A high-achieving schoolboy discovers that painting can express feelings his polished social performance has kept at a distance, then commits himself to the demands of art-school entry.
Yatora Yaguchi's first encounter with a painting changes the kind of work he wants to do. Interest quickly becomes practice, criticism and comparison with students whose experience differs from his own. The entrance-exam goal gives self-expression a deadline without making artistic identity a simple matter of winning.
Yatora is accustomed to learning what a situation expects of him. Painting offers something less comfortable: a way to say what he sees and feels without knowing whether the result will succeed. Mori's art-room scene places paint and materials beside the image that sparks that change, while the lead turns his familiar schoolboy appearance into a surface marked by blue. The practical attraction is the connection between an urgent personal discovery and the repetitive work needed to develop it. Follow the twelve anime episodes from that first encounter. Their commitment is separate from the later live-action film and the manga's longer route through artistic education.