Holiday Review: BLUE PERIOD

Let's keep this 'blue' mood going with a manga about finding one's passion for art. 

BLUE PERIOD (Burupiriodo), by Tsubasa Yamaguchi.  First published in 2017 and first published in North America in 2020.

PLOT:

Yatora Yaguchi has great grades, good looks, and a congenial air.  Yet to him it's the result of calculated preparation and effort and it brings him no satisfaction whatsoever.  One day that ennui is broken when a simple art class project unlocks something within him.  Soon enough he joins the art club, starts to hone his skills, and finally finds a goal he believes in: to get into the oil painting program at the Tokyo University of Art.  It's the most competitive art school in the country, but with enough practice and inspiration Yatora just might make it.

STORY:

On the surface, Blue Period could be viewed as just another shonen series about competition.  You could say that Yatora wants to be the very best, like no one ever was, except that in this case it's the best at getting into art school.  That certainly helps to give Blue Period some structure but it's not really what the story's about.

What Blue Period is truly about is Yatora's emotional awakening.  Like a lot of academically gifted kids, his academic performance isn't motivated so much by personal desire or interest but inertia.  The world tells you that you need to go to college to succeed, so you focus on doing that without questioning why or what for.  He can memorize facts and make pleasant chit-chat, but he sees neither cause nor reason for doing or saying anything beyond that.  

A big part of that awakening is his almost instinctive recognition of art as a method of communication.  This is what initially pierces through the inertia of his life - the recognition that art can communicate something about the artist's mindset and mood.  It's what motivates him to get into art in the first place, to improve, and what impresses him most about other artists.  Yamaguchi captures this very ephemeral idea impressively, and it's this core idea that forms the beating heart of this story.  It's this passion that elevates Blue Period to something above the norm and if maintained could become something very powerful.  

ART:

There were two things that struck me about Yamaguchi's characters.  The first is how much attention they put on the eyes.  While there's a lot of interesting and varied character designs, the faces tend to be kind of wonky at times.  Yet you don't notice this very often because Yamaguchi puts so much care and focus on communicating emotions through their eyes.  There's a lot of very intent staring here and it would come off creepy if not for how soulfully they're drawn.

I was also struck by how much attention Yamaguchi put into posture and poses.  There's a lot of subtle body language on display here that's used to communicate both mood and personality.  The two combined go a long way towards selling the reader on Yatora's growth as an artist and as a person as well as telling us a lot about his clubmates without a lot of exposition.

PRESENTATION:

Aside from the usual author's note and gag comics, the special thanks section is unusually long because Yamaguchi credits all the artists whose work was used in-series to represent the work of Yatora and his classmates.

RATING:

Blue Period is a good manga about learning to stop worrying and love art.  This would be a great work to pair with something like Blank Canvas and a good series for anyone who's ever considered becoming an artist themselves.

This series is published by Kodansha Comics.  This series is ongoing in Japan with 8 volumes available.  1 volume has been published and is currently in print.

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