If there’s one thing you can count on in manga, it’s stories about youth looking to break out of their shells by joining the light music club. Ok, there’s many types of manga out there so Girl Meets Rock setting it up with that as its main premise isn’t bad. This means it’ll have to either provide a new twist or execute some well-worn ideas that usually come up with this theme better than others.
So far, I think it’s doing a good job of making things interesting as we follow Hatono, a girl who blows all her spending money on a guitar as she aims to join her school’s light music club.
Hatono’s reasons at the start don’t seem to be particularly special, since it’s common to want to join something you have a love for in school, and her love is Japanese rock (you’ll note a few familiar band names that get mentioned in this series if you’re really into it). The thing is, she’s never ever played a guitar, which means she has a lot to learn. And one of the things she immediately learns is her school’s light music club is composed of weirdoes. In one of the chapters the first-years are even confused as to why the band doesn’t try to appeal to them when making their join the club pitch, so Hatono’s not alone in thinking they’re bizarre. A little bizarreness doesn’t deter her though since she still attends the club’s first meeting. Immediately she learns that starting a band is not quite what she thinks it is! Now we follow her as she tries to understand what she really wants out of this club, and if she even is surrounded by the right people to do it.
The immediate direction you can make out of these first 8 chapters is that while the manga will hang its hat on having light comedic moments, how characters gradually change in their new environment will be one of the focal points of this manga. Like, for example, we finally get a sense of what Hatono really wants to communicate as she gets an opportunity to do something aside from guitar, which is thanks to her upbringing and what her past friends had said to her in school. We have Rin, a tall girl who seems to go at her own pace (at one point she mentions wanting to cut a guy loose from contacting her but then decides she’s still amused so she’ll keep chatting with him a bit longer) but might be looking for something or someone (maybe Hatono?) to change how she looks at things. One character to keep an eye on is Hatono’s first friend at her new school, Momo, who is outgoing and seems pretty nice but aside from forming a band with her new classmates there’s a lot we don’t know about her.
The journey this series will be about will also be accompanied by some terrific art. The color pages do look very nice, and in some aspects have a somewhat classic air to it, but overall it’s very pleasant to look at and the music playing is drawn, whether someone’s good at the drums or sucks at playing guitar. Girl Meets Rock has some pretty intriguing elements in its first couple chapters, and there’s nothing really to dissuade me so far. The only concerns to have in its early phase is how much will it lean on its comedy? The drama as these characters figure out how to cope with their past and how they develop relationships with their peers across the board?
Those will be answered in due time. For now, it’s time to see just how Hatono can channel her passion for rock, insecurities with herself, and how she grows up by joining a light music club.