Blue Flag is a LGBT+ romance manga series by Kaito that follows the complicated love lives of Taichi Ichinose, his friend Toma Mita, and Futaba Kuze during their final year of high school. It’s a beautiful story about young love and how falling in love could ruin friendships. Kaito explores themes of sexuality and acceptance through these characters. And while the rest of the story is great, its finale is a mixed bag of good and bad…
About the Manga
Blue Flag (2017-2020)
Author: Kaito
Genre(s): Drama, LGBT+, Romance, Slice of Life
Demographic: Shōnen
Theme(s): acceptance; “coming out”; gender roles; friendship; relationships; sacrifices; sexuality; young love
Status: Completed
Volume(s): 8
Trigger(s): sexual abuse (only mentioned)
Goodreads describes Blue Flag as “an unexpected love quadrangle with a dash of unrequited love” and it couldn’t be any closer to the truth:
Futaba Kuze is a shy and quiet girl who develops a crush on Toma Mita, a popular and athletic boy. To get closer to him, Futaba develops a friendship with Taichi. Taichi agrees to help her out, but ends up developing feelings for her instead. But little do the two know that their own best friends are actually in love with them!
Toma and Futaba’s best friend, Masumi Itachi, are “in the closet,” and are afraid of telling their friends about their interest in people of the same sex. Their secret stays hidden until Futaba and Taichi become closer to each other and start dating as a couple.
Unfortunately for Toma, his sexuality is exposed in an unprecedented fight between he and a close friend of his, who is homophobic due to his own traumas. This exposure causes a major rift in Toma’s friendship with Taichi, who doesn’t know how he feels about the ordeal.
Towards the end of the story, Toma, Taichi, and Futaba grow close once again. In the finale, it’s revealed that Taichi and Futaba’s relationship didn’t last long after high school, and that in their later years, both Taichi and Toma had married.
Review
⭐⭐⭐ | 3 out of 5 stars
Perhaps the greatest thing about Kaito’s manga is the inclusion of seemingly controversial topics that revolve around sexuality and gender expectations. I think that Kaito does a good job exploring these things through characters with complicated histories. Toma and Masumi Itachi deal with the pressure of keeping their true selves hidden from their friends. Kaito implies that they both want to express their feelings to their respective love interests, but the fear of being shunned by their loved ones keeps them in the dark.
Another character who is explored is Mami Yagihara, who resents being born a girl because she wants to feel accepted by both girls and boys. The people around her believe that boys and girls can’t have a healthy friendship if their motives aren’t to forge romantic relationships with each other.
But before I get into the things that I did like, I’m going to discuss the things that I didn’t like.
The Bad
There are only a couple of things that kept me from rating the series much higher than I already have. The first is the divisive ending. I think that the ending adds a bitter-sweet taste in my mouth, though out of confusion for the narrative. It’s been established that Taichi is straight and has no interest in boys, though the finale makes him marry Toma. I understand that sexuality can be fluid and that people could discover things about themselves when they’re older, but I think that Taichi’s sexuality change is abrupt and out of place for its narrative.
Let me explain: when Toma’s sexuality is revealed to him (and the entire school), Taichi grows distant and resentful. He’s confused about Toma and what their friendship could have meant. However, towards the end of the eighth volume, the two mend their friendship with help from Futaba.
The second-to-last chapter of the series, Chapter 52, seems to tie up loose ends for the characters. Toma, Taichi, and Futaba got closure for their feelings. This is what I wrote on Goodreads about the last volume (and story in general):
The beach chapter—chapter 52— seemed to tie up loose ends about the characters. I thought that Toma, Taichi, and Futaba had closure about their feelings. One of the themes I picked up from the story was that one can’t choose who they love. Chapter 52 seemed to emphasize that since Toma and Taichi clearly professed their love for their respective love interests as well as their desires to maintain their friendships.
So, making Toma and Taichi husbands by the end of the series makes little sense to me. I thought that Taichi closed that chapter of his life by accepting and moving on from Toma’s confession. I don’t care if he stayed with Futaba by the end of the story or not. But I do think that making the two male leads of the story husbands in the finale is a weird move as it contradicts the development the main trio had by the end of the 52nd chapter.
I wish that Toma eventually moved on. And if Taichi and Futaba’s relationship couldn’t work out, then their friendship’s transcendence of their gender expectations would’ve near-perfectly addressed (and concluded) Mami Yagihara’s argument and/or wish that people of the opposite sex could stay friends!
As for Masumi Itachi, her character arc ends in conformity as she’s revealed to have married a man. The ending we get for her character is an awkward one as it’s unclear if she truly was a lesbian or if she had turned out to be bisexual. The finale implies that she’s content with her life, though the somber expression on her face suggests that she’s not very happy (but this could be because of Kaito’s art style). I don’t know how to feel about Masumi’s final relationship. She’s written as a contrast to Toma, who was forcefully outed as gay at school. Masumi seems to have kept her secret sexuality hidden to retain a peaceful life at the cost of her own happiness. Although I have mixed feelings about how her arc ends, I do think that it’s one of the things that Kaito does thematically well. (But more on this later.)
Another thing I didn’t quite like about Kaito’s story is the lack of focus on the side characters. Mami Yagihara’s character is often looked into, but is almost completely absent after the fallout between Toma and Taichi. Mami has a crush on Toma and she was present when his sexuality is revealed. At this point in the story, she talks about her wish of girls and boys getting along as equals without having to worry about either person falling in love. Mami desires friendships without romantic ties, and while this notion is an intricate one that Kaito explores throughout the story, its unfortunately forgotten in the finale.
And I can’t talk about Mami Yagihara’s unresolved character arc without talking about Kensuke, who has a huge crush on her and who fought Toma after he learned about his sexuality. I thought that Toma’s revelation was an interesting point in the story that revealed a lot about some of the characters’ hidden biases. Kensuke stood out from the rest of the Blue Flag cast because of his involvement in Toma’s outing. His justification for disliking Toma is that he was sexually abused by a man as a child. This isn’t explored by Kaito and it might be a good thing. However, Kensuke is essential for the direction that Toma’s arc went. However, the mangaka does very little to explore Kensuke and his feelings for Mami or his reasons for doing anything at all.
What is known about Kensuke is that he’s overprotective of Mami because he likes her. Even so, his reasons for being in love with Mami are shallow as his attractions are limited to her physical appearance. Because Kaito added Mami’s story into Blue Flag, then Kensuke should’ve also had more added about him, too. Adding Kensuke’s trauma to the story only to reel away from it doesn’t do anything for the story or for his character. His and Mami’s character arcs are incomplete.
Futaba Kuze’s addition to the story complicated things for Toma and Taichi. The complications aren’t necessarily negative as her presence only made things harder for Toma. She is a cute character whose femininity is a nice contrast against Toma, who presents a hypermasculine image. Their friendship seems to address Mami’s wish of girls being friends with boys, though his sexuality is implied to be a huge part of it. And with that, it seems as though the mangaka is saying that a boy and a girl can’t see each other as equals, as friends, unless one of them is gay.
The Good
The manga introduces thought-provoking themes that kept me interested in the story. The most prominent one is, of course, sexuality, as its explored through characters like Toma and Masumi. While Toma’s arc is completed, Masumi’s can be interpreted in two different ways: the first is that she is bisexual and had discovered this at some point in her adult life; or that Masumi has always been a lesbian and that she chose to keep her sexuality hidden from others out of fear.
I personally think that the latter is what became of Masumi’s character arc. Masumi chose to conform to what’s expected of her. Instead of going through the same hardships that Toma went through when his sexuality was exposed, Masumi chose to stay quiet. Her reasoning is that by staying quiet, she could preserve her friendship with Futaba and to avoid being ostracized by her loved ones.
Masumi and Toma are characters that mirror each other: they’re in love with their best friends, they struggle to keep their sexualities hidden, and they’re desperate for acceptance. The ridicule that Toma faced after his love for Taichi was exposed made Masumi fearful of losing her friendships and fearful of losing others’ acceptance of her. Although she insists that other’s opinions don’t matter to her, she takes her loved ones’ thoughts into consideration. A discussion with Toma’s sister-in-law, Akiko, led to a discussion about her sexual orientation. While Akiko insists that conforming to the norm makes life easier, she also adds that liking whatever and whoever one likes isn’t a crime. Whether her loved ones decide to distance themselves from her for coming out isn’t a choice she can make for them.
And so, we land to Masumi’s arc conclusion where she’s married to a man and is attending Futaba’s wedding to a different man… As much as it pains me that Masumi chose to conform, it is likely the most realistic conclusion to her character. Masumi’s social struggle ends with her defeat. It’s not surprising that many people in her position would feel pressured to keep their true selves hidden from their family and friends.
Her character is a tragic one.
Aside from the more “morbid positives” of the manga series, the comedic elements of the story perfectly balance out the more dramatic moments. Seeing the characters acting their age and behaving awkwardly with each other is refreshing for manga that are in the shōnen demographic.
Conclusion
In all, I did enjoy the series. I think that Kaito did a good job portraying the melodrama that’s prevalent in teenagers. While I do have criticisms for the mangaka’s handling of his male leads, I think that the manga is worth reading.
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