Juzo Ogami is a living legend in the Japanese criminal underworld. A hitman without compare, Ogami can kill anyone he pleases if he puts his mind to it. But after a seemingly standard job to clear out a gang, Ogami finds himself in a predicament he never anticipated: a strange wasp sting has turned him into a kid!
Although perplexed by his current condition, he still has bills to pay and offers to keep working to make ends meet. His next assignment? Infiltrate a private middle school and perform an inspection before his boss' daughter enrolls there. Too strapped for cash to refuse, the invincible assassin soon finds himself struggling with school work, his own lack of social skills, and his discomfort with modern technology.
But the most surprising thing of all is how he's starting to enjoy his second childhood.
Kill Blue is an action-comedy manga written by Tadatoshi Fujimaki of Kuroko's Basketball fame and running in the famous Shonen Jump magazine. It follows the legendary hitman Juzo Ogami after he's been physically reverted into the body of a middle schooler. Forced into an environment strange and alien to him, Ogami finds that he likes being a middle schooler more than he thought he would.
Kill Blue contains examples of:
- Amicable Exes: It's implied that Ogami has been divorced from his ex-wife Eri for some time, as she's once again using her maiden name Wanibuchi. But she doesn't seem to bear any ill will toward him and they're still in regular contact with each other. He even sends the rice balls he made with the Home Ec club to her and their daughter, Kozue. Given how much he thinks about Eri, he clearly still loves her despite their separation.
- The Beard: Because of all the people vying for her hand for the sake of her father's company, Noren impulsively declares that she's dating Ogami in an attempt to fend off her suitors. He's clearly alarmed at being volunteered like this, but decides to go along with the ruse for the sake of keeping all the other guys away from her and out of appreciation for her ramen. Unfortunately, this doesn't dissuade said suitors much at all, as they now focus on trying to bully Ogami or take the pen symbolizing Ogami's apparent relationship through competitions.
- Because I'm Good At It: The only reason why Ogami is still a hitman is because he doesn't know how to do anything else. He was trained to be one since he was an elementary schooler and never even attended middle school.
- Blatant Lies: Due to trying to keep up a facade as an ordinary middle schooler, Ogami repeatedly lies and claims he's never been in a fight before. This is while fending off bullies and showcasing extreme athleticism unbecoming of his apparent background.
- Book Dumb: Justified. Ogami never got to attend school past elementary school because he's been working as a hitman ever since he was child. So he struggles to keep in school on his own once more advanced subjects are brought up and he's too prideful to ask his teachers for aid. It's not until he gets help from his classmate, Ryo Shiraishi, that his grades improve.
- Broken Ace: Ogami is a peerless hitman with inhuman aim and the ability to wipe out entire gangs on his lonesome. He's also completely friendless, divorced (albeit Amicable Exes with his ex-wife), and living alone in an apartment while eating nothing but ramen. He takes no pleasure in his infamy and calls his life pathetic while wondering what he could have done better. In addition, his lifestyle deprived him of an education beyond elementary school, leaving him unable to be anything other than a hitman.
- Charles Atlas Superpower: Ogami is capable of blatantly superhuman feats through nothing but his own training and experience. He hops up a signal tower in an instant to use as a vantage point and throw chalk hard enough to instantly burst into a cloud of dust upon hitting a wall. But he notes that his strength has diminished due to having the body of a child, hence why he's unable to knock out the panda pervert in the first chapter with one punch to the gut.
- Deliberate Values Dissonance: As a nearly 40-year-old man who is largely a social recluse, Ogami's values are outdated and old-fashioned by modern standards. He initially brushes off the idea of men keeping house as a woman's job and uses some possessive language while trying to defend Noren. But he's called out for this and made to change his ways as part of his attempts to fit in.
- Does Not Like Men: Noren developed a hatred of most men because of how they make passes at her solely to inherit her family's pharmaceuticals company. The way they leer at her while clearly fantasizing about how to exploit her disgusts her. Ogami is one of the first people her (apparent) age she can feel comfortable around because he clearly doesn't see her that way (and has no attraction to her at all as a man pushing forty with an ex-wife and child).
- Fountain of Youth: The plot begins when Ogami is stung by a wasp created by a genetic engineering company that reverts him to a twelve or thriteen-year-old physically.
- Goggles Do Something Unusual: As part of his middle schooler disguise, Ogami wears a pair of glasses with hidden cameras and a two-way comms function so Nekota can see what he sees to act as his Mission Control.
- Heroic Self-Deprecation: Ogami tells a gangster that anyone who doesn't know how to treat a lady is trash. Given Ogami's divorce and calling himself pathetic for not being a better husband, this is also a clear jab at himself.
- Hitman with a Heart: Ogami may be a hitman, but he refuses to take jobs that involve killing women, children, or innocent civilians. Off the job, he's typically nice despite his gruff attitude.
- Improbable Aiming Skills: One of Ogami's defining skills is his incredible precision with a gun. He's able to shoot a tracker onto a speeding car from atop a transmission tower with ease. Later on, he defends innocent bystanders caught in his shoot out with another assassin by shooting his opponent's bullets out of the air. He then tops this by shooting nearly straight up into the air so the bullets will arc down and hit his intended targets anyways due to the pull of gravity. The absurdity of his feats is lampshaded repeatedly and called inhuman, with even Ogami admitting that he can only get his "shooting up into the air" trick to work about 70% of the time.
- Living Macguffin: Noren Mitsuoka is the only heir to her family's pharmaceutical company, and her father declared that whoever marries her will inherit the company from him. This has led to many unsavory figures trying to win her hand in marriage for the sake of taking the business and the resulting miracle drugs it's developing, such as the wasp that reverted Ogami to a child.
- Locked into Strangeness: Although Ogami is physically twelve or thirteen years old, half of his hair is still as gray as it was when he was still middle-aged. This is the only physical clue that he's not just a middle schooler, as he has no real distinguishing features otherwise.
- Lonely at the Top: Discussed. Tenma's overwhelming athletic talent means that he crushes the competition on average. When his Childhood Friend asks him if he'll be lonely at the top of the sports world, Tenma replies that he wants to be lonely at the top, a legend no one can possibly match. He doesn't even want a Worthy Opponent, he's just in it to enshrine his name in history.
- Men Can't Keep House: Ogami's place is a mess because he hasn't called his housekeeper over for a while and he doesn't plan on changing now. According to him, cleaning is a job for women. Nekota calls him out on how outdated his values are. Ogami starts coming around to the idea of cooking and cleaning for himself with the Home Ec club and hearing how much his daughter and ex-wife enjoyed the rice balls he made for them.
- Mission Control: Ogami's partner/protege, Nekota, supports Ogami from behind a computer. He's able to advise Ogami and send him information via the cameras and comm systems hidden in Ogami's glasses. He also sends Ogami his gun in a pinc via a drone h.
- Mixed Ancestry is Attractive: Noren Mitsuoka is described as tall and beautiful "like a model", and is constantly getting leered on by boys and adult men alike, resulting in her distaste for the opposite sex. She ascribes her good looks to her Canadian mother.
- Mundane Luxury: Having never gotten an education past elementary school, Ogami is blown away by the breadth of topics he's learning in middle school. By the end of his first day, he's sobbing Tears of Joy because of how much fun he's having as a student compared to his dead-end job as an assassin.
- My Grandson, Myself: When another assassin recognizes Ogami's impeccable marksmanship and threatens to out him, Ogami quickly spins a story of being his own love child as the reason why he's so accurate. His opponent buys it and starts to share his own Dark and Troubled Past before deciding it isn't worth it.
- My Sister Is Off-Limits: The normally nice and easygoing Ryo is enraged when Tenma starts making moves on Chisato. Even Ogami, a hardened assassin, is terrified by how quickly Ryo's attitude changes.
- Never Hurt an Innocent: Despite his reputation as a hitman who will kill anyone for the right price, Ogami makes a point of restricting his targets to "iredeemables" like murderous gangsters. Even after being turned into a kid, he doesn't do anything permanently harmful to the troublemakers he runs into.
- Papa Wolf: One of the reasons why Ogami continues to act as The Beard for Noren is because she's the same age as his daughter, Kozue. The idea of all these guys trying to exploit her inflames Ogami's fatherly instincts, leaving him just as disgusted as she is at her situation and instilling in him a desire to protect her.
- Perpetual Poverty: Despite his skills as an assassin, Ogami is perpetually broke between paying child support, his mortgage, and his car loan. He also runs up other bills too, like constantly eating out because he can't be bothered to cook and hiring a housekeeper instead of doing his own chores.
- Sacrificed Basic Skill for Awesome Training: Ogami is an inhumanly good marksman, a skilled hand-to-hand combatant, and an all-around unstoppable hitman. But his training deprived him of a normal childhood and stunted his social skills. He has no hobbies outside of work and struggles to fit in when forced to attend school.
- Spirited Competitor: Tenma is driven to become a "triple threat" super athlete excelling in baseball, soccer, and basketball because he simply loves sports so much. While he'd love to crush every game 100-0, he gets even more excited when there's someone who can keep up with him enough to make the game interesting.
- Technologically Blind Elders: Ogami is a middle-aged man and struggles to use his smartphone for more than basic calling. After being added to a group chat, he panics at the rapid-fire texts he recieves until Nekota informs him that he can just mute the notifications.
- Thou Shalt Not Kill: Downplayed. Ogami is an assassin, so killing is his specialty. But he doesn't really like to do it when he isn't getting paid for it. So he shoots the gangsters who kidnapped Mitsuoka with rubber bullets.
- When I Was Your Age...: Ogami still reflexively talks like an old man when he's agitated. For instance, when he's playing soccer against Tenma, Ogami thanks him for getting him fired up and desperate to win in a way he hasn't felt since "back in the day". Tenma is baffled that Ogami is talking like a spent old man when Ogami is supposed to have just entered middle school.
- Willfully Weak:
- Because he needs to maintain his cover as an ordinary middle-school student, Ogami is forced to run away from bullies he can easily beat up because he can't risk expulsion and losing his paycheck for the job.
- Tenma tends to hold back when playing at first because he loves sports so much that he doesn't want the other team to throw in the towel immediately. He takes off the proverbial kiddie gloves when it's clear that Ogami can compete with him.
- Worf Had the Flu: Invoked. Ogami gets so worked up that he actually manages to keep up with Tenma, a known super athlete, in a soccer match. This gets Ogami mobbed by the sports clubs after the game, threatening to put an end to Ogami's dream of a quiet middle school life. A Fter hearing about this, Tenma offers to tell the press that he wasn't at his best due to an injury, thus making Ogami's performance less impressive by comparison.
- Working with the Ex: Ogami's ex-wife Eri happens to also be the chief scientist of the Z.O.O, the assassin syndicate he works for.
