I’ve seen a bunch of ‘Blue Flag is written from a straight perspective for straights’ takes from people as it was coming out that I have to disagree with. Speculation about KAITO aside, the story relies on the audience reading queerness into the story in a way that the most likely demographic absolutely would not do.
Touma and Masumi’s stories are both very clear and even didactic in the way that a lot of cistraight-written stories are, with the characters clearly conflicted over how much they can and should share with the people around them. However, the story is careful to avoid the cliches of the coming-out story or the crush-on-best-friend story. Touma and Masumi fear getting rejected, but those concerns are secondary. Touma’s main concern is the future he hasn’t planned for. Growing up queer doesn’t seem like it has anything to do with choosing your major, but it’s a connection that’s easy to make for the queer reader. KAITO never explains how those parts of the story relate, and he doesn’t need to. Readers will make the connection on their own or not depending on their own experiences.
Masumi’s conversation with Aki-san also reveals a different take on a cliche. Rather than the typical tortured best friend, she’s more upset that she can’t be honest with Futaba than that she can’t be with Futaba. Her bisexuality is more up for debate, but I’d argue that the writing of that aspect of her story also reflects a deeper understanding of queer experiences, since the story doesn’t downplay any of her teen angst by excusing it as ‘oh she can just go straight.’
The strongest argument for Blue Flag’s queer perspective is Taichi. There are no explicit references to his bisexuality before the last chapter and a lot of readers genuinely thought he was straight, as evidenced by all the ‘I’m not homophobic but’ comments on every video, article, or post about the manga. If you take Tumblr as a stand-in for a queer audience, though, most people read Taichi as bi from early on in the story. The hints are there, Taichi can’t get over Touma, he’s driven to intense inner conflict and angst over the state of their relationship, he looks at him in awe and admiration, and there are narrative parallels that match his feelings for Touma to Touma’s feelings for him (timing of the ‘best friend power’ declaration) and his feelings for Futaba (panelling during the confession scenes).
Taichi is clearly bi and written as such, but KAITO doesn’t ever even imply it in text, he simply writes it into the story and leaves it to readers to recognize it. If the story were written for straight readers from a straight perspective, there would be the whole ‘but…he’s a guy!!’ that you get in every mediocre yaoi story. You’d get some denial from Taichi during the post-confession scenes, or even an inner monologue. The story would be falling over itself to explain away the aftermath, the reaction, the rationalization, but it doesn’t. Taichi’s feelings in that part of the story are an indescribable mess of lost friendship, fear, repressed attraction, excitement, insecurity, regret, that don’t get written out as a Very Special Episode. The character is accorded respect and distance even as we look in on Touma and Futaba sympathetically and hear their side of things. Queer perspective is required for this approach to work. If readers just assume a straight response, it doesn’t make sense why Taichi is taking so long to no homo it. If the writer taking a straight perspective, it doesn’t make sense to leave things up for interpretation because then the point is to explain these foreign characters to a foreign audience. Instead, the view is from inside. The narration is filled in by a queer readership.
Note that you don’t need to have a queer author to write from a queer perspective. KAITO is a guy, and Mami’s arc is a better and more personally relatable perspective on life as a woman than 95% of female-written women. The comic More Than Meets the Eye/Lost Light has some of my favourite writing of queer characters/themes and is written by an ostensibly straight guy. But whatever the reason, KAITO’s writing only works with a queer audience and offers an interior perspective on queerness.
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