Blue Flag

A romance manga about a boy helping a girl trying to confess to his best friend.

I’ve always felt bad for manga artist KAITO as their previous series Cross Manage and Buddy Strike did not do well in Weekly Shonen Jump. However this series had been having good success on Jump+. I was reluctant to read it because I was kind of over the shonen romance genre but glad I did.

KAITO sticks to the standard tropes of romance stories but they put in a few modern twists. In particular, the reveal of one character’s possible feelings totally surprised me and I was also super into it(yes I’ve being vague on purpose to avoid spoilers!). Also a recent story arc examined the stigma of being friends with the opposite sex and was handled very well.

I’m glad KAITO has found success and I will be adding this to my list of manga to follow. It’s now available to read on Manga Plus app and website.

~dakazu