Blue Period – 04+05+06 [Where Are We Headed? | I Know What to Do, I Just Don’t Know if I Can Do It | Mental Breakdowns Are no Joke]

Hello, everyone!

Here I am, back with another late post. This time around though, the delay was not caused entirely by my general laziness. After almost a whole year of exam prep, I decided to take a sizeable vacation, to go see if the world outside the four walls of my room still looked the same. And to my disappointment, it is just so. Hell, even the noisy crowds are back in full force now! (shudders) But hey, on the plus side, I got to be there for a baby’s first birthday and another’s first breath. Riveting stuff, I tell ya!

But ah well, all this chit-chat is not what you come to our blog for. You come here – rightfully so – for the insightful reviews of the hip anime of the season. In this case, the lovely Blue Period.

So, that’s what ye shall receive. Hop on!

 

Now, I understand that with this being a late post, most of you all would have put the events of the earlier episodes well behind and it becomes rather redundant to put up a rear-view mirror so far down the road. That’s why I shall just be talking more about the story elements and characters as a whole for these three episodes instead of picking apart individual moments in chronological order. Should make for a more interesting read that way. Well, I hope so, at least.

Starting off with the blondie in overalls, our very own Yatora! It’s been well-established from the start that while Yatora has a real passion and love for the medium of art, he does not possess the kind of talent which may be categorized as something truly extraordinary. He is not a ‘genius’, per se. But what does that word really mean? What exactly constitutes being a genius? He labels the people around him with that term for he feels that the kind of art they create is something well beyond his capabilities. People like Kuwana and Takahashi, who seem to be in a league of their own. And he isn’t wrong about that, to an extent. But at times, the very word or how Yatora employs it does feel like a reduction of their effort. It’s like their competitors calling a Roger Federer or a Magnus Carlsen a genius, which they admittedly are. But what that word does is not only put people like these on an untouchable pedestal, it also diminishes all the effort they put in to maintain their level. When Yatora calls someone that, and he does quite often, it’s almost meant as a “Heh, I need to work myself to death trying to make something worthwhile, but you can do it with a flick of the wrist, can’t you?” It’s disingenuous and downright unfair. But it’s still reassuring to see that he’s trying to get to know these geniuses better and come to a realization that no amount of talent is ever a substitute for good ol’ hard work.

 

 

With Takahashi though, we have a whole another quandary to deal with. In the middle of episode 4, he decides to quit the cram school as he doesn’t want to continue making “exam art”. The art instructor, Ooba-san later reassures Yatora that no such thing as that can be used as a shortcut to clear the entrance exams anymore. But speaking from my own experience, I do believe that Takahashi has a point. See, while in this series ‘art’ generally represents ‘fine arts’, for me it is just an umbrella term for any form of expression, be it writing, movies, songs, dance, what have you. And as someone who absolutely adores the literary, I have spent the past few months studying some very particular facets of it, no matter how boring they were or how uninteresting I found them to be, just because I needed to do so for my exams. Sure, most of it was stuff I was fascinated by, but not all. Like Yatora says himself, “Just because I love something doesn’t mean that it’ll always be fun”. And not only actual exams which students have to prepare for, when it comes to judging ‘the best’ out of any medium, popular convention always dictates that the artist must try and appease specific palettes. Be it the plethora of Oscar-bait movies we get every year or the same kind of “Blockbuster” games winning GOTY at the Game Awards com December, it all falls under the same category: Exam Art. And it is something that unfortunately will not change anytime soon.

 

 

Now, with two of our major players out of the way, we come to the one with the highest pressure to succeed, Kuwana. Not only is she well and truly on a whole another level even when comparing with the elite students preparing for the exam, she has an added impetus weighing down her shoulders at all times. That of a legacy. Kuwana’s sister cleared the exam first try and she herself is at the top of her class. For her it isn’t a possibility that she’ll pass the exam with flying colors, it’s meant to be an eventuality. It is expected of her. She constantly compares herself to her sister just like all younger children compare themselves to their siblings. For them, it’s rarely about being better than every other person but more about being better than this one person. And most often, as is the case with Kuwana too, this sense of competition is not forced upon them but just gets borne into their hearts on its own. Kuwana literally likes to look down on people falling apart under pressure. She does it every day. It helps her stay motivated, feel better about herself. You can call it sadism or you can call it a defense mechanism. Her way of staying sane. Just like what happened with her friend, you either learn to adapt any way how or you break down completely.

 

 

And a way of staying sane among the chaos inside his head is what Ryuji needs to find as well. He has been suffering quietly on his own, skipping classes and not shedding the cheery façade even for his friends but something like that can’t last forever. Though, it’s doubly hard for him to cope. His father clearly considers him a failure and society clearly considers him an invalid. So, where does he go?

Still, in one way or another, all these people are headed in the same direction. Some speeding along, some hoping to drag their legs over to the finish line. All on a collision course and there is going to be a crash. I am afraid that when that does happen, not everyone would be able to recover from the damage done.