Yatora is doing okay, but he’s not doing as well as he wants to be. He certainly has technical skills, but translating that into actual art eludes him. Yatora’s got a secret weapon in the form of his hardheadedness, but is that enough to realize an artist’s dreams?
You can have the passion, but if you don’t have the spark, is their anything that you can do with art? That’s basically where Yatora’s falling down throughout this volume as he realizes that he’s doing great work when it comes to drawing something, but making an actual creative work drawn from his thoughts is really rather difficult.
Which is fine, Rome wasn’t sketched in a day, except he’s got a very real deadline looming for his art school application and if he doesn’t find his voice sooner rather than later he’ll be stuck screaming into the void for a bit longer than he might like.
Still, you can’t keep Yatora down and he may not pull this off but you can’t say he doesn’t try his damnedest. It’s easy to root for him the whole way - he’s definitely having a hard time seeing the forest for the trees, but he has no qualms putting himself through the wringer to get what he wants (the expression on his teacher’s face after winter break is wonderful).
Which is why the blows to his progress land as hard as they do - you can’t help but feel bad when he falls into an obvious trap (or two or three) later on with his own way of thinking and seeing him struggle with actually letting his emotions out onto a canvas is really compelling stuff.
And there’s lots of great work with the rest of the cast. Yatora’s frenemy made a shocking choice last volume and to see the two of them keeping in touch and coming closer in a realistic, if prickly, fashion was really nice. The book’s quite good at keeping everything moving and smoothly told.
I think this book’s biggest downfall is that it is part of the journey and not a lot of destination. We do see Yatora’s amazing large-scale piece, which is very well done (shout-out to the way this series showcases actual artists as stand-in for the characters’ creations), but this volume is certainly about the grind of creation rather than those ‘wow’ moments (except for one glorious opening chapter spread that I loved, but it’s totally unconnected to the story).
Also there isn’t enough Ryuji. A side character who threatens to run away with the book is nothing new, but I really wish we explored more of Ryuji’s circumstances (the glimpse of their home life says a lot). Again, if this turned into a romance between our lead and Ryuji, which I doubt will happen, I wouldn’t complain much.
I was going to give this 3 stars, just because it doesn’t have the flash of the previous volumes, but thinking about it, this story is actually really solid. It always has been, and it shouldn’t (and on reflection, doesn’t) need big splashy sequences each time. It’s an interesting contrast with Animeta, which is also about art, but a whole other ballgame compared to this.