I started reading this manga cause I had watched the anime and I absolutely loved it. The music was beautiful, I loved how the characters’ stories were told, the way they grew in such a short amount of time, but what really hooked me into the story was the emotions that the anime conveyed. Their grief, their sadness, their angriness, it was all layed out so perfectly that you almost felt their emotions with them. When it comes to the anime and the manga part that was adapted (until vol 3) I honestly prefered the anime. The music plays such a part in the story, with the way Mafuyu tells his emotions through his lyrics, that you just don’t get in the manga. Don’t get me wrong, this part of the manga was beautiful and damn did I cry at some parts, but the anime just goes that extra step. But anyways I digress!!! Enough about the anime and let’s talk about the manga.

Plot

Man I don’t even know where to start, the whole story of this manga is just beautiful. It has such a nice blend of music and them being in a band, romance, friendships and all their emotions that affect the story.

One thing I really appreciate about this manga is that, even though it is a BL and there’s a lot of drama between characters about their relationships, the story is focused a lot on music and the characters’ growth. We have 4 people who are in a band together and throughout the manga they’re trying to grow as a band, write and compose music, try to get more recognition and figure out what they want to do in the future as a band. While that’s happening, the characters are going through stuff in their own lives that then affects the main aspect of the plot aka music. It was also so interesting to see that, whenever someone had something going on in their lives, it reflected in the way they played their instruments and the other characters could also tell right away something was wrong or changed (I really liked how Mafuyu was always so aware of this).

While we are shown Mafuyu and Uenoyama and the development of their romance and obviously we’re rooting for them throughout the manga, it’s so interesting how big of an impact Yuki has on the story. I’m not even talking about what happened to Yuki, and obviously if that didn’t happen then this story wouldn’t exist, it’s more the way that they talk about Yuki and Yuki and Mafuyu’s relationship, that it kinda makes you root for them, even though it’s impossible. They talk about him in such a kind and emotional way, that it almost feels like he’s there with them and he’s changing the story with them. I literally couldn’t help myself but cry everytime they mentioned and showed Yuki.

Characters

The way characters are written and portrayed has a huge impact on how I feel about a story, so I decided to highlight each one.

Mafuyu Satou
In one word: adorable. He’s a lovable character who grows soooo much throughout the story. He’s the typical quiet kid who is always in his own world and doesn’t say much. But that’s the thing, he may not say much, but he has so much to say, which he says through his music, and I found that so beautiful. He does get more comfortable with this feelings throughout the story, and learns how to properly express himself, and I loved how much he relies on his friends and just gets more comfortable with them.

Ritsuka Uenoyama
It’s kinda interesting how, even though he’s basically the main character and one of the first characters we’re introduced to, he didn’t have a huge impact on me. Nonetheless, I did really enjoy seeing his personality and how much he cares about the people around him, specially Mafuyu. I also loved the transition between the first few chapters, where he and Mafuyu are the main focus of the story and we see them get closer, to latter chapters, where we see Uenoyama as an individual and we find out more about what he truly wants to do in his live and with his music.

Haruki Nakayama
My beloved Haruki. When watching the anime, he was the character that grabbed all my attention, and he always made me laugh, and reading the manga and learning more about his character just made me love him even more. At the beginning of the story, he feels a lot like a supportive character for the main characters. We don’t know much about him, we see him mostly help the other characters and encourage them to grow, and we see him suffer from how much he loves Akihiko while not being able to do anything about it. But throughout the manga we see him evolve as a character, and he goes from being there for others, to him being his own person and showing his own pain.

Akihiko Kaji
I had such high hopes for him, and he disappointed me a little, but I also understand his pain. He’s the cool guy who seems very intimidating at first but, when you get to know him, he’s just a chill guy who does whatever he wants and lives his life according to his own wants and needs, which sometimes can go wrong. For most of the story, he’s dealing with the pain of having his heart broken and that’s all he cares about. He tries to get his mind off of this pain by doing regretful things that, in the process, hurt him, the person that loves him and even the person who broke his heart.

He does redeem himself and grows from his mistakes, but it still doesn’t forgive the pain he caused others and I feel like he just got things easy.

Hiiragi Kashima and Shizusumi Yagi
When I started reading the manga and we were introduced to Hiiragi and Shizusumi, I thought they were just going to be supporting characters to Mafuyu. We get to know their relationship to Mafuyu and Yuki, their backstories and how they became friends, and even how they help Mafuyu with his grief. But I’m so glad they dove deeper into their stories and we got to know each of their personalities and how they feel about each other. Shizusumi reminds me a lot of Akihiko, in the sense that he doesn’t really show a lot of emotions and he mainly shows his love through actions (he also does some weird things that remind me of Akihiko but anyways) and while he may not say it, everything that he does has a meaning behind it, he just doesn’t know how to properly express it. Hiiragi was a character that I got more fond of the more I read the manga. He has a very similar personality to Uenoyama, so it was always funny to see them together and their personalities just crash.

#Art style
The artstyle of this manga was beautiful. The characters are such drawn in a way that each one of them is so unique and my favorite panels were always the ones where they were playing music cause, even though you obviously can’t listen to what they’re playing, you can feel how much passion there is in what they’re doing. And those panels were just very visually appealing lmao.

After reading the manga I finally understood why it's so loved and, while it focuses a lot on the bl and music aspect of it, it also talks about so much more and even deeper feelings like grief (not only about death, but also losing things in your life to focus on others), finding yourself and thinking about your future. Even with it's flaws, overall it really is a beautiful manga.