Mar 19, 2025
By far, it is one of the more promising works to come out WSJ in recent years.
I'll keep it real and say we're still in the early days. It could crash, or it could burn, or it could meander. But what it has now, in massive quantities, is charm. The characters, especially the series' namesake, are delightful. I can't stress enough how fantastic Beethoven is. He dominates every single scene he's in, and while that sometimes pushes other characters into the background, I feel that's an acceptable price to pay for what we're given — which is much more than I could ever have
...
expected when the chapter first dropped.
I recently finished up with PPPPPP, another special interest piano series that ran in the same magazine for about a year and a half until it was unceremoniously cancelled partway through. I loved PPPPPP. Except for its name, it was a wonderful series that I'm happy to have experienced. However, one part I struggled with was its depiction of music. At least in the beginning, you could tell the mangaka was exploring and still finding how to represent something as ephemeral and intangible as a melody on paper.
I can truthfully say that Star of Beethoven has no such identity crisis, and its portrayal of Beethoven's musical brilliance is consistently and thoroughly convincing.
The art is beautiful. It's simple, but not simplistic. It’s rough, but not sloppy. It is in this controlled madness that the manga truly shines. Where the lines wobble, and the backgrounds blend. Where the faces are angular, and the eyes are all white — it's a visual language that speaks to the reader, one that is both uniquely itself and perfectly suited to the subject matter it is trying so wholeheartedly to tackle. The fact that you can crack open YouTube at any time and check the songs represented — rendered and realized — in my opinion, only serves to heighten the experience.
It is a surprisingly funny series, too. It can get silly, and it can likewise get sweet. Its tone is largely buoyant, and there’s even a character introduced in chapter four who is a microcosm of all these qualities — versatile and full of energy. It's something I hadn't expected given how it marketed itself as a "piano revenge story" and how freaky Beethoven and Ichiro Yaso, the real main character, looked in the previews, but it's not something I'm exactly complaining about, either. I think they make a pretty great pair in all their goofy glory.
Give it a read, I say. I'm not sure it will live long or if the quality can even be sustained with all the demands that come with a weekly serialization, but I'm having a blast with it so far and hope to keep it that way for as long as I possibly can.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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