Curtain’s up, I’m off

A manga about a socially awkward high school boy who often gets lost in his own imagination. His popular classmate coerces him into joining the theater club performance where his imagination helps him become a great actor.

We’ve discussed this on an episode of Darfox Dabbles.

This series is alright but I generally dislike manga about performing arts. Most of these end up making the performing art as a competition between schools because that’s always the easiest setup for a shonen slice of life series. I vehemently disagree with looking at performing arts as just competition because that is only part of what performing arts is about. This manga sets the theater club up in a plot where they’re competing against other schools and I really disliked that. I liked Akitaka Imakoshi‘s art style but this generic storytelling wasn’t doing much for me. And unfortunately for Imakoshi this manga ended pretty quickly after 26 chapters. I personally would prefer a manga like Butter!!! that focused on characters enjoying the performance but I really think you won’t get those kind of stories in a shonen manga.

You can read it on MANGA Plus.

~dakazu