The Spring 2025 Anime Preview Guide

Rock is a Lady's Modesty

At an all-girls' school where young, gorgeous, and ladylike girls from all over the country gather, Ririsa Suzunomiya, who became the daughter of a real estate tycoon after her mother remarried, gives up her guitar and love for rock music in order to act like a rich, young lady. But her passion for rock is rekindled when she meets a highly skilled drummer, who attends the same all girls' school.

Rock is a Lady's Modesty is based on the Rock wa Lady no Tashinamideshite manga by Hiroshi Fukuda. The anime series is streaming on HIDIVE on Thursdays.

Ladies, gentlemen, and nonbinary friends, I am proud to announce the first good anime of the season for those of us in the US who don't own a Samsung phone, TV, or refrigerator: Rock is a Lady's Modesty! Marvel at the expressive character animation—which includes motion capture of instrument playing! Gasp at writing that makes use of juxtaposition to deepen the character arcs and themes! Wonder at multilayered female cast! Oh, you are in for a rare treat today, just step right up!

I don't know what forces I have to thank for the proliferation of girl band anime—because the way production schedules work means that they're coming out too close together for one to have set off the trend. Maybe there is a loving but extremely specific god that saw my weariness of idol anime? Either way, Rock is a Lady's Modesty is the latest of a succession of anime that uses the rock world as a setting to explore misfits who express themselves through fast-paced guitar and drums. While you don't need to be angsty to be a rock star, it certainly helps.

And Lilisa has plenty of reason to angst. She's enrolled at an expensive girls' school where the ideal outcome is not mastery of academic subjects, but to embody the kind of gentility and selfless supportiveness of the ideal Japanese woman—the "yamato nadeshiko." At her heart, she's an ordinary, middle-class girl who'll take a beef bowl over haute cuisine. Rock is a Lady's Modesty explores how these restrictive gender roles can create a psychological pressure cooker—and Lilisa has no release valve even at home, as evidenced by her mother reminding her that yawning in front of others isn't ladylike. The whole episode moves back and forth between contrasts: Lilisa's elegant speech when talking to others versus her more casual internal monologue, performed to great effect by Akira Sekine; the bright whites of the school hallways compared to the dusty but rich browns of the abandoned schoolhouse where Otoha and Lilisa play; even the height difference between the two girls enhances the sense of opposites. It builds up a sense of the internal and external—and how stifling it can be to always keep the internal hidden.

Of course, I'd be remiss not to mention the music and the animation that went along with it. The instrumental scenes were created using motion capture. At first, I was skeptical of how well it would work, since the opening scenes of Otoha playing the drum looked a bit stiff other than how her hands and arms were moving. However, the big showpiece duet assuaged my fears completely. Lilisa was just as expressive as she was in two-dimensions, her whole body going into the technical, complex guitar piece she was playing. What was most unique was that instead of the two girls getting together to enjoy making music or working toward a common goal, there's an antagonism to how they play together—trying to outdo one another. There's no power of friendship here, just the yuri power of two young women fighting for domination.

Look, I'm a simple man. I find giant things hilarious. Give me a witch hat so oversized it touches the floor (or something similarly impractical on a character) and I'll be smiling all day—and Lilisa's hair certainly fits the bill. Her pigtails stick out so far that they quadruple her body width! How does she fit through doors much less constantly hit anyone and everyone around her everytime she turns her head!? It's fantastic.

It also helps that her hair not only makes her visually distinct, it makes sense given her character. Lilisa has no idea how to be a “proper lady.” She's just trying to fake it till she makes it. Big hair with drill curls? That's a proper lady stereotype if I've ever seen one. While it was obviously a decision made before she got used to life at her elite school, it's not like she can suddenly have a normal hair style like the rest of the girls. She's got no choice now but to own it.

Hairstyle aside, Lilisa is a character who's easy to root for. For the sake of her family—namely her remarried mother—she's got to prove she's worthy of her new elite status. To do this, she has thrown away what mattered to her the most (music, which was her direct connection to her real father) and is focused on winning the most proper lady award from her school—guaranteeing a lifetime of success. The issue is, as the principal hints, while Lilisa's mastered the surface level aspects of being a “proper lady,” by denying her inner self, she's unable to actually become one.

On the other side of the story we have Otoha, the other frontrunner for most proper lady in the class. She is far more comfortable in her skin than Lilisa and is able to keep up her “proper lady” façade even when doing unlady-like things like searching for something on her hands and knees. She even knows how to read people—knows how to goad Lilisa into breaking her façade by playing on her pride.

All this sets up the guitar/drum battle at the end of the episode where the two most “proper ladies” of the freshman class discard their outward appearances and go all out to one up each other musically. And in the end, we see that Otoha's “proper lady” facade is just as fake as Lilisa's—even if it's far more developed. But more than that, we see that Otoha is already chasing the high she got from playing with Lilisa. She's desperate to make it happen again. So instead of thanking Lilisa, she insults the giant haired girl—once again trusting that Lilisa's injured pride will compel her to take up her guitar again in the near future.

Add to all that fantastic motion capture and camera work and you have the first must-watch show of the season.

I am a man of simple tastes and reasonable expectations. If you give me a vibrantly colored, well-directed anime that features likeable leading ladies and a story that is all about the raw, furious power of rock-and-roll to fight against stifling social norms and inspire electric musical rivalries, you are guaranteed to pique my curiosity. If you then make use of the incredibly talented musicians of BAND-MAID perform the motion capture for your excellently produced performance sequences, well boy howdy, you are sure as hell are going to have my attention.

It should not be surprising, then, that I had a barn-burning good time with the premiere of Rock is a Lady's Modesty. I was pretty much hooked from the minute we opened the premiere on Otoha Kurogane's badass drum solo and my appreciation for the show only grew from there. When we first meet our protagonist, Lilisa, she is immediately likeable and easy to root for—a down-to-earth commoner suddenly thrust into the stifling and overbearing world of the meticulously mannered upper-crust. Her new frienemy-ship with Otoha is also quite compelling; Otoha's almost deranged levels of post-rockout antagonism might be hard for some viewers to swallow, but I dig the way her outrageous behavior helps Lilisa get in touch with her more rebellious roots. That's the kind of energy that all great rock-and-roll is borne from, baby! Hopefully, we can get the girls to avoid the “Tragically Young Death Due to Heroine Overdose” part of the rock star's Hero's Journey.

What really pushes Rock is a Lady's Modesty into truly great territory for me, though, is it's excellent flair for presentation. I already mentioned the lovely watercolor aesthetics that contrast so well with the subject matter, and I think the character designs are equally gorgeous to look at. The episode also nails the integration of the motion-captured performances, too. The 3D models are cell-shaded and lit in such a way that they don't stand out too terribly much from their hand-drawn counterparts—but even if they aren't perfect looking, they are animated with a stunning amount of character thanks to the real-world talent being brought in by Kanami and Akane, the guitarist and drummer of the legendary all-girl rock outfit, BAND-MAID.

So, unsurprisingly, Rock is a Lady's Modesty is one of this spring's must-watch titles, as far as I'm concerned. It might not appeal to folks that aren't as predisposed to falling for cartoons about girls putting together a rock band, but then again, who the hell doesn't love cartoons about girls putting together a rock band? If any of you sickos are out there, don't bother reaching out to me with your objections. I will simply respond by blasting Togenashi Togeari singles in your direction at ear-splitting volumes until you leave me to enjoy my guitar gals in peace.

My favorite Class S nightmare now has a rival. Not that the novel The Dark Maidens has much in common with Rock is a Lady's Modesty, but both stories take the Class S yuri format and twist it just so to give us a different tale. In one case, that results in murder. In this one, it's a rock band.

Or rather, it will be a rock band, or so I assume. We've already got drums and guitar, and I can't imagine that only Otoha and Lilisa are feeling stifled by the atmosphere of idealized girlhood at Oushin Girls' Academy. In the opening scenes, examples of this sort of dainty model of perfection are juxtaposed with images of Otoha rocking out on her drums, her flyaway hair a counterpoint to gentle library sessions and delicate portions carefully cut into bite-sized perfection. It's a world Lilisa doesn't feel she belongs in, and while some of this is narrated to us, the more important pieces are simple shown, allowing viewers to make the connections Lilisa isn't ready to share. The clearest example is when we switch from the rarified imagery of Oushin to Lilisa riding through a regular city neighborhood with her chauffeur. While he sits stiffly in the driver's seat, she rolls down the window and silently stares at normal life going on around, and without, her. In her gaze, it's clear that she'd rather be on the sidewalk with the busker or walking out of the convenience store in a plain old sailor uniform. But as she rolls the car window back up, it's just as obvious that she feels like there's a barrier between her and that everyday life.

Although it may not be part of the series' goals, Rock is a Lady's Modesty could easily be about the performative nature of a certain type of femininity. Lilisa is working her butt off to perfect her act, with the implied reason being her mother's remarriage to a powerful and wealthy man – and her mother's manner of speaking to Lilisa as she's leaving the house, juxtaposed with a flashback to their life before her marriage, indicate that she's also putting on a performance. Lilisa's afraid to be herself, with her only concession being pigtails Pippi Longstocking would be proud of, although that could just be a bad case of Heroine Hair. We don't know what Otoha's deal is yet, but from her outburst and intense competitiveness, she's likely putting on an act as well. At Oushin, girls must be ladies, after all.

While I don't love the CG employed for the rock scenes, which makes hair and cloth move unnaturally and gives faces and fingers and uncannily flat appearance, the use of Class S markers in other scenes is excellent. That sort of girlhood, all tea parties and favorite classical composers, is largely a myth, and I hope Lilisa and Otoha learn to fight back against it. This episode presents us with two girls screaming to break out of their cages (a bit of on-the-nose symbolism the episode indulges in when Lilisa finds Otoha's secret jam room), and I want to see them destroy those bars so thoroughly that they can't be caged again.