Blue Period managed to avoid replicating an anime cut that takes place in My Hero Academia. In the manga for My Hero Academia, one of Katsuki Bakugo's middle school friends is shown smoking while the group hangs out together. The scene provides some context for Bakugo's character, as the soon-to-be-hero shouts at his friend to stop it, worried that any deviancy would prevent him from getting into the prestigious UA high school. This scene was later cut from the anime adaptation, but Blue Period was not censored in the same way.
In fact, smoking was a prominent feature in episode 1 of Blue Period. High schooler Yatora Yaguchi smokes with his friends in several scenes, attracting scorn from classmate Ryuji Ayukawa who accused him of only doing it because he thought it would make him appear cool to his friends. Yatora's initial encounter with an intricate painting, which eventually inspired him to pursue art himself, only happened because he'd returned to school looking for a misplaced pack of cigarettes.
Both anime series were about underage students who could not legally smoke, but one potential reason why only My Hero Academia cut this detail was how young the characters were when the smoking scene took place. Although almost done with his first year of high school by the end of season 5, when My Hero Academia began Bakugo was still in middle school, which would make him several years younger than Yatora, who started Blue Period in his second year of high school. Yaguchi and his friends were still under 18, but they were not quite as young as Katsuki's group. Smoking for Yatora is also a more relevant character detail that not only allows for important plot events to happen, but also highlights his general disinterest in life at the start of the episode, before he discovers his passion for art. Ryuji chastised him for not caring about his health, but in actuality, Yatora just didn't care about much of anything other than doing well in school. That kind of characterization could not be as easily cut as a quick detail of a friend smoking.
Blue Period also appears to be aimed at a slightly older audience. Despite its occasional dip into darker themes and lasting consequences, My Hero Academia is intended to be a largely kid-friendly series, which would make animators hesitate before showing a middle schooler participating in an illegal activity. Being exclusive to Netflix, Blue Period potentially doesn't have to follow as many censorship rules, which would explain further why the detail remained in it.
Ultimately, it doesn't hinder My Hero Academia for not having underage smoking in it, whereas Blue Period could have been hampered by censoring this part of Yatora's character. With only the first episode of the anime currently available to stream, the decision to keep in Yatora smoking suggests the show will follow its source material loyally, even where other anime - for various reasons - often cannot.
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