While a lot of important things happen in this volume, including another painful, painful cliffhanger, what's striking about it is how it treats the idea of "normal." Blue Flag has shown us several permutations of the way that "normal" can hurt people who don't fit the accepted vision of it – Masumi hating her own sexual orientation and actively trying to "fix" it, Mami fighting against perceptions of who she has to be as a classically pretty/hot girl – but this volume also looks at how "normal" is affecting Taichi and Futaba's relationship as college looms, how it plays with beauty standards, and even just the basic idea of family. It feels as if the series is moving towards a discussion of how there is no such thing as "normal" in the toxic sense that the characters experience it, and that's something that needs saying. If any series, manga or otherwise, is going to be able to pull it off, I think it will be this one.

The catalyst for this discussion is Futaba and Taichi's relationship. They've only recently moved into the “dating” phase, and there's a real impression that neither of them quite know what to do with that, or even if they find the idea of being a couple particularly comfortable. I've said before that it looks like Taichi may be more into Futaba than she is him, but more than that there's beginning to be a sense that they've moved into a romantic relationship not because they both truly want it, but rather because it's expected of them. They're opposite genders, they get along, and they spend a lot of time together – why wouldn't they be dating as opposed to just friends?

That's something that, while never explicitly stated in the book, is represented by the Mami storyline. As we learned in volume five, Mami actively resents her beauty and the expectations it gives people about her, both positive and negative. She's still trying to fend off a friend who wants to be more than that, but no matter how many times she explains how he's hurting her by his dogged and insistent pursuit, he can't seem to understand. They have a fairly spectacular fight in the beginning of this volume where Mami flat out tells him that when he dumps a girl for her, he's putting her in the way of people's anger and misconceptions, taking control of her life and reputation in a way that he has no right to. Mami isn't at fault for turning him down; he's at fault for acting like she's the villain of the piece. It's a continuation of the direct refutation of stereotypes that volume five brought us and even more powerful for being said in Mami's own words – which also makes it even worse when no one seems to be able to understand.

This basically bookends the volume in a meaningful way that once again calls out the readers for their own genre-and-stereotype-based assumptions. Towards the end, Mami, whose club is running a make-up demonstration during the inevitable school festival, asks Toma to let her work on him. Eventually he agrees, worn down by his attempts to cope with his feelings for Taichi, and when they're alone, Mami confesses that she loves him…but wishes that he were a girl or that she were a boy. That's not because Mami is gay or knows that Toma is, though – it's because she doesn't have a crush on him, and wants to be his friend. While we could glibly say that there's nothing preventing that, the fact of the matter is that – as the past two books have spent their page counts pointing out to us – there is: because Mami looks the way she does and has the personality she does, she's essentially socially barred from having male friends. Mami has never had a crush on Toma. She likes him in a different way, but we and the characters in the story have all been so well-trained in our assumptions that once again we couldn't see what was really going on – and neither could Toma.

That's the moment that galvanizes Toma into finally truly saying something about his own feelings, leading to the cliff-hanger encounter at the end of the volume, as well as to a spate of rumors about who exactly he likes. This may not be as damaging to his relationship with Taichi as it could be, because Taichi notes that he's not going to believe anything until he hears it from the man himself, but it is a major turning point for everyone. During the festival, we not only see Taichi and Futaba trying to make sense of their potential breakup (something one of Taichi's friends seems to feel is inevitable, and he might not be wrong), but also Masumi spending time with Toma's sister-in-law. This last scene is important on two fronts: she's just the right degree of distant for Masumi to come out to her without fear of reprisal, and she's also one of the people who could be affected by Toma's coming out, making this something of a test on that front. While I wouldn't say her reaction and advice are perfect, it's also clear that she's doing her best for the obviously hurting girl in front of her, and in her Masumi finds the first person to accept her for who she is. “Normal,” she says, isn't a hard-and-fast rule. If Masumi's normal isn't the same as everyone else's, that's okay.

It's hard to fight “normal.” That's doubly true in high school, when the closed world of classmates and teachers creates its own strange hierarchy. Up to this point, everyone has been trapped there, unsure of how to break free, or if they even want to. This volume of Blue Flag brings us to the point where tethers may have finally stretched to the breaking point. Whether the characters are able to let them snap or desperately fight to reinforce them will determine everything that happens next.