This manga was very cute but held little depth. It follows Hozumi and Mishima, who secretly dated in high school when suddenly Hozumi breaks Mishima’s heart. He then leaves the town for 7 years. This story takes place when he comes back, and hears from his friends that Mishima has become a shut in. He goes to the lighthouse where Mishima lives and tries to gain his attention again. This is where their story from high school restarts.

While this was cute, I feel the pace was too fast for any real connection. Hozumi quite literally told Mishima that he didn’t love him and was lying the entire time and then LEFT FOR SEVEN YEARS. He did do this to try to help and protect Mishima, it was still a horrid thing to do. So to then see them get together so quickly ruined a lot of the plot. I would recommend for a light read but this needed more, more depth, more character development, more groveling.

This was a sweet, quick romance that had me entertained throughout.

It was not anything substantial and I felt that the reason for the first breakup was unnecessary—and I also am personally not a fan of the miscommunication going on.

It was fast paced and an easy read, but as I mentioned, the breakup being a lie of one character saying he never loved the other isn’t a trope I enjoy very much.

This one started out with a good premise:

Two high school ex boyfriends and first lives reuniting after seven years and one of them - Hozumi - actually broke his ex boyfriend Mishima’s heart telling him he lied about loving him.

It’s got all the right tropes but I just didn’t feel it? The art was ok, but the story just dragged and there was hardly any conflict, plus even the more spicier scenes seemed very out of place. I would say it works as an easy beginner Yaoi for people used to tamer books but it’s still very bland in general. I know I wouldn’t buy it after this.

Thank you to NetGalley and Kodansha Comics for letting me read this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I can´t with this. The art was okay, but the story was all over the place.

- We start with Hozumi telling Mishima he was lying about loving him (an awful thing to lie about and, guess what, it was done for no good reason) which was my first issue with the plot. If you´re going to base your plot on a character´s betrayal, then make sure this betrayal does have sense and that the guilty character pays for it / wins back the trust if you´re really going to push for the romantic relationship.
- Speaking about pushing. After 7 years with no contact with Mishima, Hozumi comes back to town and acts like a stalker towards Mishima, going to his home repeatedly "to talk" with him, not accepting that Mishima has told him more than once to go away (red flag)
- By convenience of the plot they are still in love with each other (why? don´t ask me why! I don´t even understand why they´re supposed to have +20 yo and yet still act 15!) and, although Mishima is not ready to admit or do anything with his feelings, there is a rape scene (big red flag)
- We never get to see what are the ambitions or likes of these characters. Apparently Ishizaki gone to college to study something we never know (and we don´t know either if he later worked in the city or what else). And Mishima is taking care of the lighthouse because... that is what his grandpa expected of him. He never thought about leaving the place or do something else (and did I really need to fall for the "I´m so depressed because this person left me and now I got nowhere to go on my own" subplot line? That´s so... ugh).
- Hozumi apologises for "what happened the other time" (meaning the rape) and and Mishima brushes it off saying "don´t talk about it". And that´s it. Rape happened, but we just pretend it didn´t for the rest of the manga (bigges fvcking red flag)
- Hozumi finally addresses that he lied 7 years ago because he wanted Mishima to hate him (???) and then never apologised and said he would have done it again (I swear to god, this character is the most disgusting thing I´ve read in a while. I hoped he died, but we weren´t going to be that lucky).

Overall, the only think I liked about the comic was the fact that Hozumi´s parents weren´t homophobic and accepted pretty quickly their son´s relationship. But then again, their son is a shitty human being, and I´m sorry for anyone (Mishima, that´s you) who has to put up with him. So no, this is not really good either anyway.

The artwork in this story is lovely. The character art is, at times, struggling with continuity in the facial features, and the body proportions are not always perfect, and older characters just look like young characters with lines next to their mouths (but, continuity and proportions are both difficult to draw, and many people aren't very good at drawing older characters). The backgrounds in this manga is definitely were the artist excels, though. It has a beautiful setting and the small costal town feel is apparent in every page. This manga has beautiful ambiance.

The pacing of the story is not ideal for me. There's a sex scene early on that comes out of nowhere, lasts for 1 page, and is over again. This scene is very ambiguous in it's consent, and both characters seem to regret it - implying that Hozumi raped Mishima and regrets it, and Mishima is apathetic to the whole thing. This entire scene through me for a loop and felt completely unnecessary.

Unfortunately, the initial conflict of the story (why they broke up in the first place) also felt completely unnecessary and the explanation for it felt lack-lustre. I never really felt connected to the characters or ever wanted to see them get back together, which is the bare-minimum that I expect to feel for any romance story.

A plot point I did enjoy, though, was Hozumi confiding in his brother that he was dating a man, and his brother taking it well and even warning his parents to expect Hozumi to tell them and to please be supportive. I thought that was quite sweet.

I really enjoyed reading this manga. It was short but beautifully written and although there were misunderstandings, I thought it was very well resolved and the love story was well-written. I would definitely recommend this to anyone looking for a nice, romantic manga with a more mature approach.

I liked the idea of this book, but the pacing was way too fast for me. This was the opposite of a slow burn and there is a seven year span between the first page and the last.

Also, I feel like the bonus chapter should have been chapter 2. We didn’t get much backstory of Mishima until the bonus chapter. I wanted to know more of how he was feeling through the manga. There wasn’t enough angst between them. I mean, he breaks up with Mishima and tells him he never loved him. I feel like we could have seen so many different emotions from Mishima but it kind of felt flat.

I did like how they were with one another. I saw glimpses of love between them. The art style is also really beautiful. The way their eyes are drawn, I feel like I’m looking into their soul.

Thank you Netgalley and Publisher for this advanced copy.

Sweet and enjoyable. The plot seems a bit too fast tho.

The art was lovely but the story was severely lacking. It just kind of meandered along until it ended.

These guys have no chemistry and there’s no real sense of what Hozumi is like in his day-to-day life, to the point where he just feels like a pushy obsessive kid chasing after the person he hurt, hoping to be forgiven without having to apologize. Their conversations are stilted and awkward, and Hozumi is always pushing Mishima (who he doesn’t even call by his first name even when they’re dating?) into situations that seem to be more than what Mishima is ready for.

It could have been significantly better if we understood what Hozumi was giving up by moving home, if they (the together or separately) interacted with anyone else for more than one page at a time, and it was clearer that Mishima is actually not only accepting but genuinely wants the relationship

”The White and Blue Between Us” by Kiyuhiko was … eh … pretty straightforward. To tell the truth, I can't say what the story was about. Was there a story?
Does it have to have a story?
Sometimes it can be nice reading something non-complicated ... but I was still missing something that would make me care for the characters and their ending.

The first page is about the characters having an ugly breakup. After I finished reading, I had to go back to see if we got an explanation for the breakup. We did, and it was not memorable enough for me to remember, because it has no influence on the story we are reading.

Two past lovers see each other again after 7 years, they still have feelings for each other, and they get back together. It´s non-complicated. It´s a one-shot story. It´s what I call a nice break story.

Unfortunately, this book's pacing and the story's major plot point were two things that made this book not work for me. I feel like the break-up between the two main characters could be handled much better, it felt too drastic and maybe even pointless. And while I liked Mishima enough and found his relationship with his work and with his late grandfather to be an interesting point in the story, I couldn't find myself caring about Hozumi and their relationship for at least 3/4 of the book. As I mentioned in the beginning, if the pacing was better and the story focused more on the way they mended their relationship instead of focusing on their high school years, I would be more invested.
If there's something I liked, it would be Hozumi's brother and the lighthouse. The art style was good, but I wouldn't say it felt too exceptional compared to other mangas.
Overall, I was pretty disappointed by this story, but I wouldn't say it was catastrophic.

This was such a quick read. The art was cute, reminded me a bit of Heartstopper but the story was so mediocre and kind of jumped around in time and I was confused about half the time. It was okay.

I loved the cover of this book, but was overall disappointed in the story. It's nothing new, we've seen stories of kids breaking up only to get back together again years down the line, and while there's nothing wrong with that sort of narrative, what the biggest problem here is the lack of substance. The plot only hits the key points, there's no in-between. We don't see the rebuilding of their relationship, nor do we get anything other than a superficial nod to what the original cause of the breakup was in the first place (which itself was a vague thing). The relationship advances too quickly, and there's a time skip that is frankly not needed when we're already missing so much of the story. The characters are two dimensional and flat, neither learns from their mistakes and they don't really show any growth or change other than they start dating. This hits all the points of a story, but is missing the actual elements that make a story worth reading.

I enjoy second chance romances, but this was not it. 😩 The buildup and pacing ultimately never worked for me, and I literally found myself saying "What??" out loud as soon as we got to the first spice scene because it was OUT OF NOWHERE and non-consensual, and not even in a dark romance way. 💀 I liked the side characters here at least, with Hozumi talking to his family about his feelings, but that was honestly about it. I ultimately wasn't a fan of the art style either, particularly when it came to certain expressions, but that's more of a nitpicky thing on my part. 🤣

This felt like a very middle ground manga to me. There wasn't anything bad about it, it just wasn't very memorable. My biggest issue with it, however, was I felt that the initial break up wasn't fully fleshed out. When we eventually discover why Hozumi broke up with Mishima it felt disingenuous and didn't really make sense to me. The ending was cute, and the art style was pretty standard for manga. Overall, it was a mostly OK read for me.

The White and the Blue Between Us is a single volume manga about two men who reunite after seven years apart. In high school they were secretly dating and now are reunited after one of the two left their island home for college.

There are a lot of ideas in this short volume. A lot of themes touched on, but none of them were explored deeply. I felt like this could be a longer book, or a book that was more focused. The art is nice and there is a sense of place, but it doesn't quite come together.

I thought this was very fast paced in the beginning but then mellowed out in the middle and the end. I wasn’t expecting so many “scenes” but that was my fault for not really doing that much research before reading. I expected it to be more of a slow burn between them but it went in the complete opposite direction.

Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC.

***TRIGGER WARNING: NON-CONSENSUAL***

While I was really enjoying the beginning of the book, everything went downhill once the scene with the non-consensual sex happened. There was really no need for this scene. It did not add anything to the story, it got brushed over like what he did was okay, and it made me super uncomfortable. I couldn't really focus on the story after that and I really did not care about their relationship after all that.

The pacing overall was all over the place as well as it was hard to understand how much time had passed.

Would not recommend.

Thank you to NetGalley, Kodansha Comics, and Kiyuhiko for the opportunity to read this manga in exchange for an honest review.

A BL geared more toward an adult readership, this manga follows Hozumi and Mishima. In high school, they liked each other, but seeing their futures to have different paths, Hozumi ended things. Seven years later, he returns to his island town with a hope of reconnecting with Mishima. when he learns Mishima keeps to himself and solely cares for the island lighthouse, Hozumi is determined to rekindle what they once had.

A great one-shot BL manga for older readers about high school romance and the changes in one's future. Great for LGBT readers.