Dead Rock, Vol 1

If you thought your school was hell imagine going to school in hell itself! This is the situation Yakuto and his fellow demons find themselves in today's review. Up next on our journey of 3 new volume 1s is Dead Rock by my favorite mangaka Hiro Mashima! 

Dead Rock is the story of one demons time in the greatest demon school of all. See Yakuto has a goal. A goal so crazy that everyone believes he has a death wish. And the only way to achieve it is to gain knowledge and power at this hellish institute. Together with the crew of demons who have the misfortune of being his classmates, he will do everything in his power to achieve his goal. Even killing the teachers. But first, he has to pass the entrance exam. 

Our cast is as diverse and crazy as ever. From birds to humanoid creatures to whatever this guy is, there is always a crazy new friend to meet. 

Everyone also has crazy powers based off the type of demon they are. And of course, given it's a Hiro Mashima series, Yakuto has dragon powers. 

Our main boy might look like a precious little bean, but he has some crazy strength! The series even starts with him killing a bunch of the other entrance examees!!!! 

The comedy is definitely on point for this series. From Yakuto just being a sweet goof, to the chaos of turning a classmate into a puppet, to one of the gals falling in love because of Yakuto being insane, there are jokes and gags everywhere. Which I feel is very important for a series like this. This one is a little darker especially at the start so I think the humor was needed.

This series does have alot of death right at the start. From killing classmates and giant bugs during the entrance exam to killing teachers and students once class is in session it seems no one is safe. This also means this one has a lot of crazy fight scenes right off the bat too! Everyone has such cool powers, even if some of them may weild them a tad too recklessly.

The art on this one definitely more reflects his newer style, feeling softer than his earlier works. It's much more reminiscent of Edens Zero which has some amazing art. It leads to an interesting contract between this dark world full of greusume demons and the soft look of everyone.

This one is definitely a series that started off with a bang. If you like Hiro Mashima's other works, or things like Welcome to Demon school Iruma-Kun or Assassination Classroom then this one may be up your alley. I will admit though this is the one series of his that I do have some issues with but since those are spoilers I want to give fair warning. This review is about to leave the spoiler free zone. 

⚠️⚠️⚠️ SPOILERS BELLOW ⚠️⚠️⚠️

When I grabbed this I was a little hesitant to begin with as I not super into the whole protagonist is a demon thing. Just not my vibe. But I was willing to look past it. The other big issue though is Yakuto's goal. His goal is to kill the being who calls himself god in this world. Which I do not know how I feel about this. This is a world though with many gods and Yakuto's reasoning behind why he thinks god needs to die makes sense. But it is some thing that I am unsure about. This is my only issue though with this one. 

Choking on Love, Vol 1

Picture this a graphic design student whose too scared to let loose, an art student whose part of a band and who maybe doesn't take things seriously enough, and one broken laptop. Is this the perfect meet-cute situation or the the beginning of the creation of 2 enemies? 

Choking on Love is a just recently published manga series by Seven Seas that follows Hibari, a graphic design student in her sophomore year of college. She works all the shifts she can pick up, works hard at school, and is the type to never really take risks. That is until Gaku, enters her life. He's also a sophomore but in the arts program as a sculpture and in a band like every good looking wild college boy. This is no meet-cute intro though, this is every human beings nightmare. When Gaku gets into a fight and accidentally destroys Hibari's laptop everything is downhill and chaotic from there. But through the power of technology and the trope of he fell first, everything of course works out and neither of these two have seen the last of the other. 

I loved seeing how chaotic their first meeting was. As someone in tech myself watching Hibari's laptop get destroyed made me feel just as angry as she did. Our Gaku though did not back down and made sure it all worked out. 

And of course fell so hard. Every moment they were together was adorable. The time they spent together was so well done. And I loved the concert scene. The fangirls being angry was hilarious.

 

Watching our Hibari take that first step and saying she'd do the flyer was amazing. She really went above and beyond to branch out and slowly work on growing her skills. She tried so hard to not fall into her usually patterns with it too. Love seeing character growth even if it's small. 

I really appreciated with this one that there was no age gap. A problem I've seen in a lot of idol or music romances in manga is that they often have age gaps. Now I'm not one to hate age gaps when done well, but I've noticed a lot of the ones I've tried in this genre were not of the done well kind. So having the two be the same age essentially was super nice and quiet refreshing. I can't wait to see how their relationship progresses.

The pacing of this volume was quite good. It felt very natural. I loved the art style for it too. There was also a bit of comedy thrown in. I love to laugh when I read, no matter the genre, so I got a lot of kicks out of some of the dialog. 

My only complaint would be that it does appear to have a love triangle. That's probably one of my least favorite romance tropes. I don't know why. So I will say I'm not looking forward to that playing out. But the two mains have already sorta confessed so I doubt that triangle will amount to much as long as it's not drawn out.

Overall so far I'd give this one a 4/5 stars. I'm definitely excited to see where it goes and see if it can keep me hooked. If you enjoy romances I totally suggest looking this one up. And even if you don't you still may enjoy it. This definitely isn't my usual genre but I can say it did a good job reeling in this battle loving girl. Probably cause I am a sucker for anything with a male lead in music. Can't wait for volume 2 to drop in May! 

For the official description check out this back cover featuring the whole band!

Now I have a question for all of you who made it this far Have you read Choking on Love volume 1 yet and if so, what were your thoughts on it? And if not, would you give it a go?