Ever since I got back into manga in June of last year, I've been regularly keeping up with a few series. I'd like to chat about them in a series of blog posts, and, to be honest, it will mostly be me gushing because... if I'm going to invest money and time into continuing a series, I have to really like it first! XD
Anyway, first up is Blue Period by Tsubasa Yamaguchi. To find out more about this series, please check out the synopsis >here<.
Honestly, I am not really sure where to start. Let me first let you know where I'm at with this series - I bought and read volume one last year, and then speedily devoured whatever volumes I could get my hands on (at the time of writing, I own volumes 1 to 6, excluding volume 3 which keeps going out of stock in so many places wow). As of just recently, I have finished reading volume 6 and now have to wait a few months for volume 7 to come out. I have not watched the Netflix anime series as yet - I'm really enjoying the manga at the moment and would kind of prefer to keep going with that for now, if I'm honest. Plus I'm already watching about three differents animes so...
This series is... so good. I have only had an issue with gender representation/deadnaming/incorrect pronouns in volume one (it has kind of continued on past that, but like... it's kind of complex? And the character on the receiving end of it seems to be okay with it/hasn't asked for specific pronouns to be used... Basically, I just feel like it could be handled better, but I think it also does a decent representation of how difficult it can be to figure things out as a queer person myself.) But, otherwise, I have just been really loving everything about this series.
It's so interesting, and it certainly fires me up creatively. I love learning about different things to do with art, different artist's work, and also about how artists portray themselves or the way they see the world through their work. The characters are really brilliant, too, and I really love learning more about each one. I wasn't sure I was going to like being in Yaguchi's head so much, but I've actually found him to be so relatable and interesting. I actually feel like I can't have a favourite character in this series, weirdly, because each scene just seems to make me love a different character more. Although, we do kind of spend a lot of time in Yaguchi's mind, so maybe I like him the best? Hard to say.
Either way, I really think this is a fantastic series, and I really can't wait to see where it's going. If you plan on buying the volumes, though, a word of advice: try to grab whatever you can when you see it, if at all possible. Because of a lot of stuff going on with the publishing industry (covid delays, paper shortages, etc.), many manga are not being reprinted regularly, so it can be hard to come across them sometimes, and you'll find yourself, like me, waiting several months to try and pick up volume three to complete your collection (of what has been published in English so far, that is). I do highly recommend reading it, though, if you are at all interested!
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