Blue Box

Now this one I found all on my own! Please clap. So hear me out: I usually don’t read sports manga week to week. And romance manga that gives me a twinge of Nisekoi’s endless harem  vibes usually goes straight to the bin that’s auspiciously labeled “guilty pleasures.” But Blue Box is a manga I can say with my full chest is one of the better sports/romance stories I’ve read this year. Blue Box, created by Kouji Miura, follows the blossoming romance between two junior high athletes named Taiki Inomata and Chinatsu Kano. Chinatsu and Taiki’s will-they-won’t-they romance is neatly accentuated by how determined they are while training and competing for their respective championships. Because Blue Box is still a romance manga, the pair’s blossoming romance is complicated by the one-two punch of them having to live together, and their tenuous, one-on-one dynamic turning into a love triangle with the inclusion of Taiki’s best friend, Hina Chouno.

Although it occasionally skirts the line of being a full-blown cliche harem romance manga, it consistently sets itself apart with how emotionally mature its characters are. Despite being junior high schoolers, all three characters are acutely aware that they’re initially in love with the idea of being with the person they’ve got a crush on, without really knowing them as people first. While the manga is filled with comedic and dramatic misinterpretations and misunderstandings between the trio, it also takes them to task whenever they project their feelings onto each other, which is a really refreshing change of pace for romance manga. Also, the sports in question in this manga are basketball, something I’ve really gotten into this year, and badminton, a high-key slept-on sport in both real life and fiction.