The Spring 2025 Manga Guide

DEAD ROCK

What's It About? 

Welcome to Dead Rock, the underworld's top educational institution! A spot at this training facility for demonic mischief is all the young demon Yakuto has ever wanted, but in Hell, there's no such thing as an easy A. Plenty of Yakuto's fellow prospects won't survive the entrance exam, and even fewer will make it to graduation. So why bother? The prize, for those who survive this death game through perdition, is the world, in the palm of their hand!

DEAD ROCK has a story and art by Hiro Mashima, with English translation by Erin Subramanian. James Dashiell lettered this volume. Published by Kodansha Comics (March 4, 2025). Rated 16+.

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Is It Worth Reading?

Rebecca Silverman
Rating:

Here's an idea, Hiro Mashima – how about you not throw ten named characters at us right off the bat? Like all of his series, Dead Rock opens with the introduction of way too many named characters (in creative writing, naming a character is the equivalent of telling you to remember them), and this time we have the added bonus of each of them having a unique “root.” As in our own, in the story's world, “root” means “ancestry,” and each character's root is important to their power and personality, meaning that we really have to remember that Mikoto's root is a lich and Hani's is Thor. It's frankly a lot.

But, what Mashima series isn't? Dead Rock, unlike Fairy Tail and Eden's Zero, takes place in a school setting, a cutthroat academy for demons who aspire to rule a section of the human world. Most of them seem to be there for power, but our group of protagonists may have other motives – of the two whose have been revealed so far, revenge factors heavily into them. But where Hien just wants to do…something involving the princess who he seems to think lives on in his sword, Yakuto wants to take down God himself. Yes, quite possibly that God – he's the principal of Dead Rock, but he's also the ruler of three worlds and is revealed to have killed all of the gods who were worshipped previously. It feels like Mashima might be skirting around some theology here, especially since, as Yakuto points out to his classmates, “God” isn't typically the ruler of the demon realm.

This first volume feels like a mashup of Mashima's typical fare with a battle school story. It also features more actual death than any of his other works, and frankly, than most shounen of this ilk. Yakuto starts his school life by straight up killing his homeroom teacher, and one of the school rules says that you can freely murder anyone who annoys you, and the art has a field day with dynamic images of death and destruction. One of the main cast, Mikoto, is a necromancer, so death doesn't have to be permanent, but it does come with the caveat that if she resurrects someone they become her puppet, which has its own problems.

Apart from the fact that we're introduced to Frey boobs-first and Mikoto legs-first, which I realize won't be an issue for everyone, the art is very polished. Mashima gets to trot out a lot of interesting character designs for the demons, even those in the background. Yes, Yakuto looks like the usual Mashima hero, but he's got more going on in the brains department than, for example, Natsu, and he's clearly very motivated, although by what remains an open question. This didn't instantly pull me in the way some of his other works have, but with a solid translation and an interesting, albeit brutal, world, this is pretty good. I'm curious to know where it's going.

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MrAJCosplay
Rating:

I love that Hiro Mashima is getting progressively more edgy with his titles since Fairy Tail. Sometimes it feels like the man got all his feel-good, happy endings out of that story, and now he's just writing aggressively violent stories with a hint of goofy charm. I loved Edens Zero because of its darker tone, and I think I'll like reading DEAD ROCK for similar reasons. However, instead of a sci-fi futuristic series, we are going back to Fairy Tail roots instead, focusing on more of a dark fantasy.

DEAD ROCK constantly keeps me guessing with each chapter. I'm not sure if Mashima will be able to keep this up, but almost every chapter in this volume ends with a twist that recontextualizes how everything was previously set up. We go from a lighthearted comedy to a dark revenge story at the drop of a hat, but there's a powerful air of mystery surrounding the intentions of our characters. All of the characters bounce off each other extremely well, but I still don't know any of their intentions. We're setting things up, but not giving too much away. This applies the most to our main character, which is a nice change of pace since our lead in a Mashima story is usually the simplest and easiest to figure out.

I know that his stuff is an acquired taste, especially from a design perspective. Almost every character design in this series is in one of his other works, but unlike Edens Zero, which sort of played with the fact that a lot of his characters looked similar to his previous works, there is no joke going on here. The main character resembles Natsu, but with an inverted color palette. However, the action is still a lot of fun and has a comedic sense. Also, surprisingly, there isn't a lot of fan service compared to his previous works, if you were ever worried about that. If you're looking for a dark fantasy series, then I think this sets a good pace moving forward, and if you're a fan of Fairy Tail, I think you're already reading this by the time you get to this review.