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Mikazuki March does an excellent job of capturing the collective emotions of a marching band. Outside of Euphonium's parade episode and a handful of other under-the-radar ongoing manga, marching is a pretty unique subject to Mikazuki March within the scope of animanga. It gets so much right about marching fundamentals, learning drill, memorizing music, and first-year performance anxiety. The struggles of each character feel real and similar to those of real people I have played with in the past. The band singing their program on the bus was absolutely perfect. While the series obviously had to choose a few characters to center around, it would ... have been interesting to see more details about what goes into a successful drumline and frontline. The way events can happen out of order was a bit confusing until I figured out what was going on. The other bummer for me here is how clear it is that the story was severely stretched thin chronologically by a page limit.

Hamada Yamachi's art here is simply fantastic. The inspiration of shoujo manga in the brushes, character designs, and atmosphere shines brilliantly. While it's hard by nature to capture musical expression into panels, the artist makes it very clear exactly how the players and audience feel at any given moment. Every environment feels lived-in, especially the cafe.

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There are some differences between the JMBA's approach to field shows and what you'll see in America, particularly due to the fact that American football fields are typically not used. This is apparent in scenes that feature the drill cards and the marching scenes. I was a bit surprised to see stage props. In North America, stage props are usually only created by bands that work on one program for the entire year, rather than those that come up with a new one for every appearance. In general, some American high school bands are parade bands first, which are judged at parades, others focus on a fresh field show with its own drill for every home Football game, and others work on one annual show performed at several contests in front of judges.

It was also interesting to see enthusiasm for DCI (Drum Corps International) become a key part of the narrative. In my formative marching experience in an annual-program band, many students crafted their entire personalities around how badly they wanted to get into a drum corps. Students would hold DCI finals pay-per-view watch parties every year. Seeing those groups perform was a driving factor that kept me wanting to practice and improve. There's really nothing quite like it.