Blue period, by Tsubasa Yamaguchi, is a drama manga focusing on the main character, Yatora Yaguchi, as he embarks on his personal journey in art. Volume 2 continues where the last left off, with Yatora aiming for the Tokyo University of the Arts. This volume also has a lot of focus on characters like Ryuji and Yotasuke, who we’ve seen before, and Haruka Hashida, a new character in the art prep school that the rest attend.

The artwork this volume is good, the author’s art-style took a bit for me to really get used to, but now that I have, I appreciate its distinctness a lot more. Yamaguchi maintains an ability to convey her characters’ emotions via their facial expressions. She has the most unique character designs of all the manga I’ve reviewed so far. The scene where Yatora enters the day school and Yamaguchi pans through the plethora of characters she has designed really struck me with how distinct each were.  The panelling had excellent flow and the diagrams she used to explain things in art such as composition were easy to understand for a non-artistic person like me. The only thing I did not like as much where the moments where we got a full body shot of some of the characters. They looked disproportionate, although this did not impact much of the manga at all.

The story telling was, once again, excellent. Every character’s progression was well balanced, which is great in a character focused story such as this. The 3 main characters, Yatora, Ryuji and Yotasuke, where very interesting and seeing how they develop has become something I want to see to fruition. Their interactions with each other were very interesting as well, all conflicts and friendships were very easy to understand and felt natural. There were no moments that felt out of character.

The strong points of the manga are of course the characters, in both design and storytelling they are unique, and interesting. Yamaguchi has excellent dialogue as well. The use of art from various individuals and the way Yamaguchi explains things in the Japanese art world stands out as being incredibly interesting and I something I always look forward to seeing. The art style is both a strength and a weakness, its uniqueness stands out and I enjoy all her drawings, yet the proportions are awkward when the focus on a character shift to their full body.

In conclusion, this was an excellent volume, a bit worse than the first but the difference is negligible. I’d rate this a 4.8/5.

SPOILER SECTION

Yatora and Yotasuke’s conflict is interesting to me. I kind of had a feeling that this would be where they would end up at when Yatora says that he had the highest score in the group of the boys in the ranking competition. The extent of Yotasuke’s feelings about Yatora, the jealousy that he is intruding on a space that people who appear like delinquents would not thrive in and doing is well really reflects heavily on his potential insecurities.

This coupled with his mom showing up at the art festival, and Haruka calling him spoiled makes me wonder if he has helicopter parents. I wonder how they’ll resolve this. I can see next volume focusing on this heavily. I also like how Yatora channels his emotions here to make a new piece. I think that this was the most compelling show of emotion in the series so far. It may be my favourite chapter honestly.

Ryuji’s plot is interesting, but I think it’s going for a slow burn effect. I’d really like Yamaguchi to bring it more to the forefront as I think his plot about his sexuality is just behind Yatora and Yotasuke’s in terms of how interesting it is. I felt for him when he got rejected from the boy he was interested in, and the way he describes how he is perceived by the girls who appear to be fangirls of him is interesting. How they don’t treat him the same way as another girl or as a boy appears to be something that can be really explored. Maybe this is adding to how isolating I think things are for him.

 I really hope that in volume 3 this is more fleshed out. I get the impression so far though that Ryuji’s family will be heavily involved soon. I predict that they’ll be against his lifestyle, but I’ll have to wait and see. I like Haruka a lot, but I really hope they introduce some sort of character arc for him soon. He has a lot of potential I think.

A scene that really stuck out as good to me was at the start of the volume. Showing Yatora adapt Mori-senpai’s idea of drawing to show emotions to finally convince his mother to go to the art classes was a standout moment. I can’t wait to see how everything develops from this point forward for the characters.

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