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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.

By far one of the more predictable one shots I've ever read, but it's how the ideas are put across and drawn onto the page that really sticks out to me. I'm a huge sucker for Hakuri, let's just get that out of the way. Sachi-iro no One Room is one of my all time favourite series and the fact I, who typically struggles with distinguishing styles and remembering faces, could tell at a glance from just the color page that this was by the same artist is saying something. I adore everything about this. The art is gorgeous and the story itself, while as ... I said predictable, is executed in a way that made me want to continue reading even after I hit the end. I'd definitely recommend giving it a shot, especially if you're looking for a little one-and-done. Stories of the yandere genre are seldom written well but this has given me a taste of hope for the future, as there are so many stories that could benefit from this kind of approach that values a strong foundation over needless complexity.

I thought some of the others reviews had to have been exaggerating. I find a lot of series, particularly on sites like these, tend to either have wildly inflated scores or exactly the opposite. It's rare I come across one where the score seems appropriate and is exactly as I would judge it. The series is fine. Or, well, it's hard to say. If the first of two volumes is good. Interesting, entertaining, and so on, but the second has some of the most garbage, nonsensical, irritating, and otherwise annoying, infuriating, and aggravating writing I've ever had the displeasure of reading, then how exactly do ... you judge that? Does that severe drop-off in storytelling retroactively make the first part any less enjoyable? I can't answer that, because I don't think you could even really call the second half a story. At least not in any meaningful sense. It's intangible, insubstantial, and ultimately just a waste of my time. The MC, Amane I think his name was, has no personality. He's introduced as cold, logical. A smart, no nonsense kind of guy, and he is... until all of a sudden he isn't, then he is again. It feels the mangaka didn't really know what kind of character they wanted to write, or maybe just couldn't commit, so they made him a complete, indistinguishable mish-mash of whatever the story needed him to be. The female lead, who I thought had more than a bit of potential, also ended up being kind of lame. Less than the MC, and certainly less than she could have been, but the brightest spot in a series like this isn't hard to find. So, it's not a horrible series, but there are other, much better ones. This one was only alright. Just stop reading mid-way through volume 2, you'll know what bit I'm talking about when you get to it, and in some respects you'll probably end up enjoying it a whole lot more than you would have if you had continued. Not as much as if you'd just refused to pick up the series in the first place, but I digress.