Blue Period Volumes 14 and 15 Review
Yatora Yaguchi is enjoying some down-time with his art school friends over the summer break from TUA, staying at the temple run by Momo’s family in Hiroshima. But the lure of entering a contest with a cash prize and a professional debut is too great and he starts work on a new piece. Yatora, a modest soul at heart, has not really thought about going professional as an artist before – but now, as he realizes his friends and contemporaries are aiming to do so, he wonders if he should be doing the same. His unconventional fellow student Yakumo takes time out to tell him about their friend Machiko Sanada: a truly gifted young artist who died tragically young and whose presence still lingers at the temple as well as in their memories.
Yatora realizes that out of all those who knew Machiko Sanada, perhaps Yakumo is the most affected by her death – although, as always, he has an unconventional way of expressing his feelings of loss. In Stroke 59, we get to hear Yakumo’s story as he tells Yatora that he’s from a poor family and has had to struggle to get to TUA, failing to get in on his first try and working part-time to pay to go to prep school. It was at the prep school that he met a bespectacled, diminutive girl student absent-mindedly eating mouldy bread… and she turned out to be the star of the school, Machiko Sanada.
In Volume 15, memories of Machiko Sanada (portrayed on the cover) the art prodigy who died two years earlier at nineteen, still haunt her friends Yakumo, Momo and Hacchan, and Yatora is caught up in their unresolved feelings for their loss. Yatora feels increasingly conflicted as he’s drawn into their conversations yet feels as if he’s somehow cheating as he never knew Machiko. Talking it over with Yotasuke allows him to feel less guilty – and watching as the three try to deal with their feelings in their own ways, he finds himself reflecting, The shape, size and weight of a burden is different for everyone. And this leads him at last to an idea about the next work he wants to create…
Then, who should arrive at the temple but Kanie, the local gallery owner, who has come to collect Machiko’s paintings. He’s putting on an exhibition (with her family’s permission) entitled The Gifted Girl Artist Who Became an Angel. Yakumo explodes with rage. “You god-damned hyena!” he shouts, grabbing Kanie by the collar. “You must be happy she’s dead ‘cause the price tags go up!” Kanie proceeds to explain to him that “In reality most art loses value” and goes on to list the problems and cost of storing art in a protected environment. “Our job is to maximise the value of art and deliver it to those who treasure it.” And he and his staff take the canvases away.
Yatora and the others are temporarily distracted in that they have to deliver their pieces for the competition… but when Yatora sees Yakumo’s dramatic and sombre painting, he realizes, I immediately knew what it was. A floral tribute. Then the exhibition opens – and there’s trouble in store when Yakumo arrives at the gallery, spoiling for a fight…
These two volumes of Blue Period offer a self-contained episode, set over the summer break in Hiroshima – and they offer a moving exploration of what it feels like to lose a close friend and fellow artist at the age of nineteen, as well as showing the very different ways Momo, Hacchan and Yakumo react to the loss. Machiko Sanada is a very vivid presence throughout these chapters – and we see how Yatora is also deeply affected by her story with a sequence of full-page and double-page images that really strike home.
The portrayal of gallery owner Kanie is fascinating too as he is Yatora’s first real brush with the commercial side of the artworld. Tsubasa Yamaguchi does some very interesting things here. On the one side, Kanie’s verbal sparring with Yakumo (who is at his most rude and obnoxious around Kanie even before the exhibition is announced) gives us (and Yatora) some down-to-earth business talk about the realities of the artworld beyond the studio. Kanie is drawn in a very unflattering and unsympathetic manner. He is presented as a short, stocky middle-aged man in a suit, with a face that sometimes looks like a grotesque mask with full lips twisted in a fake smile.
But those that treasure the relationship between Yatora and Yotasuke will not want to miss their conversation in Volume 15… and the final pages show everyone back at TUA for the culture festival, in which some familiar faces make a welcome reappearance: Yuka-chan, Maki Kuwana, Hashida and even Yatora’s inspiration, Mori-senpai, is mentioned, setting up matters for the next volumes.
The translation, which is excellent, is still by Ajani Oloye who supplies invaluable translation notes at the end of each volume – and is supported by Lys Blakeslee’s (also excellent) lettering. The charming and quirky 4-koma panels are still present at the end of each volume as are the special thanks from the mangaka to her fellow artists who have contributed the works shown in the text as painted by the characters. We’ve almost caught up with Japan now so Volume 16 is not promised in English until November.
It’s a cause for celebration that Kodansha are still bringing us Blue Period (which has to be one of the most original and life-enhancing manga around today exploring art, life, discovering yourself and so much more) but nevertheless, it’s disappointing to note that there are still no colour pages in Volumes 14 and 15. Tsubasa Yamaguchi’s vibrant colour work can still be enjoyed on the cover art but this is a series about art and artists, and deserves to showcase the mangaka’s dazzling and inspiring work in colour as well as black-and-white. But this series has so much to share with us about growing up, life and making art that it can be enjoyed on many different levels – and is still as highly recommended as when it first made its debut in 2017.
Oh – and how does Yatora’s work fare in the competition and does he get his professional debut? You’ll have to read Volume 15 to find out!
Our review copies from Kodansha were supplied by Diamond Book Distributors UK.
