This isn’t the first time Dai Noshiro has had to transfer schools and he’s familiar with the process: be as friendly as he can and he’ll quickly be accepted by your new classmates. So when Noshiro notices that one of his new classmates, Kou Sanada, is seemingly isolated from the rest of the class, Noshiro immediately reaches out, knowing first-hand how unpleasant it is to be alone. Sanada rejects most of Noshiro’s advances at first but Noshiro isn’t about to give up after one or two refusals, even if he’s shocked to learn that unsubstantiated “rumors” about Sanada being gay aren’t rumors after all.
This adaptation of Okura’s webcomic of the same name is a surprisingly and delightfully sweet story about a couple of high school kids wrestling with LGTB+ identities, although there were one or two things in this first volume that left me a little concerned. I felt like the series is trying to gloss over the red flag of “Sanada’s previous boyfriend was a full-grown adult who was KNOWINGLY dating a high schooler (with implied sex)”. Sure Noshiro brings it up (“EX-BOYFRIEND?!!” “Why are you yelling?!” “Are you serious?! I mean, that guy is a MAN”) but since Hidemitsu also becomes a Trusted Adult Figure for Noshiro to ask for answers about gayness I feel like creator Okura is trying to have it both ways. This certainly isn’t the first time I’ve had questions about an age-gap/power dynamic relationship in a manga and, while fiction =/= real life, this one concerns me more than usual.
Aside from that detail, and so far it does seem to be just a detail (Hidemitsu is only a side character, although there is some implying that Sanada is still dating other adult men), I thought that this manga was quite cute and I’m really enjoying the relationships between the leads and the side character Yamamoto. Initially I was concerned since the story is told from the point of view of the (assumed straight, now questioning) Noshiro instead of the (gay) Sanada, a dynamic I’m used to seeing done poorly, but after reading the first volume I think that was a good choice after all. It seems that Noshiro likely isn’t as straight as he assumed he was after all (and as a side note, he totally looks like he’ll grow up to star in a Gengoroh Tagame manga) and the story isn’t one that’s meant to explain LGTB+ -issues to the readers. That Blue Sky Feeling is a story that’s genuinely about these kids navigating their senses of self while at a turbulent time in their lives. If Noshiro wasn’t the point of view character we would also miss out on a lot of his inner world and, as someone who also moved several times as a kid, I really empathized with him on this point. Lots of manga use “the main character just moved to a new town” as the catalyst for the story but I feel like few writers really engage with what that entails; I feel that Okura gets closer than most to imagining how this kind of upheaval even changes your character and how you handle social situations differently.
Speaking of writers, I was interested to see in the extra pages that this story was originally a webcomic created by Okura (both written and drawn I believe) and while I’ve gotten used to seeing Japanese webcomics get picked up for publishing (like My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness) or even anime (like Re:LIFE) the only other one I can think of off the top of my head that’s been redrawn for a more traditional release is Horimiya. Okura mentions a few changes in the extra pages, such as cutting out one side character (for now) and a few redesigns.
I’m curious about what the original webcomic was like and I hope that the other two volumes provide even more details on it. Of course I’m looking forward to reading volumes two and three for more reasons than just that one. I’m rooting for these kids!