Aoi Haru

Everything about this manga is kind of ugly: The art, the atmosphere, the characters' personality, the world they inhabit and their future outlook. Weirdly, that is also what makes it actually quite good.

Blue spring is the darkness that often precedes the light at the end of the tunnel. A light which in this short story collection, is a little out of sight. Spring is known as being a time for rebirth, a fresh start, and often a chance of change. In this case, the outlook of the characters is coloured with a gloomy wash of blue that defeats the usual themes of hope, hard work, and happiness. Seven chapters showcase the lives of high schoolers who have fell out of touch with reality after coming to a realisation that it doesn’t have much to offer them. Or so they think. Waiting for the idea of summer to fill a gap in their monotonous lives, they readily shake hands with death and danger as they seek thrills to justify their living. Standing on the edge is the closest thing to relief that these people often partake in just to keep themselves going.

A lot of familiar themes are explored within this collection, but they aren’t peppered with easy answers or slithers of hope. Being unsure of the future, coping with loss, feeling like you aren’t valued or respected for your actions. Wanting to take past mistakes back, but knowing you have to live with them, despite making your best efforts to wallow in them. Always not being enough, or having enough in life. Living under the same sun as others but having different perceptions of the shade it brings to life.

Now these themes may play into your interests, but the characters in these stories often find themselves dealing with them by bruising their knuckles, or just generally causing trouble with a flavour of introspection as they consider their actions, yet still go through with them despite knowing the risks. So the reception of the characters and stories I’d imagine will be wildly differing, they are characters you can love from their earnest way of how they cope with living, or hate for how easy they give in to things such as violence.
Despite the aching melancholic feel of the stories shown, Matsumoto still somehow manages to inject dull scenes with life. His unconventional linework is palette of emotions that he mixes very carefully before applying. He still understands what it still feels like to be young and hopeless, or one yearning for hope, and it is portrayed with a form of boundless precision in his works. The panel work in blue spring is absolutely exceptional, often splitting pages into diagonals numerous times but still not interrupting the flow whatsoever.

But with his artwork mentioned, I feel like that may be one of the few things one could consider flawed. Although his artwork is more anatomically accurate, it plays host to some sort of surreal exaggeration which makes it greatly stand out. I personally adore it, and would hope that others would be willing to give it a chance. Because it brings some very special stories into the world.

It's strange that no one has even bothered to write a review about this awesome manga. But then again I guess it's not much of a surprise given how it isn't very well promoted. However, this manga is one of the buried treasures of the manga world.

STORY: Alright, this story is actually a compilation of several stories all done by Taiyo Matsumoto, best known for his work Black and White, about a group of students during a Blue Spring, or a dull depressing spring in which nothing happens. These kids are on the fringes of society ranging mainly from punks to thugs and it deals with their problems, many of which are quite dark and disturbing.

That said, while some of the stories are absolutely jaw-dropping (If You're Happy and You Know It Clap Your Hands, Mahjong Summer) some of the others are mediocore (Revolver: 1-3) to just plain bad. (Peace) These stories are dark and for the most part thought provoking, much like his previous work B&W, but some are just fillers that won't cause you to look twice. This is why I had to give it a 5 in this category although I consider some of the singular stories as 9s or 10s.

ART: Like Taiyo Matsumoto's other works this one's art is somewhat strange. It is not the standard manga-style as is seen in many of the shounen jump works, instead it is much more cartoony and a little more unrealistic. Some people I'm sure will be turned off by it, it took me some getting used to, but others will latch onto it from the very beginning and love it to the very end.

CHARACTER: As in many other manga compilations, the characters are hard to relate with simply because they are only in one story or chapter. The other problem with the characters is what I mentioned before, the characters themselves are just plain hard to relate to because for the most part they are punks and thugs. None of them are really driven by their own desires and they generally belong to a group and follow the demands and needs of the groups. Pretty much, they are sheep.

The only good thing is that some of the other characters in the manga, for the most part they are very minor, but they seem to have more impact on the story than the main characters do. Espiecially in the If You're Happy and You Know It... story. These characters are for the most part not sheep like the main characters and therefore much more likeable. They really make it worth reading.

ENJOYMENT: For the most part, I enjoyed this manga. Like I said before there were a couple of stories in it that I just didn't care for but then again there were some stories that I absolutely loved and reread frequently. A couple have actually inspired the way I write my own stories. For the most part I really enjoyed it.

OVERALL: Like I said before, their are a couple of bad stories, the art may not be for some people's liking, and some of the characters are rather week. BUT (And this is a big but.) some of the stories are simply masterpieces, as is to be expected by a master storyteller like Taiyo Matsumoto. It's just a a shame that he couldn't keep it up all the way through.

Despite all its faults the goods outweigh the bads, and it is certainly worth checking out espiecially if you enjoyed Black and White. As said before, it is one of the lesser known great mangas. Definately worth the read.

This is my first Matsumoto manga, and it won't be my last. Taiyo Matsumoto really knows how to elicit a very specific feeling and tone.

These short stories aren't great stories in themselves; they don't have any plot or character development. They are tone pieces through and through. The art isn't all that great either, but it oozes with charm and really captures that punk rock vibe that's present throughout the book. I loved how there were tons of graffiti, to the point that the bottom of the page was chock-full of annotations from the translator. Loved all the music references too (Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles, Sex Pistols). Really helps cement the type of tone Matsumoto is going for. All in all, this manga is a perfect snapshot of teenage delinquency in the 80s and 90s in Japan, and the blues that fueled it.


I'll leave you with two quotes from Matsumoto's after thoughts at the end of the book:

[talking about teenage delinquents] "In retrospect, I realize that for these youth, for whom the present was already the past, the camera was an important item. But at that time, when their actions didn't quite make sense, I was strangely attracted to them. They answered to reason with their fists and never questioned their excessive passions. Their frankness and their sense of being true to themselves won me over. They were my heroes."

[after talking about how those delinquents now have families, are responsible, etc] "No matter how passionate you were, no matter how much your blood boiled, I believe youth is a blue time. Blue - that indistinct blue that paints the town moments before the sun rises. Winter is coming."

Blue Spring is a collection of short stories centered around the theme of questioning one's future. The characters are all high school delinquents, and the answer to their question lies in crime, dissatisfaction, or death.

As one might expect from Taiyo Matsumoto, the presentation is unconventional both in visuals and style. Matsumoto's drawing style is aesthetically pleasing and captures the gritty reality he is examining. The stories are understandable enough, but I feel a lot of it is lost on me due to a lack of cultural knowledge. I think after some research and time, a reread would allow me to give a better analysis.

This work is Matsumoto's sandbox and it's up to you whether you want to play in it or not. His style is completely devoid of mainstream boundaries; linear narration is substituted for juxtaposition of almost non-cohesive panels. Effect of such approach is that instead of a passive observer, you feel as if you're inside of character's heads.

There are no moral of the story moments, it's more like sheer realism; you could even call it conveyance of youthful boredom. As such it obviously doesn't pertain to excitement, but mood is set in a masterful way to keep you interested. Positive points for implementation of surreal slapstick which Matsumoto doesn't even bother to throw it in subtly.

Aspects such as development are completely thrown away, these characters simply live their empty and purposeless lives. No justification is provided for their actions nor are there any hints for a better future. You'll either hate their dull existence or consider it comically realistic.

It will feel quite heavy, especially due to abundance of Japanese pop cultural references, lack of vivaciousness, ostensible non-coherence manifested in erratic presentation and simply the fact that Matsumoto refuses to serve it on platter. I'm also sure that his artwork won't appeal to many, especially since it's not consistent, albeit really shines here and there.

Aoi Haru is a dichotomic work, it's perfect in its imperfection. It's definitely not a masterpiece in every sense of that word, but for its attempt to tackle such a risky theme and present it in such an experimental way, one could consider it as masterpiece in its own standards.