Io Sakisaka’s Ao Haru Ride began in Bessatsu Margaret on 13 January 2011 and ended on 13 February 2015 at chapter 53, collected in 13 volumes. The boy Futaba Yoshioka liked in middle school, Kou Tanaka, transferred away before that summer ended, and turns up in her high school as Kou Mabuchi.
Both have changed in the meantime. Futaba has been acting deliberately unfeminine to avoid being resented by other girls, and Kou has become someone who keeps people at a distance after what happened in his family. So the centre of the book is not getting back together. It is two people who remember an earlier version of each other agreeing to deal with the current one. The supporting cast are each carrying their own missed time, which keeps feelings from running in a single direction.
The drawing fills in what goes unsaid with white space and where people are looking, so the quiet pages are the ones that stay. Thirteen volumes, complete, with animated and live-action adaptations.
