6 Manga that Let You Sit in With the Band

Nana, by Ai Yazawa
Nana Komatsu is boy-crazy and perpetually flustered, but also determined to improve herself, so she leaves her small town to follow her boyfriend and best friend to Tokyo. Nana Osaki is the singer in a Black Stones, a pretty good local punk band, and she and the bassist, Ren, are madly in love—until he leaves for Tokyo to take a spot in a bigger band. Nana Osaki goes to the big city too, but not to follow Ren—in fact, she deliberately avoids him as she focuses on building her own musical career. The two Nanas, one sweet and naïve, the other cynical and edgy, meet on the train to the city and, thanks to another chance meeting, end up being roommates. That’s just the launching pad for this absorbing soap opera, as the Nanas quarrel, embrace, find love, lose love, and sometimes just sit around with their friends. Like all good soap operas, Nana has a strong supporting cast, and the drama is so absorbing, I blazed through the first seven volumes in a day. The story, the characters, and Ai Yazawa’s superb art make it a series not to be missed.

K-ON!, by kakifly
K-ON! takes us to the other end of the spectrum: it’s a four-panel gag manga about a quartet of high school girls who are the only members of their school’s pop music club. That means they are hanging on by the skin of their teeth, and it doesn’t help that their guitarist, Yui, not only hadn’t played the guitar before joining the club, she took her time about starting once she did join. They don’t really know what they’re doing, but they’re having a good time doing it. While some four-panel gag manga fall kind of flat, K-ON!, is an amiable read, sort of like manga comfort food.

Idol Dreams, by Arina Tanemura
Tanemura’s specialty is magical romances about teenage girls, but this story is a bit of a departure. It’s about a 31-year-old office lady who can turn back into her teenage self, but only for a few hours at a time. It’s a Cinderella story for wistful grownups. Chikage Deguchi peaked early—on graduation day from high school, when the dreamy Haru confesses his love for her. Inexplicably, she never followed up on his declaration, and 15 years later, she’s working at a dead-end job, getting crapped on by her co-workers—and still a virgin. She has high hopes for reconnecting with Haru at their high school reunion, but instead, it’s a humiliating disaster.
Chikage is literally wading into the river to commit suicide when another old classmate pops up with a tantalizing alternative: a pill that reverts her body back to what it was at 15. Like the fairy godmother’s magic, the effect wears off before too long, but Chikage makes the most of her time. Thanks to one of those cases of mistaken identity that happens a lot in fiction, she gets drafted to fill in on a TV program for a debuting singer who was a no-show. Next thing you know, she’s hanging with a boy band headed by Hibiki, a temperamental, misunderstood genius. The story shifts back and forth between Chikage’s teenage adventures with the band and her adult life, where there’s a quiet romance brewing in the background. Tanemura gives us plenty of backstage action and an interesting contrast between the highly commercialized world of idol singers and the driven Hibiki, who is not just a pretty face but a serious performer and producer.

Your Lie in April, by Naoshi Arakawa
A piano prodigy who was taught in a rigid style by his abusive mother meets a free spirit who plays music for the sheer joy of it. That’s the backbone of this surprisingly nuanced shonen romance. Kosei Arima’s mother was harsh and demanding, but under her tutelage he became a star pianist at a young age. Then she died, and he was plunged into a depression that left him unable to hear music at all—and therefore unable to perform. When he first sees Kaori Miyazono, she is performing barefoot in a park to the delight of a gaggle of children. It turns out she is an accomplished violinist, and she presses Kosei to be her accompanist. Kaori doesn’t care about the strictures of music competitions, and her freedom is astonishing—and fascinating—to Kosei. While the music itself is often absent from music-themed manga, Arakawa weaves it into the art, bringing an added dimension to what is already a charming, bittersweet love story.

Nodame Cantabile, by Tomoko Ninomiya
A beloved classic from the 2000s, Nodame Cantabile is back again in digital format. This is another spin on the rigid guy/free-spirited girl story, but the characters are older—both are college students at a school for classical musicians. Shinichi Chiaki is a gifted pianist and violinist, but his fear of flying threatens to restrict his musical career. Megumi Noda, who goes by the nickname Nodame, is as laid-back as Shinichi is uptight, but what she lacks in discipline, she makes up for in sheer talent. Together they make sort of a musical odd couple, and over the course of this story they each learn from the best aspect of each other’s personalities.

Solanin, by Inio Asano
Like Nana, Solanin is about young musicians striving to succeed in Tokyo. The tone is very different though: The characters aren’t hip at all, just a bunch of kids in their early 20s who don’t want to get sucked into the gears of everyday life and see music as an escape from that. The lead character, Meiko, is working at a job she hates and feels like she’s just drifting through life; her boyfriend, Shigeo, is only working part time, so she’s supporting him. They met in college, and their group of friends is still together (one is actually still in college, and seems like he’ll never graduate), and still playing together in a band. Everyone seems to be postponing adulthood, and the music is the only thing that seems real to them, but it’s not so easy to move up from playing together to making a career of it—and an unexpected tragedy has all the characters thinking harder about what they want from life.
What’s your favorite musical manga?