Title: Anonymous Noise Vol. 3
Author: Ryoko Fukuyama
Publisher: Viz Media
Language: English
Format: Paperback
Pages: 200
Genre: Shojo, Romance
Publication Date: July 4 , 2017
The Story
In the third volume on Anonymous Noise, Nino lost the audition, but is ready to perform with In No Hurry to Shout at the Music King television special. There, she loses control like she did at orientation, but the band covers it up nicely and they end up being a hit. Soon after, they learn about the Rock Horizon music festival and a “ripoff” band called Silent Black Kitty will be performing there. They discover that Momo is the bassist and that Miou is the lead singer for the band. Miou revealed that her audition was for the lead singer part for Silent Black Kitty.
Meanwhile, the love triangle between Momo, Yuzu, and Nino grows and gets a bit complicated once Yuzu discovers that Sakaki’s first name is Momo and that he is the same Momo that Nino has been searching for this entire time. Yuzu decides to give up on Nino as a love interest and just become her friend. Meanwhile, Nino discovers that Momo has been going to the same high school as her this entire time, but Momo never wants her to speak to him again. Before they say their final words to each other, Momo confesses that he used to love her when they were kids. This caused Nino to lie and say that she used to love him, too when, in reality, she still does.
This plagues Nino’s mind and during a practice session for Rock Horizon, the lyrics to Canary remind her of Momo and she breaks down, leaving the studio. Yuzu rushes to her side and ends up kissing Nino. This is where volume three ends.
This volume threw a LOT at the reader, but there was just so much advancement in terms of story and characters! After watching the anime, I kind of soured on this series, but reading the manga makes up for it. When the story doesn’t have an audible counterpart to it, it’s a lot more enjoyable. The only qualm is that since I’ve seen the anime, I know how these characters sound and what the music sounds like and even though I do my best to try and block that out of my head, it serves as a constant reminder to how bad the anime adaptation was. If you don’t mind spoilers for future volumes, you can check out my review of the anime here: https://www.theouterhaven.net/2017/07/fukumenkei-noise-review/
There were some pretty deep moments for the characters, but the story itself was simply just moving to one plot point to the other. It started with Music King, Nino receiving Momo’s guitar, right into Yuzu, Momo and Nino all discovering the connection between each other into practice for Rock Horizon. Despite the story staying linear, the character development made things so much more in-depth!
Characters
Nino hasn’t really changed all that much. She’s still rather stubborn and often ignores what people are saying to her. The only real change comes after she lies to Momo about used to loving him in the past when she still loves him today. She becomes a bit more conflicted which causes her to have a bit of a personality shift. She begins wearing a proverbial mask in addition to her physical one. She’s always smiling on the outside, pretending that everything is okay, but on the inside, she’s a complete and total train wreck. This became very evident at the end of the volume when she broke down during rehearsal.
Yuzu went through some soul searching as well and ended up being similar to Nino that regard. He realized that there was no way he could compete with Momo so he gives up on Nino and convinces himself that he will be happy just to be Nino’s friend. He wears this mask all the way until the end of the volume as well where he tries to comfort Nino when she breaks down during rehearsal, but all of those emotions and feelings that he kept bottled up inside finally escape and he ends up kissing Nino.
In addition to this, we got a bit of a tease to Yuzu’s backstory when he told Momo that he ran away from home after his mother struck him. Yuzu’s mother isn’t happy with him dabbling in music for some reason. Yuzu mentions that she checks his phone and computer every single day to see what he’s up to because she’s that determined to keep him away from composing. This explains why Yuzu is only seen composing on the beach or at school. I’m sure we’ll get more details on this in a future volume, but it’s an interesting facet to Yuzu and it’s the first real backstory we’ve seen so far in the series aside from Nino and Momo.
Miou, although she took the job as lead singer for Silent Black Kitty, remains the same person. She even goes out of her way to not make her involvement with the band a big deal. They could have turned her into a huge rival and an antagonist, but they opted not to do so. I think it would have made her character a bit more interesting that way as keeping her as a friend of the band just makes things very bland. What is the point of her being in a rival band if there’s no jealousy or heat between them? It doesn’t make much sense, to be honest.
Final Thoughts
Aside from my little qualm about Miou, this was a great volume of Anonymous Noise. After the rocky start in the first volume, this series has really found its pacing and the plot points are getting deeper and deeper, which is a good thing. While there was a lot of information thrown at you, it was laid out pretty clearly and it was very easy to follow and understand.
There were still come cringe-worthy moments in the volume where they attempted to use comedy to deal with a serious situation. It was like that in the anime as well and I could only be reminded of those scenes as I read them, but somehow, reading the text rather than watching it on a screen makes a big difference and makes those situations a bit more tolerable. I still feel that the series would be so much better if the comedy was just dropped and they focused on a more serious tone, though.
All in all, another great read and I can’t wait to check out volume four to see the aftermath of Yuzu’s kiss!
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