Blue flag does many subtle things remarkably well, but one of my favorite is that Taichi is a pretty average looking protagonist, but every once in a while the camera/POV switches to the perspective of someone who's in love with him and suddenly he's gorgeous. Nothing about him changes- he's drawn with the exact same features as always- but it's instantly obvious why they love him. We see him through their eyes instead of through Taichi's own, and he becomes the most beautiful person in the world and he doesn't even realize it.
Taichi looks up at Touma with doe eyes and food stuck to his face and suddenly he's heart achingly cute. He gives a full body laugh and it's so rare and genuine that Futaba/we through Futaba's eyes stare in lovestruck awe.
It's just. It's so subtle and deftly conveys so, so much without uttering a single word. But it also strengthens the fact that the camera POV is tied to the characters. So when Taichi/the default POV does the same to the others, every time it oogles Touma or makes Futaba glow, that's Taichi. That's his feelings, his love, his attraction that he doesn't even realize he's feeling yet. And you reach that final reveal in the final pages of the story and then you go back to the beginning and you the reader have the fanfic oh. moment. Because it's been there all along.
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In my hearts of hearts, I'm not winning the war.
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the thing about ao no flag that's hitting me so hard is that, on the surface, it's a romance manga. the whole concept is that this girl is in love with the main characters childhood friend. and then the main character gets feelings for her. and then all the while, the childhood friend has been having his own romantic feelings for the main character.
but that's just the surface. in actuality, the manga is mainly about friendship, about the who's and the hows and the assumptions that come with it.
can a boy and girl be close friends? can I stay friends with the person I love, even though I'll never tell them? can i stay friends with someone whos confessed to me? can I be friends with someone who only thinks of me as a romantic option? can I care deeply about more than one person? do I have to care about my significant other more than my friends? can I be friends with the one I love even though I know my presence just causes them pain?
can we still be best friends, after all that's happened?
and that's the climax of it all, isn't it? not the romance, but the friendship.
"I dont know what's going to happen in the future, but I do know that I care about you, and I want you by my side, and even if our feelings dont exactly match here in this moment, I love you, I love you, I love you."
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confused arospec & fed up arospec
I have so many thoughts about each of them, but I can't put them into words. I just love them so much. I just love characters that defend importance of platonic love, especially in romance genre. I just love characters calling out bullshit of "you can't be close friends with opposite sex". I just love them so much
I wanted this post to be funny haha meme, but I'm not normal about them
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the number of times the VIZ translation of anf made me read the word 'gawd' is a little inhumane tbh
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i havent seen anyone talk about this but Arajin and Matakara remind me of Taichi and Touma so much man.
small dark haired guy chasing a girl he likes. major inferiority complex. complicated feelings about his childhood best friend that have to do with those feelings of inferiority, causing him to initially avoid him now that they're in high school.
Said childhood best friend has no parents and only has his big brother left. He idolises his former friend to a fault, and still calls him by a childish and overly familiar version of his name (Tai-chan, Ara-chan). hes tall and fit and seems to be popular / well liked, but all he really cares about is his (former) best friend.
the bigger one has kept a memento of their friendship for years. best friend power. best friend stone.
ao no flag was all about making choices. bucchigiri is about not running away and facing things head on.
with the way things are going for bucchigiri, it's inevitable that Matakara and Arajin will reconcile, just like Taichi and Touma did
well. maybe not exactly like they did...
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