“Blue Period” is the third film I’ve reviewed this summer about young people struggling to break into the art world. Is there something in the water?
To be fair, “Blue Period” came first, in a way: This live-action film is based on an ongoing manga of the same title by Tsubasa Yamaguchi, which debuted in 2017 (it was also made into a well-meaning but creaky anime series in 2021). The story follows a high school student named Yatora Yaguchi (Gordon Maeda) who seems to have it all: Both popular and an academic whiz, he’s ready to test his way into the top public university of his choosing — his family can’t afford a private one, as his worrying mother (Hikari Ishida) keeps reminding him. But whether he’s out partying with his buddies in Shibuya or breezing his way through math class, Yatora can’t shake the feeling he’s just going through the motions until a chance encounter with members of his school’s art club sparks an interest he never knew he had. Yatora starts devoting all his waking hours to making art, and even decides to study it in university. The problem is, there’s only one public art university in Japan, the Tokyo University of the Arts, and its acceptance rates are lower than even the elite University of Tokyo. Most art students have years to prepare for their entrance exams. Can Yatora pull it off in less than one?
The manga by Yamaguchi (a real TUA graduate) has an authenticity that made it a hit, and with over 7 million copies in circulation, a live-action film was inevitable. But this story’s been told twice before: in the original manga, obviously, and the TV anime, which covers the same section of the manga as the film. The anime and movie even share the same screenwriter, Reiko Yoshida, and much of the dialogue is word-for-word across all three versions.