Kara Dennison
May 21, 2025 
Looking for a Cinderella story with all the family drama and showbiz heartbreak of Oshi no Ko? Look no further than Roar: A Star in the Abyss! Kodansha releases volume 1 of the thriller next month, setting the stage for one girl’s revenge. But the first few chapters will be more than enough to get you hooked. Read on to meet Misato and find out what drives her revenge in this series from the creator of Guilty.
A Tragic Tale
Roar: A Star in the Abyss starts its story early in the life of Misato, a young rural girl with an innate talent for acting. A bit part on a TV drama turns her world upside-down—but not in the fun and exciting way. Not long after her episode airs, her family home burns down. Rather than getting to move in with her neighbors, she’s scooped up by a stranger who claims to be her real mother and whisked off to the mainland.
What follows is hell on earth for Misato, interspersed with backstory for the reader. What Misato doesn’t know is that her birth and childhood are fraught with mystery and deceit. But instead of answers, she gets abuse at the hands of her new “Family,” especially her adoptive mother and her sister Ayane. Only in the final pages of the first volume does she effect an escape.
Secrets Abound
While Roar: A Star in the Abyss doesn’t show its hand in the first volume, the stage-setting alone is compelling. This manga is utterly heartbreaking and devastatingly tragic, ranking alongside the heaviest moments of Candy Candy and Idol Densetsu Eriko. Oshi no Ko is another no-brainer comparison, though the showbusiness angle is only barely sown in this first volume.
In spite of everything, Misato keeps hope alive by clinging aggressively to what she can of her childhood. Her rural dialect remains even after ten years far from home. And she brings herself and her invalid “brother” moments of joy by reciting books from her childhood from memory. As the first volume ends, it’s one of these recitations that draws attention to her—positively for a change.
What’s Next
Roar: A Star in the Abyss launched in May 2023 and is still running. To that end, we don’t actually know where it will end. We know at least some of Misato’s tragic backstory, though elements of it are still in shadow. There’s clearly something bigger at work than even we as the readers know. And Misato knows less than us. So the sky is the limit as Misato uncovers secrets and, eventually, begins to take action.
Ai Okaue’s artwork starts cute in the early chapters, but it conveys both Misato’s heartbreak and the coldness of her tormentors vividly. Lovely and chilling both to look at and to read, this is one for the drama-lovers.
