Ao no Flag
Blue Flag

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A classic love triangle story with classic high school teenage drama surrounding it. Great character development and back story to drive the overall story to a good narrative. The only thing i'm not satisfied with is the ending of this story, it felt rushed, but besides that, it's a great manga and I recommend it to anyone who likes these types of stories.

The manga is fairly short but the pace is good enough to suffice a valuable story that shows the true power of friendship and showing that there is a difference between love and friendship no matter what gender.

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THIS, is what Yahari Ore no Seishun Love Comedy wa Machigatteiru could have been.
THIS IS HOW YOU WRITE CHARACTERS, A LOVE TRIANGLE, A DRAMA, SOL.
I will savor the criticisms of Yahari for some other post, but to keep it short, it cuts out a lot of the nonsensical edginess with hard hitting drama, addressing common themes that occur in youth with a more "realist" outlook, and much better pacing.

I am a crazy action shonen fanatic, so I normally dislike the "slice of life" genre(unless its very comedic) because the characters and plot moves too slow. This series is the golden standard on how to do drama and SOL in a way that keeps the fire hot. Every panel, every chapter, every piece of dialog just flows like butter and contributes to actually developing the characters or moving the plot.

I just can't put it into words but the author captures very very subtle movements that convey large amounts of information without dialogue. I don't need to read internal monologuing to tell that a character is nervous or anxious, just tell me through how a character moves in action! (*cough* e.g series like Yahari Ore no Seishun Love Comedy)
Examples of this are littered throughout the story, e.g: the small panels that show Futaba fluttering, and little pauses everywhere.

The authors ability to stitch together panels without tons of overbearing dialogue is something I will constantly praise throughout this review.

Characters & Story:
Being a character driven story, the characters are top notch. Honestly the story seems extremely surreal. The themes of drift between friends as they progress through school,
the restrictions of what society places for boys growing up into "men" (cut off creativity and imagination and get real),
the loss of childhood imagination because of the ridicule on creative works that aren't practical/pragmatic (in this case Tachi having fun making battle pencils),
the gossipy bullying girls experience (as a guy, holy shits),
the thorns and complications with romance, of misunderstandings and miscommunication,
and the struggle of self acceptance.

As they say, "you can only love someone else to the extent you love yourself" and it shows very hard in this manga.

THE MAIN CHARACTERS HATE THEMSELVES

and throughout the entire story, they slowly grow and learn how to express and accept themselves honestly.
Again, I can't commend the art and pacing enough on this... the facial expressions and panels of the characters initially appearing to open their mouths and wanting to say/do something, only to doubt it and look away conveys rich amounts of emotion and brings them to life.
In other SOL/Dramas, this isn't conveyed enough, main characters like Hachiman(in Yahari) does a mic-drop and utters a roast and the audience just blindly follows it without any thought to fact check it(also he gets a harem win from this). This brings me to another point:

The author actively argues with the main characters, and also our point of view(more on that later). The author actively tries to predict what you'll think and argue and writes in counter arguments to challenge more perspectives, which not only makes the story feel more personal and engaging, but makes growth seem earned.

SPOILERS ON CHARACTERS HERE:

Kuze Futaba is a ditzy clumsy whimsical anxious character, seen by society and her family as an airhead who isn't capable of much, condemned harshly when making mistakes, and if not only pretending to be clumsy because it's "cute". Seeing her being socially crippled by anxiety to growing out of her shell was remarkable. Jesus the small panels of her fluttering... you can see her try her hardest to be someone else, try to live up to everyone's impossible expectations, and it just hits hard.

Mita Touma, strong, athletic, socially afluent, the all around pretty perfect guy. It's funny how he doesn't want to be himself, but to be more like Tachi who's more crafty. We find out that he's gay, and that society gives him a lot of shit for just not picking a girl. Boys are grimly envious and jealous of him, telling him off that he could have any girl he wants and his brother wants him to be "normal"(don't worry, he's a good guy in the end), so it makes him feel alone with no one to confide with, an outcast who is contradicingly popular.

Ichinose Taichi is a creative crafty person who enjoys things like making his own toys when he was younger but threw it all away due to ridicule because it was "lame" and wasn't as cool as being good at sports, etc. He decides to play everything normal and not embrace his passions, a lost soul wishing to be more like his best friend Mita, athletic strong and liked by everyone. Unable to see his positives, he's always questioning "Why me?" Why does Touma still chose to hang out with me? Why doesn't Futaba just leave me? Wanting to be someone else is something the lot of us have been through and the way the author explores this psyche hits hard.

Yagihara Mami - She is bitchy, she is annoying, she keeps getting in our characters way, but she breaks the 4th wall and shouts at the audience as to why we hate her. We think she's a manipulative bitch who is only with our main characters because she has a crush on Touma, which is only part true. She reveals she's just a naturally playful and that this screwed her over because her girlfriends bullied her because they were being overly paranoid that she was trying to steal their boyfriends. She hammers down the point that once someone is in a romantic relationship, friendships break apart because if you're too playful, you're going to get accused of trying to steal. The author knew exactly what we thought about her. Why is she suddenly trying to get close and playful with Tachi when he's going out with Futaba? Oh my god, is she trying to steal him? This bitch...BEGONE! DON'T RUIN THEIR RELATIONSHIP! This is what I thought, but the godly author has her bite the readers. Why can't she be playful? Why does everyone immediately jump painting her as a bitch? Is it because she's seen as preitter than most girls? What if she was ugly?

Itachi Masumi - haven't seen her backstory yet, but in the progress.

The bald guy - He's in love with Mami because of her hot looks. Everyone thinks he's a thirsty shallow horndog but yet again, the author makes us question just what's wrong with liking pretty people? Some people put a lot of effort in it so they wouldn't want to go unnoticed.

The flustering, the drama of miscommunication, misunderstanding, it all intermingles so well with the characters as they can't accept and embrace themselves for who they are, and live honestly. The author touches upon so many issues without making it too one sided. No full on SJW, no full on ANTI-SJW, just well balanced engaging exposition on varying perspectives.

The character development, the slick progressive flow of the story, the growth of our characters, fricken RIGHT IN THE KOKORO HERE LADS. Puts the "D" in good drama.

Caught up with all 30ish chapters that were out in one night. Curse that it kept me up making me lose sleep but this is how I tell a manga is good. When you can't stop turning the pages, you know!

!!WARNING, SPOILERS ON THE ENDING!!
So the ending just hit, and I need to re-read this series to update this review since its been a while, and reading it monthly is fragmenting. Anywhoo, my thoughts on the ending:

The ending has left many people dissatisfied, including me. Speculations are that the series got axed and had to rush itself but I am doubtful(unless someone gives me solid proof). As stated in the review, the author is very aware of our reactions, and actively challenges our viewpoints. Tachi noted in his breakup with Futaba:

"there wasn't an interesting story behind it, people might have said what they would've done in our place not understanding the little decisions we made".

As like you, I WANT TO KNOW TOO, but what good does it do me if it just wasn't an interesting story? So I can roll my eyes, judge em and say they could have forced it to work out? It doesn't change the fact that I'm still salty about it... but the author put that line there to address the backlash of the sudden break up. Of course I don't mind people really wanting to know the gradual process of how their relationship decayed, but I think to say this is absolutely bad writing is going overboard.

People want more development on Tachi and Touma coming together romantically at the end, and I'm in the minority that doesn't. Imagine how you would personally write Tachi becoming romantically involved with Touma. Considering Tachis history,
>he never was against gay relationships, just confused because he never thought about it.
>he never was bullied for being gay/bi
>he never was always gay and had to hide it while growing up so he's "not coming out of the closet"

What is there to develop and overcome if he's open to it and he just wanted to try it out? This entire series is premised around overcoming problems, and the author just didn't find Tachi eventually dating Touma an interesting struggle, neither with Masumi dating a guy. Granted for us, it'd be great if we could get some small fan service panels of it in action, maybe of Touma fluttering and doing couple things.

I complete agree that the author should have at least drawn Touma at the end though. I mean... maybe the author thought it wasn't interesting, maybe he looks the complete same, but it still would have been a nice final touch.

In conclusion, I still think this is the best SOL, school life romance series I've ever read. The ending may get a lot of salt but I'm willing to bet if it ended with Futaba and Tachi never breaking up, Touma finding someone else, and etc, it'd get a lot less flack...

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Ao no Flag, or Blue Flag translated, has been flying under the radar for too much time. A manga like no other. You won’t find anything even remotely similar to Ao no Flag. So, before we get into the review mind that, if you still haven’t read it and you have some kind of ideologies on society, this manga might not be your cup of tea. Taking that into account, my review will be based off of my enjoyment and point of view alone. Now, without any further interruptions, let’s get to the review. Minor plot points spoilers ahead.

Ao no Flag (AnF for short) is what you can call a coming of age story, and as such, it deals with many heavy but common themes teenagers go through their adolescence. Everything revolves around love and acceptance, and AnF represents the latters perfectly. The story is about five teenagers, two guys and three girls. They seek for happiness and love, chase dreams for their future, look for a meaning in youth and ask themselves if society is with them or against them. so, when I say that this manga is like nothing else, is because it dives into a yet to be explored territory by japanese authors and goes to a direction you would never expect: the LGBTQ+ community. Therefore, no need to mention that the plot is character-driven. Yes, every chapter is about interactions and relationships, and as it goes on they get more and more complicated. AnF’s story is a thought-provoking one that criticizes society through the eyes and minds of teenagers as they enter the forbidden territory of love. As a consequence, suffering, anger and depression are more than often represented through the actions of the characters: the most important side of this manga.

Every character represents a typical teenager. We have the one guy who can’t accept and comprehend his bestfriend’s sexuality. There’s the shy girl who motivates his boyfriend to make actions for his good. There’s the lesbian who hides his hidden love towards the other main girl and suffer from it and the gay one who doesn’t want to be who he is. And then the last girl introduced who wants to have a normal friendship with a guy and always misunderstood for wanting a friendship with a person of the opposite sex. While these main characters have the purpose of representing the society that differs from the rest, the side characters represent society and its ideology towards the minority. Society is both a blessing and a curse in life. It can either help you or make you feel worse. There’s that one side of it that supports you and the other side that doesn’t want to help you. The main characters find themselves in a harsh society that makes you question about yourself, what is around you and who will stay with you. Touma, Ichinose, Futaba, Musumi and Mami are the ones who will tell their story to you and their social constructivism battle.

The art might be the weakest point of this series. While being a very good drawn manga, it doesn’t have the excellent One Punch Man’s art, the insanely well portrayed horror-ish Mieruko-chan’s artsyle or the unstable but unique drawings of Kimetsu no Yaiba. So yeah, the panels feel clean but as I said they are nothing sort of unique. On the other side, while it might sound both funny and incoherent with what I said before, the art is also the strongest point of the series. Meaning that, the author manages to convey strong feelings through silence. Silence is a very important word for this manga. The characters’ silence play the big part in AnF, and by that I mean hiding their true selves. So, not only it’s important story wise but also artistically speaking wise. There are whole scenes of characters saying absolutely nothing, yet you can feel what they feel. Also, as simple as some scenes can get, the author likes playing around a very interesting first persona view sometimes. You see what they see, nothing more.

Being part of the LGBTQ+ and also an adolescent, of course my enjoyment is out of this world. I can relate to most, if not to every main character in the manga. Fear not, you don’t have to be a teenager or part of the LGBTQ+ family to enjoy this manga. It touches many important themes and I think you’ll find yours. Ao no Flag in less words is a criticism to society through youth. Therefore I recommend you to read this manga for many reasons.

Sorry for my grammar I’m not native speaker and thanks for reading! Hope you found this review hopeful!

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