Manga: 10 Dance

10 Dance Vol 1 
Rating: 4/5 
Buy or Borrow: Buy
Source: Copy courtesy of the publisher! 

Shinya Sugiki, the dashing lord of Standard Ballroom, and Shinya Suzuki, passionate king of Latin Dance: The two share more than just a first name and a love of the sport. They each want to become champion of the 10-Dance Competition, which means they'll need to learn the other's speciality dances, and who better to learn from than the best? But old rivalries die hard, and things get complicated even further when they realise there might be more between them than an uneasy partnership...

I was super curious about this series, because I was excited to see a series with a focus on dancing and I was curious as to how that would be drawn. I did watch Welcome to the Ballroom when it aired but it didn't hold my interest for long and I wasn't a fan of the art style. While the art style for 10 Dance is, again, not one I particularly enjoy...it was easy to move past it and the costumes and dances themselves were beautifully drawn! 

The basic gist of this is that Sugiki challenges Suzuki to the 10 Dance, and at the 10 Dance they have to do all 5 standard dances and all 5 Latin dances for each round and they basically have a year to teach each other the 5 dances that they specialise in....and their dance partners! 

Sugiki is the dancer who specialises in standard. He appears quite cool and composed, he's a World Champion...but in second place because it appears the competition is rigged. Suzuki meanwhile has Latin as his speciality and he has a bit of a fiery temper. His awkward blurting was hilarious though, and he himself is a National Champion. They strike me as quite opposite to be honest, but alongside all of that Suzuki's father hates Sugiki's mum because they both have dance schools. Despite being enthralled by his dancing years ago, Suzuki has hated Sugiki since he found out about that animosity and the hatred and rivalry between the two dance schools. 

I am quite intrigued by the both of them, Sugiki seems quite rigid whereas Suzuki is a lot more loosened up than him and they embody the types of dance that they're best at. They're both determined, and so far they haven't given up easily! I'm not only intrigued by the two of them and to see how they'll get on with the dances and so on...but I'm intrigued by the world of Ballroom Dance. 

There's another character we see a lot called Urashima, he's a reporter who covers dance and he's a fan of Sugiki's. Thanks to him we learn a lot about ballroom dancing and how things stand with our main characters careers, he basically fills in a lot of background information which is a nice way to do it and slot it in with the plot seamlessly. But I was fascinated by what we learned about dancing throughout the volume from he and the two main characters. 

This is a great first volume, it has its funny moments, we see the main characters start to work together and become closer and closer and Suzuki gets more serious about learning standard. The relationship is already starting to develop but we also get a crash course in Ballroom dancing, which is much appreciated because it's smoothly slotted in so you understand everything!