Blue Flag

Warning: This review contains spoilers and is long. Really long.
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I started reading Ao no Flag after almost every person I followed on Twitter posted pictures of the volumes they bought. I had no idea what the manga was about, nor did I look up images or Youtube videos about it. As soon as I read the synopsis, I was skeptical. I am not a romantic person. I like the idea of romance, but the stories that make it my way never leave enough of an impression on me. Then if you add a love triangle to the mix, it just makes me want to drop the story without giving it a chance.

My problem in romance anime and manga is that almost always, I end up rooting for the second love rival and not for the one the hero or heroine first falls in love with. The protagonists almost always ending up with the first person they fall in love with, no matter what they did to them, is enough to make me think that I will not enjoy myself reading. After debating on whether or not to give it a go, I thought, "well I can always drop it if it is not what I want." I never expected that this manga would bring me to tears multiple times and for it to become a very important piece of media. Beautiful story, relatable and complex characters, simple artwork that when needed becomes gorgeous and breathtaking. This work for me is a masterpiece.

Story:

Ao no Flag is a story about the many choices a teenager embarking on his way to young adulthood will take and also about self-growth. The story begins with the protagonist, Taichi, who is having an inner conversation with himself. He is pondering on whether he would save his best friend or his lover, before telling us that it doesn't really matter anyway, since he has neither.

Right of the bat, he seems like the usual protagonist: he doesn't have many friends (if any), he doesn't have a special someone, has self-confidence issues, and seems to just be a normal high school kid. In the same chapter, we meet the other two protagonists: Touma and Futaba. Touma is Taichi's childhood friend, but ever since middle school, their relationship became strained. Touma is everything Taichi is currently not. He is very friendly, radiates positive energy, is clearly very good-looking, and is good at sports. Futaba is a mostly quiet girl. She is clumsy, shy, petite, and not very good at defending herself. Taichi clearly dislikes her in the beginning because she reminds him of himself, and he does not like himself very much. Futaba ends up revealing to him that she is in love with Touma, and attempts to ask him for advice on how to woo him and about Touma's likes and dislikes. Taichi wasn't going to help her initially, but after she expressed to him that she wanted to change and not just give up, he decided to help her.

Along the way of Taichi helping Futaba in trying to court Touma, he ends up falling in love with her and that right there is when the plot starts moving. After Futaba tells Taichi about the time when she fell in love with Touma, he sets up a date. He invites Touma out to the movies and plans on running into Futaba to then leave the two of them alone. This plan quickly backfires since Futaba is too awkward and ended up bringing a friend with her, a girl whose name is Masumi. The movie ends, and then the four of them go into a shop. Taichi takes Masumi away and leaves Touma and Futaba alone. Masumi asks Taichi why he is helping Futaba with Touma when it is clear she will be rejected and get hurt, to which Taichi answers that Futaba already knows Touma likes someone else but she is still willing to try to get him to like her. Masumi becomes aggravated and questions Taichi about whether or not he cares about Touma's feelings. Taichi is not able to answer and decides to run away, and is spotted by a very confused Touma and Futaba. The next school day, Masumi apologizes to Taichi for being harsh and also tells him to be careful if he wants to help Futaba since clearly Touma has misunderstood and thinks Taichi and Futaba like each other. Rather than talk it out, Taichi opts to ask Futaba to stop being friends so that their relationship isn't misread as something else. Futaba follows Taichi to tell him that she wants to be friends with him, and it is then that Taichi finally acknowledges, to himself at least, that he is in love with Futaba but will still help her get her feelings to Touma across. In this same chapter, we get hit with the plot twist of the story. It is not flat out stated but it is implied that the person Touma has a crush on is Taichi.

Characters:

Ao no Flag mostly revolves around four characters: Taichi, Touma, Futaba, and Masumi. They all are by no means perfect in any way, which makes them complex characters who feel like real people. They all have goals, likes, dislikes, things that hurt them, and overall they are very well written.

Taichi is someone who self-doubts, criticizes others who have his same behavior, has an inferiority complex regarding his friend Touma, and he has little self-awareness. His relationship with Touma suffered because he was jealous of him and he just never began to think that his friend must have problems too and wasn't perfect. He is very selfish and at the same time, he is not. He likes Futaba but still helps her out with Touma. He wants Futaba to be happy but wants her to be rejected at the same time. Taichi feels he is not worth the attention his friends give him.

Back when Touma got hit by a car, and still reassured Taichi to not worry. That his life was more important to him than being able to play baseball at the Koshien Stadium, Taichi says that he is "not worth that much". When he is watching the baseball game while holding Touma's hand, he cries while apologizing to Touma, because if it wasn't for him jumping to save him, then he would have been able to play and then his team might not have been defeated. He cries and thinks about how much he doesn't deserve the people he is surrounded by, and about how much he wants to make it up to Touma. That whole scene just made me bawl my eyes out.

Touma is the second protagonist. He is fairly liked by all of the students, the girls are after him all the time, he is in the baseball club, is a handsome kid and everyone, including Taichi, thinks he must have it really good and that he has no problems whatsoever. This is a huge spoiler but I need to talk about it since it is part of the character. If you've made it this far you probably know anyway. Touma is gay. Throughout the manga you will take notice of all the issues or most of them anyway, you will face when your sexuality is different from the norm.

As soon as his classmates hear of him being gay, suddenly the friendly Touma they always cherished becomes a "sexual predator". Props to the author cuz this way of thinking happens pretty much all the time. Clearly, if you are gay you suddenly like all men. Obviously, people can't have different likes and dislikes, they only base them on gender right? Anyway, Touma not only has to come to terms with the fact that he likes his childhood friend but also with the fact that said childhood friend is a man. Never mind the fact that that same friend is straight (or at least that is what Touma thinks since Taichi and Futaba end up dating somewhere in the middle of the story or even a bit before then. Taichi ended up being bisexual).

Apart from the problems Touma has with his sexuality, he also faces the burdens and expectations everyone places on him. During the school festival, he even gets angry when Taichi implies that Touma must feel nothing about not having decided what to do after high school. He said, " I think it's amazing how you are okay with failing. It's because you believe that even if you fail, you'll still be able to figure it out by yourself right? and even if you don't, other people will surely help you out." this basically screams out that because he is liked by everyone and can do pretty much anything then he mustn't be worried about his future. Touma obviously gets angry and tells Taichi that even still he does have his problems and to please not make light of them. After this Taichi just tells Touma that it's just that no matter what it feels like Touma might end up happier than him.

Touma is very relatable, you don't even have to be in the LGBTQ community to relate to him, but for those in the community, I am sure Touma's problems hit close to home. I particularly cried and felt for him when he expressed to Taichi that all he wanted was to be free. In his own words, " I want to live with freedom. I want to be able to say what I love, be happy when I'm happy, and be sad when I'm sad. Not be told what to do. To not hurt anyone nor be hurt by anyone."

Futaba is the third protagonist. She is a timid girl, very clumsy, and is not good at defending herself from others. At the beginning of the story, she clearly states to Taichi that she wants to change herself. Rather than just give up, she wants to make an actual effort. As the story progresses, she starts to grow out of her shell and says what she really wants to say. She figures out what goals she wants for herself after she graduates, and she begins planning for them. I appreciated her character a whole lot when she confronted Touma asking him about why he confessed to Taichi, and then talked about her feelings and what she thought about the whole thing. The Futaba at the beginning of the story would have never done that.

There are plenty of good characters in the supporting cast but I don't want to make this review even longer than it will already be, so I am going to pick some of my favorite ones.

Masumi is Futaba's classmate and friend. She also has a crush on her. Masumi, like Touma, is very much affected by the fact that even though she loves Futaba, her feelings not only are unrequited, but she also cannot risk confessing because they are both women and she does not want Futaba no think she is not "normal". She shared a talk with Touma's sister in law, about how she doesn't know what happiness is, and that she wonders if it's okay for her to choose happiness even when people she likes might leave her behind or completely remove themselves from her life because of who she chooses to love. That talk is one of the best I've seen so far and honestly I can't even put into words just how well done it is.

Mami is another supporting character in the story. She has had a crush on Touma for a long time. She knows it is not requited, but since Touma has not flat out rejected her, she still tries to get him to like her. She befriends Taichi and the others in an attempt to get closer with Touma but ends up genuinely liking them. Because Mami is a very pretty girl, others think she may be trying to take Taichi away from Futaba. She clearly states that just because she is a girl and Taichi is a guy, does not mean they can't be just friends. That whole conversation they have about why society looks at a woman and a man and thinks they can't be platonic friends, and that they will fall in love at some point, is a masterpiece on its own.

She also was there for Masumi when she had a breakdown over her crush on Futaba. After Taichi told Futaba that Touma had confessed to him, Futaba told Masumi and Mami that she couldn't even begin to wonder how Taichi felt like. That she wouldn't know what to feel if Masumi, her best friend and also a girl, suddenly confessed to her. This made Masumi's fight or flight instinct activate and Mami realized Masumi's feelings for Futaba and ran away after her. They both had a fight and Masumi kept brushing Mami off by saying how she wouldn't understand her because she wasn't like her, and Mami heartbreakingly told her that she wanted to understand her, even though as much as she wanted to, she couldn't become like her.
Overall Ao no Flag resonated with my whole being and has become one of my favorite works. The ending might seem rushed to other people, but if you read the manga attentively, you will figure out that is not the case. We were given many hints as to how Taichi and Futaba's relationship was not the best, so it is no surprise that they broke up in college. Touma and Taichi ending up together is not farfetched when you notice how even in the beginning Taichi has always been aware of Touma and not in a way a friend would. Even the fact that he didn't flat out reject him both of the times he got confessed to should give you a clue that he was not opposed to the idea. Just the smile Taichi flashed in the last chapter while holding out his hand, which had a wedding band, while he grabbed Touma's hand, is enough to make me incredibly happy.

Yes, I wish the last chapter wasn't from a first-person perspective, because I really wanted to see the smile on Touma's face, but that does not change the fact that it is a beautiful ending, and that it is definitely a manga that should get more credit than it does. It will never not be a masterpiece in my book.