Paradox Blue is a shonen manga written by Nakanishi Tatsurou and illustrated by nini, which was serialized in Comic Blade from 2008 to 2010 and compiled into five volumes.
Angels have descended onto earth in order to test humanity through the angels' paradox: questions that couldn't be easily solved. Answer correctly and be rewarded; fail, and be punished. The first time humanity failed to overcome the angels' paradox, an entire city in England was eradicated in the span of one night. There was only one survivor.
The manga follows a team of five heroes as they encounter the Angels and clear the trials posed to them. The manga presents itself as a game and optionally reads like a Gamebook (down to bad ends) with clues to the answer marked by white feathers surrounding the important panels.
Contains examples of:
- The Ditz: Christia tries to set off fireworks inside of a moving train.
- Foreshadowing: Exists on two levels: the white feathers point out the important clues to solving the ongoing paradox and the colour pages foreshadow the true plot.
- Gamebook: Readers have the opportunity to pick whether they want to solve the riddle themselves (turn to page 1), let the characters solve it (skip a page) or give up (flip to the next page for a Game Over/Bad End notice).
- Meaningful Name: All the Angels have -el angelic-sounding names but take away that and it gets interesting: The Narrator/Navigator calls herself Izanamiel, the true identity of Umivozel (umi means the sea in Japanese) is the ocean, Medousael turns people who failed its trial into stone, Kalkiel (Kalki is an Hindu metaphor for time) has a trial that involves not crashing into the future.
- Our Angels Are Different: Only because humanity named them.
- The Pollyanna: Christia. An orphaned baby, she was the only survivor in the first trial that humanity failed. Her maternal uncle took her in and renamed her "Christia" because he saw her as a replacement for his dead sister. For ten years, she was raised underground in a research facility, tied to a chair and put behind bars so that she would be protected from the outside world. The only reason she got out was because Shindou killed her uncle and took her away. Even then, when she returns to the place of her imprisonment, she introduces it to her friends with a smile.
- Replacement Goldfish: Christia and her mother.
- Spoiler Opening: The colour pages and seemingly random snippets of dialogue and references to video games? All of them are there to foreshadow the inevitable conclusion and truth.
- Student Council President: Christia, somehow, bearing in mind she is a only a first year.
