is a Japanese web manga series created by Kuwahali. It tells the story of first year high school student Chihiro Hatono, who begins playing guitar and joins her school's light music club. Kuwahali published the original work on Shueisha's digital platform Jump Rookie! from January to September 2023. A remake, written by Kuwahali and illustrated by Tetsuo Ideuchi, has been serialized on Shōnen Jump+ since January 2024. Its chapters have been collected in 12 volumes as of October 2026. The remake is published digitally in English on Manga Plus. Seven Seas Entertainment began publishing the series in North America in August 2026.
Girl Meets Rock! has been well-received, winning the 10th Next Manga Award in the web category and being nominated for the 18th Manga Taishō and the 9th Saito Takao Award.
Synopsis New high school student Chihiro Hatono buys her first electric guitar and joins the light music club at Tanikyu High School. There, she and bassist Rin Koyama form the band . Not very good, they quickly break up, as do other club bands. After having heard Hatono sing, Rin sets out scheming to form the perfect band with Hatono on vocals. They quickly recruit drummer Momo Uchida, whose own band broke up after their bassist was dumped by fellow club member Koki Takami, a skilled guitarist and singer who is popular with girls. In order to play a concert in July, Hatono's band temporary recruits third year Tamaki Nitta as a support guitarist. Hatono's lackluster performance there spurs her to practice playing and singing in Nagai Park every day of summer vacation. When the second semester begins, Hatono's band recruits guitarist Ayame Fuji, who was about to quit the club after also being dumped by Takami. They also decide to name their group , which Hatono suggested after a Zazen Boys song. Despite the performing acts for the September cultural festival already being decided, Rin's scheming earns Heartbreak a slot. There, Hatono impresses the club members with her improvements, including Takami, who begins to view her and Heartbreak as rivals to his band Protocol. Takami makes a bet with Hatono where the members of whichever band puts on a better show at the Halloween concert, as judged by three of their senpai, get to ask the losing band's members any question they want.
Characters Heartbreak
A 15-year-old first year high school student who is a self-described introvert. After her parents divorced, she moved from Kawasaki to Osaka Prefecture for her first year of middle school. Despite being a complete beginner on guitar, she borrows money from her mother to buy a red Fender Telecaster. She has dreamed of being the guitarist and vocalist in a rock band since she was a child, but has suppressed the latter ever since her voice was made fun of in middle school. As the story progresses, she develops a crush on Mizuo. She is impressed by his guitar skills, and they interact regularly in everyday life.
A tall first year student with short hair. She is a bassist who asks Hatono, whom she calls , to form a band, La Cittadella (and later Heartbreak after their initial disbandment). After secretly watching her sing, Rin becomes obsessed with Hatono's vocals, to the point of worshiping her as her "god". She pulls numerous schemes in order to form a new band with the perfect members and Hatono as frontwoman. Although she often looks like the guru of the informal "Hatano cult", Rin shows genuine affection and concern for her and the other members of the group in critical moments. She uses a sunburst Fender Jazz Bass.
An outgoing first year student with two braids in her hair. She is a drummer who befriends Hatono, whom she calls , on their first day of high school. She initially forms a trio named Sound Sleep, but they disband in June when a member quits the club after being dumped by Koki Takami. After hearing Hatono sing at a karaoke session arranged by Rin, Momo joins their band. The other three members elect her to be bandleader.
A guitarist with a wolf cut who is always seen wearing a pink hoodie jacket. She is a former elementary school classmate of Momo. Ayame was the guitarist in the band Protocol until leaving it after being dumped in August by its vocalist Koki Takami. Although she was planning to quit the music club, she agrees to join Hatono's band after seeing her perform solo following her summer training. Her former surname was "Morita". She uses an orange Fender Jazzmaster.
Protocol
A skilled guitarist and singer who is popular with girls. He is the vocalist and a guitarist of the band Protocol. Days after breaking up with the bassist of Sound Sleep, Takami begins dating his bandmate Ayame. He breaks up with her a couple months later. He has an older brother who was in a band, but he does not know his current whereabouts. Initially, Takami displays an attitude of rivalry towards the main characters. He uses a blue Fender Telecaster.
The laid-back and unemotional guitarist who replaces Ayame in Protocol. He attended the same middle school as Hatono, and is her co-worker at a Chinese restaurant. Although he begins to notice that Hatono is acting strangely at some point, he still does not realize that she has begun to have feelings for him. He uses a yellow Gibson Les Paul Special.
The bassist of Protocol and Rin's cousin. He is aware of Rin's scheming and manipulations, and went to middle school with Takami. Taguchi is also the support bassist of Friday Nights. He uses a white Fender Jazz Bass
The bespectacled drummer of Protocol who has a crush on Momo. He is very knowledgeable about the drums, which he has been playing since elementary school, and has disdain for those who do not take their instruments seriously. He is the bandleader of Protocol.
Other characters
A member of the light music club who is nicknamed . He is the singer and a guitarist of Hatono's first band, La Cittadella, until quitting the club after being romantically rejected by Rin. However, after he continued to message her, Rin realized she can use Yonsu in her schemes. He rejoins the music club to sing in after their vocalist quits, and renames the band to .
A member of Shichido High School's light music club that works as a model. She went to middle school with Hatono and Mizuo, where she was briefly the latter's girlfriend. She is nice to Hatono on the surface, but Reiha looks down on her and Hatono can sense it. Hatono envies how bold and unrestrained Reiha is as a performer.
Production Origins
Wanting to try something new during the COVID-19 pandemic, Kuwahali bought an iPad and started practicing drawing before eventually deciding to try his hand at manga, which he has liked since childhood. Insecure in his skills, his first work was an essay manga about his high school life that he published in serialized form on Twitter. He then conceived Girl Meets Rock! as he wanted to create fiction with more ups and downs in the story. Kuwahali's time working as a teacher at a high school in Osaka for over a decade influenced the series; "The students I taught as a teacher were actually striving to win the top prize at the school festival. I want to portray the joy of being passionate about something. I feel like nowadays the spotlight tends to focus on big goals like 'becoming number one in Japan' or 'making a lot of money', so I think this work serves as a counter to that trend." The light music club setting was chosen because he was the advisor to the one at the school and felt that focusing on a large number of the club members would differentiate it from other works featuring the same setting. He set the story in Osaka because he is familiar with it and also thought readers would enjoy it.
When asked about the manga's title, the author said he did not give it much thought but that it came from his time as advisor, "It was just the norm for the club to be full of all sorts of people, and for none of them to be particularly talented. I wanted to depict the story of just such an ordinary light music club." Kuwahali also has a background in music personally, as he formed his first band, which played original songs, during his freshman year of college where he was the bassist. Although he continued to play in cover bands casually for nearly 20 years, and also plays drums as a hobby, he insists he is not very good.
After publishing the first three chapters on Twitter, Kuwahali began uploading to Jump Rookie!—a part of Shueisha's digital platform Shōnen Jump+—with 22 chapters published from January 7 to September 18, 2023. Believing there was no way he would become a professional manga artist due to his lack of drawing skills, he said it was the response from his gradually increasing readers that motivated him to continue, rather than any personal desire to create.
Kuwahali said that at first, Girl Meets Rock! was like an essay manga when he started it. But this changed when Hatono became depressed over making mistakes at her first live and picked herself up and started to practice; "I started to feel that Hatono was like the protagonist of a manga. With that development, I felt like the character's attributes became clear again. The excitement of the work rose, and it felt like it was not as relaxed as it was at the beginning, and it had a rather hot-blooded, sports-spirited element to it." It was around this point that Kuwahali was approached by an editor at Shōnen Jump+ to have a meeting about turning Girl Meets Rock! into a proper serialized manga. He was hesitant because of his lack of skills and because he already had a full-time job, but agreed once it was decided that he would focus on writing the story and Tetsuo Ideuchi would be in charge of illustrating it. The editor chose Ideuchi because his previous work, Yakyū-ba de Itadakimasu, also featured cute girls and everyday scenes. Additionally, while Ideuchi had no experience in bands, the editor knew he had traveled to various places to do research for his manga, so he thought the artist would be good at absorbing new things and incorporating them into the series.
Process and characters When serialization was decided, Kuwahali used the chapters published on Rookie! as a base and reworked their pacing. With an increase in page count from 8 to 19, he said he enjoyed going back and rearranging the storyboards to show parts he previously had to skip. Kuwahali does not plan the story in advance. Although there are times when he thinks of developments he wants to do in the future, he does not decide on how to get there and just focuses on the immediate developments as he draws the storyboards. For example, he never thought about having Yonsu return to the club. Knowing that chapter 30 would be the end of the third volume, he felt ending on Hatono's discussion with her dad would be weak, thus he brought in an unexpected character with Yonsu. Kuwahali said the only thing in his writing that had changed since the shift to Shōnen Jump+ was that he now thinks more about adding a hook to the end of each chapter.