my favorite volume of the whole series. I'm not female either.
Blue Flag is a manga that will stick around in your head after you finish it. It makes you think about social norms that maybe shouldn't be so normal if it means that people are afraid to be who they are. life can be hard to face in your truth. It's even harder to face inside the confided walls of high school.
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