Blue Period 1

Winner of the 2020 Manga Taisho Grand Prize! A manga about the struggles and rewards of a life dedicated to art. The studious Yatora leaves a dry life of study and good manners behind for a new passion: painting. But untethering yourself from all your past expectations is dangerous as well as thrilling...Yatora is the perfect high school student, with good grades and lots of friends. It's an effortless performance, and, ultimately...a dull one. But he wanders into the art room one day, and a lone painting captures his eye, awakening him to a kind of beauty he never knew. Compelled and consumed, he dives in headfirst -- and he's about to learn how savage and unforgiving art can be!

"Blue Period is a great series, with a twist of realism that makes your heart ache. Watching characters experience imposter syndrome and feel inadequate during their artistic journey can be hard—and for some, too relatable—but the way that writer Tsubasa Yamaguchi has presented it makes it one of the best series to hit serialization in a long time." -Polygon "One of the top 10 manga of 2020." -School Library Journal "A stunning manga about discovery and passion… I was not prepared for the amazing story I would lose myself in." -Black Nerd Problems "An exploration of what it means to make art [and] a slice-of-life coming-of-age narrative about a young man figuring out what it is that he wants to do with his life." -Anime News Network

Tsubasa Yamaguchi is the author of the hit manga adaptation of Makoto Shinkai's short film She and Her Cat, published in English by Vertical Comics, and the art student drama Blue Period from Kodansha Comics.