Blue's Diary
Blue's Diary is a Webcomic created by Indonesian artist Rong Rong. It started in June 2016 on Rong Rong's Facebook page
, and is still ongoing, with updates more or less daily. It follows Alex Blue, the pampered son of the CEO of the MegaCorp Blue Royals. His father plans to step down and hand the reins over to Alex, but in order for Alex to inherit the company, he must first gain some real-world experience and find himself a girlfriend. Simple... right?
What could be a straightforward teenage Rom Com is instead complicated by several more sinister elements that overlap with the main story: a sinister crime syndicate opposing the Blue Royals; a series of gruesome deaths that are seemingly linked to a demon-summoning ritual; and subtle hints that Alex's love interests - blonde beauty Cornelia, her friend Lily, and Blue Royals employee Natalia - are more than they appear. Layered on top of all of this is Rong Rong's love of cleverly-foreshadowed plot twists and extreme Black Comedy; the comments sections of most strips are filled with Epileptic Trees and very dark jokes.
Blue's Diary can be found here. While it's technically Safe For Work, reader discretion is advised.
The series contains examples of:
- Art Shift: The series is generally in black and white, but shifts into colour for important scenes. Very important scenes, such as series finales, get minute-long animations instead of strips.
- Audience Participation: At certain points, Rong Rong presents the readers with two choices of what Alex should do next, and lets them vote, with the story progressing differently depending on which choice is selected.
- Bifauxnen: Alex's twin sister, Diana, is flat-chested and very masculine. Even her own father mistakes her for a male on occasion.
- Cerebus Rollercoaster: The series switches back-and-forth between the main Rom Com storyline and the more sinister subplots at the drop of a hat.
- Clingy Jealous Girl: There are heavy hints throughout Series 4 that Lily is one towards Alex, such as badgering him for information about Natalia, and punching out Diana after she beats up Alex during a sparring session.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Diana infiltrates an illegal underground fighting tournament in an attempt to defeat the NED's top enforcer, Hong Bak Ung. She makes it to the final of said tournament only for Hong to immediately knock her unconscious.
- Deal with the Devil: The 'magic circle' summoning ritual is allegedly this. By drawing a summoning circle and providing a sacrifice, one can supposedly summon a demon that will grant you a wish, but if the sacrifice is insufficient, the demon will instead kill you. After a reader vote, Alex tries out the ritual with Daniel, sacrificing two years of his life in exchange for a single night with Cornelia. The ritual appeared to work, but in #268 it's revealed that Cornelia cancelled the deal.
- Dropped a Bridge on Him: Daniel is killed off-screen and his death announced via a news broadcast.
- Expy: Alex's dad is quite visibly based on Gendo Ikari, performing his signature pose on multiple occasions.
- Eyes Always Shut: Daniel, a former classmate of Alex's, and the one who introduces him to the demon-summoning ritual, has his eyes perpetually closed.
- Fanservice: Season 1 contains an arc in which Alex and Cornelia enter a water-balloon dodgeball tournament, to try and win books for Lily. They're in swimsuits for the whole thing, and the arc is preceded by Lily trying on some rather revealing bikinis.
- Double Subverted with the shot of Cornelia emerging from the hotel room in her underwear. It's a Wham Shot when it first happens, but when seen again with the proper context is really is quite fanservice-y.
- First Girl Wins: Averted. At the end of #292 Cornelia vanishes along with Ricky, and it's stated that Alex never saw her again.
- Foreshadowing:
- There are several hints in Season 1 that Cornelia is more than she appears to be. When a rejected boy starts to harass her, Cornelia somehow scares him off before seemingly vanishing, and during the water-balloon fight, she is implied to teleport away briefly (something her opponents seem to notice). She also laughs when she was watching a horror movie with Alex: a lack of fear is later revealed to be one of the identifying characteristics of a succubus. The clincher is when she apparently appears in two places at once.
- An animated episode showing Cornelia walking to a hotel with her brother Ricky is actually titled "Foreshadowing". We later see the scene in context 200 strips later.
- A food poisoning incident at the fast-food restaurant where Natalia works is later revealed to have been the work of the NED, setting up their introduction in Series 3.
- Gold Digger: When Alex is first given his mission to find a girlfriend, he immediately remarks that he could just win over a gold-digger using his riches, but his father forbids him from doing so (even threatening to castrate him if he does). Turns out Alex and Diana's mother was a gold-digger who took advantage of their father and then left him holding the babies, and he doesn't want Alex to repeat his mistakes.
- In Series 4, after Alex tells Lily about Natalia, she remarks that Natalia sounds like a gold-digger, and Alex agrees.
- Hidden Depths: Two of the potential love interests so far: Cornelia is a demon, and Lily is seemingly Hong Bak Ung, the NED's top enforcer (and thus an enemy of Alex's).
- I Never Said It Was Poison: After Alex shows Cornelia's picture to Ricky, Ricky attempts to make his leave and promises that they'll talk about Cornelia some other time. Alex catches it and points out that he never told him Cornelia's name.
- Jackass Genie: Discussed after Alex and Daniel complete the summoning ritual. When the Cornelia-succubus Alex wished for does not materialize, he and Daniel remark that the demon must have twisted the wish in some way (with reference made to Twisted Metal). It's later revealed that Cornelia is already a succubus, and that she had cancelled the deal entirely.
- Late for School: Alex, after performing the demon-summoning ritual the previous night. He's not the only one: Cornelia is also late, something Alex takes as a sign.
- Love Dodecahedron: Alex has three primary love interests:
- Cornelia Angeles, the initial object of his affection. She is later revealed to be a succubus, and is removed from the equation in #292 when she disappears along with Ricky.
- Lily, Cornelia's best friend. She acts as a wingman to Alex, trying to help him win Cornelia over, but is heavily impled to have a crush on him herself.
- Natalia, an employee of Blue Royals whose father is in significant amounts of debt with the company. She is heavily implied to be a Gold Digger.
- The Masquerade: Initially inverted, then played straight and justified. Flashbacks reveal that it was Ricky who first posted the instructions on how to summon demons, but Cornelia admonished him for breaking the masquerade. By the time Ricky took the post down, it had already gone viral, so he instead created a new "debunker" persona to try and convince people that the ritual didn't actually work.
- Meaningful Name:
- Miss Hong's name means "Red". Not only is this fitting for some who opposes the Blue Royals, she also has blood-red eyes.
- Mr. Exposition: Ricky, who appears in person for about seventy strips and spends the majority of them clearing up the events of the previous 220.
- Once More, with Clarity: Done masterfully with the "The Truth" arc. Alex sees Cornelia with a strange man and follows them to a hotel, where the man heavily implies that he has hired Cornelia as a prostitute. Around 200 strips later we see the scene again, this time from the perspective of Cornelia and the man, and with the knowledge that they are both demons, and are siblings. Ricky's remarks about "money buying anything" are revealed to have been a snarky critique of human greed, rather than an implication that he had "bought" Cornelia, while the fact she's in her underwear is because she was trying out different outfits in a bid to impress Alex and just happened to have been interrupted at a bad time.
- Rape as Drama: It is heavily implied in strips 197-199 that Daniel kidnaps and rapes Natalia.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: Hong Bak Ung, the NED's top enforcer, has blood-red eyes, as shown just before she curb-stomps Diana in the underground fighting tournament.
- Lily's eyes are seemingly the same shade of red. Her encounter with Diana in Series 4 heavily implies that she is, in fact, Hong.
- Stock Footage: The same establishing shot of Beta City is reused in multiple strips,
as confirmed by Rong himself. - Urban Fantasy: Becomes this after the reveal that demons really do exist, and that Cornelia is one of them.
- Wham Episode: The six-part "The Truth" arc, in which Alex discovers Cornelia is apparently working as a prostitute, with a man having paid her to sleep with him. Counts as a
Player Punch since this reveal only took place due to the readers' decisions; they could have chosen for Alex to simply walk away from the incident.- Strips 228 to 292 form one extended Wham Episode. When Alex goes to meet the "demon debunker", he first sees a news report revealing that Daniel has been murdered. Then, when the debunker arrives, he is revealed to be the man who slept with Cornelia in the previous arc. Eventually, the debunker proves that Cornelia is a demon before inadvertently revealing that he is also a demon... and her brother.note .
