SUBSCRIBE
SUBSCRIBE
SLJ Blog Network +
  • 100 Scope Notes
  • A Fuse #8 Production
  • Good Comics for Kids
  • Heavy Medal: A Mock Newbery Blog
  • Teen Librarian Toolbox
  • The Classroom Bookshelf
  • The Yarn
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • About/Contact
  • Previews
  • Reviews
  • Manga
  • All Ages
  • Young Adult
  • Interviews
  • News

April 19, 2017 by J. Caleb Mozzocco

Review: ‘Anonymous Noise’

April 19, 2017 by J. Caleb Mozzocco   1 comments

Anonymous Noise 1Anonymous Noise, Vol. 1
Writer/artist: Ryoko Fukuyama
Viz; $9.99
Rated T for Teen

Nino Arisugawa has a great voice—and lousy luck with friends. As a child, she shared her love of singing with her next door neighbor Momo…until he suddenly disappeared, his family having skipped town without even giving her a chance to say goodbye. Years later, she meets and befriends a mysterious young boy named Yuzu, who composes music with a stick in the sand, and then, suddenly, he too disappears.

Believing that her voice will someday bring them both back to her, she continues to sing, but in secret, almost ritualistically. When she’s not singing, she wears a mask over her mouth. This continues until manga-ka Fukuyama picks up her story in high school, where Nino finds Yuzu is also a student, but his feelings for her seem to have changed.

SCROLL TO KEEP READING THIS POST

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

Yuzu is now part of their school’s tiny pop music club, which is so small it’s always on the verge of being shuttered. The club has a secret, though: They wear masks and eye-patches as disguises and take on assumed identities when they perform professionally, as the extremely popular rock band No Hurry To Shout.

Circling Nino, Yuzu, and the band is a handsome, mysterious young man that smart money suggests is the grown-up Momo…but if that does end up being the reveal, it doesn’t come in this first volume of the series.

Fukuyama presents a fun and quirky set-up for this shoujo manga, with Nino and Yuzu both being appealingly weird and the latter harboring dramatically complicated feelings for Nino, who is his muse and his crush…although he’s secretly jealous of Momo and hopes Nino never does find her first love, thus setting up a love triangle just waiting to be realized.

The secret band is another neat twist, allowing the characters to exist both in a more-or-less familiar high school setting and a high-profile, professional rock-and-roll world, the latter of which will likely come to the fore in future volumes.

Music is notoriously difficult to depict in comics, and Fukuyama handles that by more-or-less avoiding the problem. There are no lyrics, and only suggestions of sounds rather than depictions of actual music. When Nino sings, she simply opens her mouth and a giant music note appears in dialogue balloon; the other characters tell us how good a voice she has.

The double set-up of Nino meeting and losing two friends before the present story begins, and the choice to tell these events chronologically rather than via flashback, makes Anonymous Noise a little tougher to get into than it might otherwise be. Fukuyama’s very typical shoujo lay-outs and designs could be a further impediment to the casual reader, but manga fans should have no problems with the stylistic choices.

(There’s a free preview at the Viz website.)

Filed under: Manga, Reviews

SHARE:

Read or Leave Comments
Anonymous NoiseRyoko FukuyamaVIZ

About J. Caleb Mozzocco

J. Caleb Mozzocco is a way-too-busy freelance writer who has written about comics for online and print venues for a rather long time now. He currently contributes to Comic Book Resources' Robot 6 blog and ComicsAlliance, and maintains his own daily-ish blog at EveryDayIsLikeWednesday.blogspot.com. He lives in northeast Ohio, where he works as a circulation clerk at a public library by day.

ADVERTISEMENT

Related Posts

January 2023

My Sister, the Cat, vol. 1 | Review

by J. Caleb Mozzocco

January 2023

SHY, vol. 1 | Review

by J. Caleb Mozzocco

November 2022

Romantic Killer, vol. 1 | Review

by J. Caleb Mozzocco

October 2022

Dinosaur Sanctuary Vol. 1 | Review

by J. Caleb Mozzocco

October 2022

No Longer Heroine, vol. 1 | Review

by J. Caleb Mozzocco

ADVERTISEMENT

SLJ Blog Network

100 Scope Notes

Surprise! Announcing CABOOSE

by Travis Jonker

A Fuse #8 Production

Jump Into this Guest Post by Shadra Strickland About Her Latest Book: Jump In!

by Betsy Bird

Good Comics for Kids

The Archie Encyclopedia | Review

by J. Caleb Mozzocco

Heavy Medal

What’s Coming in 2023, A Feedback Poll, and Goodbye for Now…

by Steven Engelfried

Teen Librarian Toolbox

WRITING FOR YOURSELF FIRST, a guest post by author M. K. Lobb

by Karen Jensen, MLS

The Classroom Bookshelf

The Classroom Bookshelf is Moving

by Erika Thulin Dawes

The Yarn

A Book 25 Years in the Making: Marla Frazee Visits The Yarn

by Travis Jonker

ADVERTISEMENT

Related Articles on SLJ

Best Graphic Novels 2022 | SLJ Best Books

10 Graphic Biographies Bring Notable Figures to Life | Stellar Panels

Best Graphic Novels 2019 | SLJ Best Books

Top 10 Manga of 2021

Eight Graphic Works that Offer Fresh Perspectives on the Past | Stellar Panels

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. todoroki and deku says

    August 30, 2019 at 2:00 pm

    i love this book series.

ADVERTISEMENT

Archives

Follow This Blog

Enter your email address below to receive notifications of new blog posts by email.

This coverage is free for all visitors. Your support makes this possible.

This coverage is free for all visitors. Your support makes this possible.

Primary Sidebar

  • News & Features
  • Reviews+
  • Technology
  • School Libraries
  • Public Libraries
  • Age Level
  • Ideas
  • Blogs
  • Classroom
  • Diversity
  • People
  • Job Zone

Reviews+

  • Book Lists
  • Best Books
  • Media
  • Reference
  • Series Made Simple
  • Tech
  • Review for SLJ
  • Review Submissions

SLJ Blog Network

  • 100 Scope Notes
  • A Fuse #8 Production
  • Good Comics for Kids
  • Heavy Medal
  • Neverending Search
  • Teen Librarian Toolbox
  • The Classroom Bookshelf
  • The Yarn

Resources

  • 2022 Youth Media Awards
  • The Newbery at 100: SLJ Celebrates the 100th Anniversary of the Award
  • Special Report | School Libraries 2021
  • Summer Reading 2021
  • Series Made Simple Spring 2021
  • SLJ Diverse Books Survey
  • Summer Programming Survey
  • Research
  • White Papers / Case Studies
  • School Librarian of the Year
  • Mathical Book Prize Collection Development Awards
  • Librarian/Teacher Collaboration Award

Events & PD

  • In-Person Events
  • Online Courses
  • Virtual Events
  • Webcasts
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Advertise
  • Subscribe
  • Media Inquiries
  • Newsletter Sign Up
  • Content Submissions
  • Data Privacy
  • Terms of Use
  • Terms of Sale
  • FAQs
  • Diversity Policy
  • Careers at MSI


COPYRIGHT © 2023


COPYRIGHT © 2023