Akuma to Love Song

Akuma to Love Song (悪魔とラブソング) is a shōjo manga series by mangaka Miyoshi Tomori.

Plot
Akuma to Love Song revolves around an unusual girl, Kawai Maria who was expelled from her previous school, St.Katria Girls' School, and soon transfers to Touzuka High School, a public school with low standards. Her sharp tongue and straightforward personality often leads everyone else to hate her with the exception of two handsome boys who eventually get involved with her. With a devil's aura like hers and an arrogant facade to pair it up with, it's just too hard to be understood. And so Maria needs to deal with bullying, adjusting, fitting in and romance. Just how will a devil like her cope with all these predicaments?

Characters

 * Maria Kawai (可愛マリア)
 * The protagonist of the story, Maria has a cold personality which estranges herself from her classmates. She says what she wants, albeit too bluntly and harsh, even when she intends to help others. Her arrogant facade and point blank statements are the reasons she is hated by most people and it seems she too is indifferent towards them. Emphasized throughout the manga, Maria also is shown to have the ability to see the true natures of people around her, or—more simply—their flaws. Although she maintains this air of superiority, she actually yearns for acceptance and friendship. Even when knowing the unpleasant outcomes, she often steps into troublesome situations just to prove herself to others. Everyone thinks that she is a devil but they don't know that they're the devils. She gives special regard to Kanda Yuusuke but exhibits much stronger feelings for Meguro Shin, stating that she feels Shin is much closer to her than God and she is much more afraid of being hated by him. Later she realizes she is in love with him. She likes nursery rhymes and hymns like "Amazing Grace." She apparently got expelled because of "punching the teacher/nun," but it has not been explained in detail, though it was revealed that the cross she always wears is from that teacher/nun. She has a habit of pushing out her lips and having her eyes half open when someone says something that annoys her. It is shown that she starts to like Meguro.


 * Yūsuke Kanda (神田優介)
 * Yuusuke is a bubbly and cheerful person, who is popular with the girls and generally well-liked. Much to Shin's chagrin, Yuusuke always has an idiotic grin pasted on his face. Initially, he develops a liking for Maria as she is beautiful and has an intriguing personality. He is the first student to approach her and constantly pops up wherever she is. While he is extremely fond of her, it is not yet revealed if it is more than admiration. It seems as if he knows that Meguro likes Maria, because in chapter 11 he calls Meguro out and tells him that if he doesn't step up he might "steal Maria away". Yuusuke taught Maria the "lovely transform". He calls Shin "Megu-chin" and Maria, "Maria-chi". His face forms a comical style with thick dark outlined eyes and a w-shaped smiled when someone (mainly Kawai) is blatantly against one of his ideas. He also confessed his love to Maria later in the series.


 * Shin Meguro (目黒伸)
 * Shin dislikes drawing attention to himself and prefers to observe situations. He is often cold and aloof towards his classmates, and Yuusuke's constant pestering irritates him. At first, he treated Maria with disdain, appearing to want nothing to do with her, but circumstances proved otherwise and he seems to actually care greatly for her. He pretends to be "rude" to Maria thinking that his actions would somehow lead the other girls to sympathize with her. In Chapter 4, he scooped up Maria in the middle of the class and declared that he would take her to a hospital because of her sprained ankle, making a scene as they leave. Then, he secretly bought Maria a pair of flashy shoes (apart from the ballet shoes he already bought for her) even after earlier commenting that they looked stupid. Despite claiming that he does not want anything to do with her, he finds himself falling in love with Maria, but there is no way that he'd let the "devil" discover his feelings. It is later revealed his "loner" persona comes from an incident when he was a kid where he "choked" during his large piano debut making the media destroy his image. In chapter 23, Meguro insists he will stand by Kawai Maria's side no matter what happens.


 * Tomoya Kōsaka (甲坂友世)
 * She is first introduced to us as Nippachi (apparently because she always gets a 28/100 in tests as Nippachi means 28 and is always grinning). Upon hearing this Maria stated that Tomoyo was looking down on the very girls that called her Nippachi. This aggravated those girls a lot, and shocked Tomoyo (indicating in a way that Maria was correct). Later, the other girls in the class made Tomoyo give an invitation to Maria for a fake welcome party for herself. The reality was that the girls in the class were going to make Tomoyo drink a lot of alcohol and then say that Maria made her do so. They supposed this would work because they already convinced Tomoyo to lie and say that Maria beat her up earlier. Upon receiving the invite, Maria, who was already aware that no good would come to the party stated that “I think, no matter how much filth you show, I need to go”.  Hearing this Tomoyo pushed Maria down the stairs, insisting that she was not filthy like Maria.  Tomoyo ended up crying. Then Kanda Yuusuke showed up at the party with Tomoyo.  He smoothed out the whole situation.  The next day, Tomoyo appeared in school with a cast around her legs and crutches. Then the other girls insisted that Maria pushed her, which was not true. The other girls in the class asked Maria to be Tomoyo's replacement; Maria abruptly refused, saying that she could not just go around smiling at everyone, and that she could only be herself.  It was very soon after that the class discovered that the cast was fake. They then began to call Nippachi a liar, even though Nippachi insisted that she fell down the stairs that morning, which was later proven wrong.  Tomoyo did not show up to school for the next week.  This was later considered a problem, so the class and teacher told Maria to bring Tomoyo back to school. She and Kanda went to her house together. They spoke to her normally and then left.  The following day, Maria went to Tomoyo's house before school and told her to come to school with her. At school, Nippachi defended Maria and also put an end to the other students and the teacher calling her Nippachi. This begins the friendship between the two of them. She has a secret love for dark things like black clothing and skulls.


 * Hana Ibuki (井吹ハナ)
 * A sickly girl who arrives later in the manga because she has been hospitalized since before the start. She appears to be Kawai's opposite in every way as she is cheerful and popular. When she first returned to school, she noticed the necklace the teacher took from Kawai which he then gives her (seemingly as a way to get Kawai expelled in hopes she would attack Hana to get it back), however, she instead tries to befriend Kawai which goes well. Until she discovers that Yuusuke confessed to Kawai, as she has feelings for Yuusuke and even asked earlier if Kawai had feelings for him, which she denied but believes she is lying. Because of her outbursts, Kawai believes that she is only doing this because she likes the attention. Which may be true as with anything that happens she is prone to emotional outbursts that get the rest of the classes attention in the matter, shown where Kawai causally pointed out that the cross was missing from the necklace, only for her to have an emotional outburst about it being missing. At the end of chapter 17 it appears that Hana is losing her sanity, smiling evilly with a blank look in her eyes. Later she conspires with the classmates against Kawai to have everyone hate her by setting her up with vicious comments about the other students in her bag, however this seems to quickly falls apart when Shin points out that she says what she feels without hesitation and wouldn't write that, as well as Kawai seeing through Hana's "help". However, later she sets Kawai up to make it look like she really did write it and ultimately suggests splitting up the group. In the end is stated to be the head of the group. This causes Kawai to show aggression for the first time, as she was truly dedicated to her role as the Choir Leader and correcting Hana when she thought that Kawai hated her, where she just didn't see her as a friend, calling her a Bad Friend. However, Hana finally shows her true colors and confirms that the teachers only set up Kawai as the Leader as a way to promote the school. Hana makes a conspiracy against Kawai to make herself look good at the choir competition. Hana finds out that reporters are going to be there. She gets even madder when Kawai ruins her plan 'accidentally' and bursts with anger in front of the camera. The reporters realize that Hana and everyone are misunderstanding Kawai.


 * Ayucchi Nakamura (中村亜由)
 * Ayucchi is an antagonist in this manga and loves Yuusuke. Ayucchi cares a lot about how she looks and takes a long time doing her makeup and hair in the morning. Because of Ayucchi's ego and jealousy over Kawai's looks, Ayucchi tries to makes Kawai look bad in front of the class. Kawai's classmates, excluding Yuusuke and Shin, starts to hate Kawai even more because of Ayucchi's plans to make Kawai look bad. But when Kawai's words helped Ayucchi confess her love to Yuusuke, Ayucchi realizes Kawai isn't too bad.


 * Anna Mouri (毛利アンナ)
 * Anna was Maria's best friend from St. Katria's. She cannot speak due to a disease that infected her throat and communicates with a notepad. She does not truly regard Maria as a friend and considers Maria to be corrupting. Meguro is the first to meet Anna at his music school and she falls in love with him. However, he bluntly states that he does not trust her at all.

Teacher
 * He is their homeroom teacher and usually is shown to have no real care for his job or his students. He often uses Kawai as a scapegoat when something goes wrong, even when confronted by Yuusuke of these ways he just smiled and accused Yuuske of standing up for her because he was in love with Kawai. He always tries to find a way to get Kawai expelled, even giving a necklace he confiscated from Kawai to Hana in hopes that she would attack her to get it back. He showed his lowest point where he poured ink all over Kawai, and when he arrived in the room stated she ran away. Once she enters still drenched in ink, he goes off accusing the students as they had a grudge against her, even going as far as to accuse that Kawai did it herself to gain sympathy, where it wasn't till after all that did he admit it was him and he spilled it on "accident", though would only publicly state that if she announced she had reformed thanks to "her loving teacher's guidance".

Other Teacher
 * Unlike Kawai's homeroom teacher, he sees to use Kawai to boost the school's image in "reforming a teen delinquent". Although like her homeroom teacher doesn't care for the students and will try to have Kawai expelled if she fails. However, after hearing her sing his views changed.

Classmates
 * They are very cold to Kawai and seem to be lead by Nakamura Ayucchi, often blaming her for any and all problems that happen around them, believing that she is the cause of all of this. They stoop to playing violent pranks on her from putting ink, tacks, or just shredding her school shoes, stating to her face that she should just leave school, and even planning on having Tomoyo get drunk during their "welcome party" for Kawai, then stating Kawai forced her to drink it to get her expelled. Even when one of them noticed that Hana was wearing Kawai's necklace, she told Hana that Kawai was a violent girl and might attack her for no reason, hoping that Kawai would attack her to get her necklace back. Even as Kawai is setting up the Choral Contest for her class, they cause the class to split in two and state that everyone says it's because of her and she should just drop out (though some of the classmates comment they never heard of this, only for them to cut them off by stating that all the students decision was unanimous).They even worked with Hana to get the rest of the students on the Choral group by planting hateful writing about the other students in Kawai's handwriting and placing the cross in Kawai's bag when Hana "went looking". Shin pointed out the comments to the students were "too soft" to come from her, as well as commenting that "she is an idiot who says whats on her mind without any hesitation".