Suzonomiya Lilisa has a mission and a goal. A girl from an middle-class household (a commoner to the rich girls around her) whose mother has married into high society, Lilisa is studying at the exclusive Oushin Academy, alongside the daughters of the rich and powerful. Lilisa is good at faking it and the girls around her admire her poise and knowledge. Every day is torture.

In Rock Is A Lady’s Modesty, Volume 1, Lilisa longs for simple pleasures of her former life, but when she discovers that the other star of the school, Kurogane Otoha, holed up in an unused school building and absolutely shredding on drums, Lilisa’s days are turned into a maelstrom in which she lives a double life. Playing her heart’s desire on guitar doesn’t make it any easier to rise to the position of Noble Maiden, her actual goal at this school, for she knows that when she attains this position she and her mother will be accepted into the ranks of high society. Surely.

The archaic rules of “Class S” here lie heavy in this premise. At Oushin, girls are cultivated like the flowers for which the school is named. They are treated as delicate, ephemeral and with the sole job of looking beautiful and cultured. These are young women being trained to be married off and sent to their cloister to await their husbands’ attentions. Within Oushin, these girls focus their passions on the paragons of their classes, treating them like idols.

This story, like it’s adaptation into anime, positions playing the guitar as something “common.”. Lilisa’s mother is so concerned that her daughter aspire to more refined instruments, like violin, that playing guitar is returned to its cultural roots in ways that a modern Japanese audience might not even consider. We of the late 20th and early 21st centuries think of guitar as something cool. But the guitar is also an instrument of rebellion and resistance. Rock & Roll has always been seen as subversive, a counter-culture noise. So Lilisa, and Otoha, playing loud, unfettered rock, sweating heavily, and cursing and screaming during their sessions, is hardly a subtle message. Still, this is a fun subversion of rules. Rock & Roll becomes the catalyst for women trapped by their lives to find their true selves.

I am honestly glad that Yen picked this series up. While the manga went on hiatus in Japan in July, we have 8 volumes to look forward to here. We get a nice handling of both the refined Class S world and the gutter-sniping of the rock sessions from both translator Ajani A. Oloye and letterer Phil Christie. Well done to the team at Yen.

And of course, the joke of these refined young ladies using gutter language works. It’s funny. It’ll stay funny. Yuri is by implication, primarily, as Otoha speaks of their jam sessions in increasingly intimate terms. She’s not really wrong, either. The sessions are the sex. The music is the relationship. 

Ratings: 

Art – It is very much its own thing, 8
Story – A nice spoof of the “school star” trope, 8
Characters – Somehow relatable? 8
Service – You like sweat? You’re good
Yuri – Absolutely yes and not at all

Overall – 8

I’m looking forward to watching this series develop and getting past the anime!