Blue Period Manga Goes on Hiatus After Creator Contracts COVID-19

The award-winning Blue Period manga is taking at least a one-month break so the mangaka can recover from COVID-19.

Tsubasa Yamaguchi confirmed the hiatus on Twitter, explaining how she hadn't been feeling well since "the other day" and how a PCR test revealed she had contracted the virus. In a follow-up tweet, the mangaka stated she will be "sleeping a lot and healing."

Yamaguchi's Blue Period isn't the only manga to go on hiatus recently due to the mangaka's health. World Trigger's Daisuke Ashihara took a break at the end of last year, and My Hero Academia's Kohei Horikoshi took several breaks throughout 2021.

Blue Period first appeared in Kodansha's Monthly Afternoon magazine in June 2017 and has produced 11 volumes worth of content, with five volumes released in English thus far. The story follows high school student Yatora Yaguchi as he discovers and develops his passion for art and painting. After being inspired by another student's artwork, Yaguchi joins his school's art club and works to get accepted to the Tokyo University of the Arts. The series has been nominated for several prestigious awards in the manga industry, including the Manga Taishō award and Kodansha Manga Award for Best General Manga in 2019. In 2020, Blue Period won both of those awards and was nominated for the 24th Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize.

An anime adaptation of Blue Period premiered in 2021 as part of the fall anime season. Seven Arcs (Inukami!) animated the series with Koji Masunari (Magi: The Kingdom of Magic) serving as chief director, Reiko Yoshida (Violet Evergarden) overseeing series composition and Tomoyuki Shitaya (Food Wars! Shokugeki no Soma) designing the characters. Ippei Inoue made their anime debut as the show's musical composer.

Blue Period stars several well-known voice actors such as Hiromu Mineta (Tokyo Ghoul: Re) as Yaguchi,  Yumiri Hanamori (Suppose a Kid from the Last Dungeon Boonies Moved to a Starter Town) as Ryuji Ayukawa, Daiki Yamashita (Attack on Titan: The Final Season) as Yotasuke Takahashi and Kengo Kawanishi (The Genius Prince's Guide to Raising a Nation Out of Debt) as Haruka Hashida. Other cast members include Yume Miyamoto (The Misfit of Demon King Academy), Fumi Hirano (Mobile Suit Gundam SEED), Tatsumaru Tachibana (The God of High School), Ikumi Hasegawa (The Way of the Househusband) and Aoi Koga (Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba). It is currently unknown if the anime will receive a second season.

Blue Period is available to stream on Netflix. The sixth English volume is set for a Feb. 15 release, and the seventh will hit store shelves on May 31.

Source: Twitter, via Crunchyroll