Tanaka Minoru’s Rock It, GiRL! (ロケット☆ガール) series has been an interesting ride. The apparent protagonist, Kaname, has moved from hapless street guitarist to rock band fame without apparently, noticing. She is pretty much the same soppy, sappy, person in Volume 2 as she was in Volume 1.

However, as we move into Volume 2, and the band (provisionally-permanently known as “The Pinch Hitters”) starts to pick up traction, our attention wanders from Kaname to the more complex, more fascinating, eternally enraged Seira.

In between Seira screaming at Kaname, and raging at the world, we learn her tragic backstory (all art comes from pain, you know) and we learn the nature of the baggage between Kaname and Seira.

Far more interesting than the personal drama was the band gearing up to perform at a music festival, recording a commercial, YouTube-esque video backlash, parties, being asked to do TV dramas and all the random dribs and drabs of being a professional musician in Japan.

The book comes to a shocking (no, seriously, it was) climax at the music festival, and at least half the shock is the fact that I think we can turn our back on Kaname and Seira and they’ll be…okay. Phew.

Ratings:

Art – 8 The art is nuts and Tanaka-sensei knows it.
Story -8 Better than I imagined it would be
Characters – I don’t know what to say, really. I didn’t dislike them, but none of them would be welcome in my house for lunch, either. ^_^;
Service – 0 None, really. Not even the service-y bits
Yuri – 8

Overall – 8

In the end, it was a sweet romance. With a lot of shouting.