A review by obgot
Blue Box, Vol. 1 by Kouji Miura

lighthearted reflective relaxing slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No

3.0

 It's kind of hard to formulate how I feel about this series... there are a lot of things I really like but then they're paired with so many really generic & hollow feeling plot beats. 
I like: 
- the sports elements in general. always love sports manga but the format makes solo sports like badminton a lot harder to do, the fact that blue box is mostly a romance instead & the whole sports school set up works really well actually! And I like a series about two characters cheering each other on 
- the characters! I like all of them, they're really sweet & serious & hardworking for this passions and I love that for them 
- the art is lovely, esp the detailed bgs <3

Things I don't like as much: 
- just in general the 'two high schoolers suddenly start living together' trope is really not my thing. though how underutilized it actually is in this series makes me wonder if the author wanted to have it at all or if the editor forced it on them... in general I want to attribute the writing I like to the author and the stuff I don't care as much for to editing and wonder if this would be a way better series if it wasn't published in jump, but who knows, it could be completely the other way around or not that kind of split between editor and author at all. 
- sooo much of the romance and love triangle feels very generic & not built up on. there are some moments that I think are really nice but then they seem to have no lasting impact or personality beyond 'these are the plot beats we need to hit in a romance series'. The romance doesn't feel personal to the characters.

All in all it's a mixed bag... none of these +s and -s really cancel each other out so I can't say this series is neutral... it's just. somewhere. Combined with the fact that it's a high school romance which I'm not really into lately I think I won't keep reading it