This review contains spoilers for Blue Hearts Blue Hearts deals with sensitive themes like suicide and sexual assault and as such those topics will be referenced in this review. Reader discretion advised. Blue Hearts is the most recent manga created by Sou Yayoi who is known for being the creator of ReLIFE a personal favourite manga of mine. ReLIFE was a manga that hit heavily with me as someone who has had feelings of wanting to return to childhood in the world of working life. Due to this I went into Blue Hearts expecting to have a similar story but from the perspective of a character who still had time to change things. Is it what I got? Not really. Plot 5/10 Yuuhi Nagi is a second year high school student who is on the verge of dropping out. After being called to the principal for cheating on a test he is given an ultimatum alongside the 4 other lowest achieving students in the school. If even a single one of you is not able to reach the top 200. The four of you will be forced to repeat a year. This ultimatum gives us the stage for the story and introduces our 5 main characters Yuuhi Nagi our protagonist and heart of gold delinquent who is also extremely stupid. Fuuka Seto a popular girl who has probably the worst handled arc in the story. Dai Yagami a member of the kendo club and Arata Kaizaki lookalike. Kanae Mizusawa a formerly cheerful girl who refuses to open up. These four are tutored by our final focus character who is the top student of the school. Toki Ichijou heir to his familys hospital who is unable to pursue what he wants. Blue Hearts is a story that dives into these five characters and their pasts an interesting premise but the execution is another story entirely. I am not personally comfortable in my ability to discuss some of these topics but I will make an effort to explain why they are handled extremely poorly. The first two story arcs are in spoiler tags due to the sensitive nature of the content. Read at your own discretion. Moving on the next story arc is of Dai. And to be honest it just wasnt very interesting. After how deep the first two arcs are this one just felt a lot less important due to its resolution. Dai was a member of the kendo club but in a duel to decide the next club Captain he was seemingly intentionally injured by his closest friend at the club and essentially forced out making him give up kendo. After various events Yuuhi decides to duel the new Captain of the club to get the truth from him which leads to Dai stepping in and winning the duel. Here it is revealed that the current Captain was threatened to injure Dai and push him out otherwise the upperclassmen of the club would make the club a living hell. A rather underwhelming resolution considering once this happens theres basically no repercussions for anyone involved. Not Dai not the Captain for whistleblowing on the threat and not the upperclassmen for making the threat. The penultimate arc is the arc of Toki number one student at the school. During this arc it is revealed that Toki is secretly singing for a band at a local bar after Yuuhi and Dai are roped into working there by one of Yuuhis friends who we will be discussing later. Toki is an honour student who is also the heir to his familys hospital this is because of his twin sister who is transgender. Im not really sure why that means she cant inherit the hospital but whatever Japan. The arc leads to a classic school festival band show with Tokis parents being in the audience and discovering his passion for music with them accepting his dreams and Tokis sister agreeing to take over the hospital. This arc was kind of pointless as from the resolution its pretty obvious that Tokis parents had no objections to his love of singing and they just very clearly had no idea thinking that he loved studying and wanted to be the heir. Simple communication could of resolved this a long time before the story even started and I do understand that the message is that sometimes you need to take a risk and admit that you want to do something other than what your parents wish for you but it could have been handled a lot better. The final arc is about our protagonist Yuuhi and his two friends Ren Shiina and Yuushi Koga. It is revealed rather early on in the story that Yuuhi is an orphan and currently lives alone. Yuuhi and Ren grew up at the same orphanage and were bullied at school for being orphans Japanese kids are evil man what the hell and this resulted in them retaliating leading to the orphanage director having to step down from his position. Yuuhi and Ren grew up as delinquents constantly getting into fights and being outcasts from society leading to their former orphanage director deciding to... get a gang member to recruit them into his gang?????? Im not entirely sure how this was the best course of action but it leads to Yuuhi and Ren eventually attempting to leave the group after their friend Yuushi getting into a conflict with the leader. Yuuhi is slashed over the back by the leader who decides to stay behind and wait to be arrested. Before being arrested he tells Yuuhi and Ren that he will eventually return for them. Long story short he comes back and attempts to get Yuuhi back in the gang but decides against it once he discovers that Yuuhi has finally found his place in society and made some real friends. Of course after brutally assaulting Ren and Yuuhi and getting himself arrested again. Blue Hearts ends with the final exam and surprise surprise all of the cast passed the test and everyone lived happily ever after for some reason despite half the cast realistically being traumatized. Art 8/10 The art is pretty pleasant to look at and similarly to ReLIFEis in full colour. https://i.ur.com/SbzdjBw.png Theres not much to say really the art is basically the same as ReLIFE. Characters 6/10 The characters were enjoyable enough they had some good chemistry and their comedic moments were good. However they do mostly feel one dimensional with a couple of rare instances where there is exception to this. Enjoyment 5/10 Blue Hearts both gave me enjoyment and extreme discomfort. The moments where the manga doesnt attempt to deal with heavy topics are enjoyable and the comedy was funny at times. But the mangas extreme failure at handling serious topics is a real turn off to what could have been an enjoyable experience. Overall 55/100 Blue Hearts had potential it really did. But its just nowhere near long enough. ReLIFE was over 230 chapters whereas Blue Hearts is only 64 but tries to fit in so much more serious topics and issues that it really doesnt have the time to dive into. Would I recommend Blue Hearts? Unfortunately Id have to say no. I tried really hard to like this manga I did but I just couldnt. ReLIFE however? ReLIFE is amazing. Go read that. This review was hard to write to be honest but I felt I had to get it out there because the topics presented in this manga hit me in a personal way. Unfortunately I didnt come out with a positive opinion of the way they were handled. And finally a quick message from Chizuru thanks for reading. https://i.ur.com/hUzvpu8.png