{Spoilers, but it's pretty light-hearted slice of life}
This story takes place in Vienna with a bunch of famous musicians you've probably heard of all enrolled in the same school. It fallows Taki Ren's experience through the school with familiar arcs such as the music festival and internal competition which could be likened to a school festival and sports competition of sorts. The only thing is, this school is an all-boys academy, so for Ren to enroll, she has to hide her identity and pretend to be a man.
She encounters many famous musicians who are with her in the trouble-making class S- which include Wagner, Back, Hadyn, Mozart, Beethoven, Liszt, Chopin, and Tchaikovsky. Those names should be pretty familiar to you. Each of these famous musicians (and a few bonus characters) are portrayed in the manga in a way vaguely similar to their real life historical counterparts, but with a few artistic liberties taken to make them more personable and engaging in the story. Overall, all of these musicians will wiggle their way into your heart and make you feel like you know each of them by the end. Personally, when the cast of characters is this large, I tend to lose track of who is who and end up frustrated because it seems like a fruitless exercise to get to know everyone. Perhaps because all of their names are familiar or perhaps because each of their personalities and dynamics were so unique, I didn't have quite the same trouble trying to remember everyone's names!
Because this is a slice of life kind of manga, there's no definitive plot per say. It's more about the camaraderie that develops between Class S- and some of the funny antics they get up to because of their eccentric personalities. The class as a whole starts to get closer with the introduction of Ren who catalyzes their relationships into a more intimate one of familial ties which is pretty cute to watch unfold.
Overall, I definitely didn't do a good time persuading anyone to read this. But you should read it regardless of my execution because the story is so good. Usually with manga that have a similar premise, they lose themselves when the plot starts to revolve only around romance. In this case, the romance takes the back seat as each of the musicians works to build the others up and enjoy their time at the school. 10/10 would recommend. I'm not sure why the manga was cut short, but it was wrapped up nicely with a bow of an ending with all of the feels that I'm certain you will enjoy.
Sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words. This is Chopin, the poet of piano, playing for Liszt and Ren and it looks like they've been transported to an underwater wonderland. Just looking at this image gives me goosebumps.
The internal competition is something that I think, if the manga were to go on, would definitely be a "redemption round" kind of arc if they were to continue on for another year. I mean just look at all these cinnamon rolls helping out their friend.
This whole section of trading partners was amazing. I haven't seen anything quite like this in terms of utilizing both sides of a page in order to create this kind of intimate moment. It weirdly enough reminded me of a father-daughter dance at weddings?
Putting together these screenshots of the manga, I realized that it's been a long time since I've done screenshots. But I hadn't really felt compelled to, even for this manga, until I saw that scene with Chopin playing the piano. I even read past that part and meant to continue my streak of not including pictures, but I just had to go back and capture this. Please please read this! It's so good and so worth it.
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