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Blue Box
Author: Kouji Miura
Volumes: 6 English & 13 Japanese (Ongoing at 130 Chapters) while writing these in advance a 7th Volume landed on my doorstep as it released this month!
Publisher: Shonen Jump [click HERE for digital chapters]
As I said in the last entry, the top 3 all sit at number 1 interchangeably, and it’s only recent events in the number 1 spot that currently hold it there. Kouji Miura’s wholesome Blue Box is easily one of my favourite curve ball series of all time. I still can’t believe I’m reading what is essentially a romcom under the pretence of competitive sports in “weekly shonen jump” of all things.
Not only that, but the two main characters, Taiki Inomata, and Chinatsu Kano are both an absolute joy to follow on their journeys to make it to nationals in badminton and basketball respectively. What I love more than anything else is that it’s handling relationships in a way that I haven’t seen done before in Jump.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s a little bit of that disney “love at first sight” stuff going on, but it thankfully goes a whole lot deeper than this too. Both characters start off for nearly 100 chapters getting to really know one another better, to spend time together as friends and see where their strengths and weaknesses are. Even now in the current arc where it’s a new year and things have been taken further with the start of their relationship, things are taking the slow and steady approach, each one respecting the other.
In a country where I feel like the subject of romance is far behind the times, it’s refreshing to read a love story that I think may even be years ahead even for western audiences that are all too focused on just the honeymoon period of love itself rather than the entire journey before, and I sincerely hope that we may even get to see what happens after this too… This is one story where you could actually pair some of the cast off and not have it feel so forced!
Even better, is that as I was writing this, the animated adaptation was announced, meaning that a broader audience will soon see what this series is all about!