Artist's commentary
Wrapped in Blue
https://chanomach.fanbox.cc/posts/7753329
From blog post:
A drawing I made just because I wanted to draw a scene with the visual of blue tarps everywhere. I was studying construction and agricultural sites as references for another piece, and the blue tarps in them caught my eye and that basically led me to thinking if I couldn't draw a piece just based on that. Using blueness (youth) as your shield.
The phrase "Aoharu" came to me pretty soon, and part of wanting to draw this was just me wanting to use it. Even though I became concerned that that alone wouldn't convey the idea, I figured the impact of the visual alone would be good enough even if the meaning doesn't quite come across so I just threw it in there. I was struggling to decide if I should go with "Youth wrapped in blue" to get the idea of it being about youth across or maybe reference the old song with Aoharu YOUTH.
Title is a play on the Japanese term for "youth" being written as "blue spring", which can be read the same was as the title, which can be interpreted multiple ways, such as "wrapped in blue" or "putting blue forward". "Blueness" is metaphorically used to mean innocence or naivete associated with youth. Originally, Japanese did not overtly distinguish the colors blue and green in the language, and the term that now generally means "blue" is used to mean young or unripe, such as with plants. Similar to how "green" can mean inexperienced in English as well.