Taichi Ichinose

Taichi Ichinose (一ノ瀬太一, Ichinose Taichi) is the main protagonist of Blue Flag.

Appearance
Taichi is short and of a slight build with minimal muscle definition. He has fairly long black hair that is unkempt and sticks out in all directions. When not wearing his school uniform, he typically wears loose-fitting pants and T-shirts of video games. In the final chapter, he is seen with short spiked hair, wearing a suit when attending Omega’s wedding. He also wears a wedding band.

Personality
Taichi is a self-conscious and pessimistic person. His low self-esteem derives from the fact that his best friend is good at everything, from athletics to social skills. He is also heavily influenced by social pressures; never wanting to be seen as abnormal or weird for his interests. He also gets easily embarrassed when he feels people are looking at him differently.

His paranoia and communication problems are apparent at the beginning of the series with his struggles to maintain his friendship with Touma. This situation is caused primarily by Taichi's belief that he is too inferior to maintain a friendship with someone of such levels of popularity as his childhood friend, and the fact that he always feels left out in the more popular social circles despite Touma’s best efforts at including him, causing him to put distance between them.

While he doubts a lot of his abilities and suffers from some sense of self-loathing, Taichi is a good problem solver. When faced with figuring out a way to help Futaba, he quickly outlines a plan of action and follows through to set her up with the best outcome possible.

Taichi is very skilled with his hands, being able to build and craft ornate objects, having even once had a dream of opening his own toy store. Throughout the story, you see Taichi making many handmade games.

Aside from his interest in crafting toys, Taichi has a soft spot for cute things. We find this out when Touma makes a comment to Futaba about his love of collecting cute Pokemon when they were little.

History
Taichi was best friends with Touma Mita since primary school. They spent much of their time together until their first year of high school when they begin to have different classes and form new friend groups. Apart from that, Touma’s popularity and large friend circles often caused him to feel left out and develop an inferiority complex which is further punctuated when his first crush ended up falling in love with Touma; although he never reciprocated her feelings.

In Taichi's first two years of high school, he becomes friends with Yorkie, Omega, and Mon-chan and they have a group chat together called “Dead world denizens”. They are often seen playing video games together and in the finale, he attends Omega’s wedding.The series starts with Taichi getting ready to start a new semester of school, which is his last year of high school. He quickly finds out that he's classmates with Touma, which causes him to feel conflicted..

He notices Futaba getting her lunch knocked over by some students who were roughhousing and Taichi calls her slow and clumsy, causing his friends to ask why he doesn’t like her. In reality, he sees her as a mirror of himself, someone who was shy and awkward, and not really good at anything which causes him to feel frustrated because it was like looking at himself.

When she confides in him that she had a crush on Touma, Taichi tells her she has no chance because he (mistakenly) thinks Touma likes Akiko. However, he reluctantly agrees to help her get together with him. Over the course of the story, he starts to fall in love with her, partly due to her strong will to change herself and how much time they spent together. During his birthday, they go to a fireworks festival together with Masumi and Touma and they officially become a couple. She gives him handmade madeleines after seeking advice from Touma, who remembers that Taichi mentioned wanting handmade madeleines from the person he loves.

During the semifinals of a baseball game, Taichi spots a cat about to get hit by a car. Remembering how much he regretted not being able to save a cat in his childhood, he rushes over to save her only to be knocked out of the way by Touma. This caused Touma to break his leg and end his dreams of going to Koshien. This caused Taichi immense guilt because going to Koshien was the only dream Touma had ever held on to since they were kids.

Despite vowing to stay together, Taichi and Futaba broke up 2 years after high school after their goals became too different. 5 years after the breakup, Taichi got an invitation to Futaba's marriage to another man and it is revealed that Taichi had married Touma who attended Futaba’s wedding on behalf of both of them while Taichi attends Omega’s wedding which was on the same day.