Spoilers follow throughout this review!
This was a series that I put off for a while because of my bad tendency to reject popular works at first, but this is popular for a reason, it’s really wonderful. I continue to try to overcome my knee-jerk reaction to scorn recommended works, because when I do engage with a wider variety of things, it ends up with me broadening my horizons and finding books that I do love. Blue Period is a seinen manga (aimed at young adult men) that follows Yatora Yaguchi as he discovers his love of art, goes through the grueling process to apply for art school, then deals with the many even more grueling hurdles of art school and of growing up and discovering what you’re passionate about. Again, I was sort of skeptical about this manga because I’m not always one to love manga about leveling up and getting better at things (like The Drops of God or Hajime no Ippo), they tend to take a very long time and I lose focus. But this manga has a realistic progression and the character work is so good that I was fully immersed from the beginning and hoping that Yatora would get through all of the inner and outer obstacles in his way.
This is also a really realistic and thoughtful manga that deals with a wide range of topics, from LGBT discrimination to sexism to grief, and Yamaguchi handles all of them very well. There’s a very wide range of characters and they’re all very interesting. I’m endlessly impressed by her ability to create so many unique, realistic people and then to be able to make me care about all of them and remember them, especially over 17 volumes! This volume deals with Yatora’s continuing struggles to see himself as an artist and commit to that path, and his relationships with his former art school classmates. They decide to rent a gallery and do a show together, which stirs up all sorts of things for him. I thought this was a very solid volume and moved along all of the plot points in a satisfying way.
I’m looking forward to the next volume!
