Blue Period sucks

In hindsight, it doesn't make any sense to have an anime about art.

The making of art, specifically. "Blue Period", an anime about a high schooler who decides to be an artist, is from the same breed as most sports anime, "club" anime and, hell, most shonen anime: it is fundamentally about some character's progression in a skill and thus their consequent acceptance into society. The plot progression is simple: the character has a realization they want to be good at X (football, boxing, music, cooking, rock climbing, cycling, hell, being a superhero, somehow), they go through obstacles that basically serve as tests, and at the end, hallelujah, they complete some life-changing event that demonstrates their mastery.

There are two fundamental reasons that these anime work: 1. the characters' struggles have a clear result; 2. the results of the characters' struggles are clear and demonstrable to the audience. "Hajime no Ippo" is my favorite of the anime in this genre; I paraphrase Coach Kamogawa: "Those who work hard may not be champions, but those who are champions have worked hard." It's clear to the audience that the amount of physical training Ippo goes through helps him in his fights; in a less physical environment, such as "Food Wars", it's clear how certain experiences in Soma's life give him the creativity to come up with certain dishes.

"Blue Period" fails on both points 1 and 2, for, again, two reasons: 1. art is expression itself; 2. the anime exists in the first place. To fulfill 1, you have to somehow connect that learning all of these art techniques and hearing all these perspectives help the main character become a better artist, which is impossible because art is literally about expressing an idea or an emotion; it's not about winning. If a work of art is actually good, then it doesn't need additional context. A person's history and skill set, for example, would not help the audience to understand what the art work is trying to convey, much less explain why it is good.

The bigger reason the anime fails comes from the fact that it exists at all - if the author herself was so capable at art, then why is she making a manga about art instead of making, you know, art? or writing art criticism or teaching art. I'll make the bold claim that writing a story about art school is less of a challenge than anything mentioned above, and is at a distance removed from art because a story is, you know, fictional, and not actual. Rather than fund art, or distribute art, or make art, or analyze art, or raise awareness on certain unknown artists, or teach art, the author has decided to write a story about art, which seems a little cowardly. Why the hell would anyone talented want to write a story that ultimately would not be art itself, rather being Joe Schmoe's Guide to Art (which anyone can write)? In light of that, how could you believe the protagonist would make any progress into being a great artist?

Unless of course the point is that the author wants to emphasize that creating art is more of a personal journey than an accomplishment to achieve, which raises the question of, why is this anime so boring? Again, if the main idea behind art is the personal journey, then you need to emphasize the person, which the author deigns to do, the main character is as interesting as a wet sack of potatoes. This topic has been covered by the series "Beck", but it never focused on the actual nuts and bolts of how art is made, only the expressive, personal part. "Blue Period" does not do this - the main character is a blank slate, with seemingly no history or notable characteristics, and his primary role in the series is to ask "how do I art?"

Truth be told, I find "Blue Period" to be particularly frustrating because I think this particular genre of fiction to be cold, mechanistic and money-grubbing, and this is especially for an anime about art. These types of stories transcend when the writer finds a human element to relate the story to - "Ippo" is a fantastic example, but you also have shows like "K-On!" When you don't have the human element it becomes routine and almost mercenary - yeah this series follows the same pattern as other series but it's about rock-climbing, stamp. So to apply the same formula to art, and then remove the human element that art is supposed to have, is, like... insulting to me, because, obviously by this review, I take art criticism seriously.

I acknowledge the author's attempt to raise visibility of the creative process behind art, but it's a failed attempt because the plot and the characters themselves are uninteresting.

In light of all this, "Blue Period" has quite a lot to be blue about.