Chap 173 Raw Manga Welovemanga: Dance Dance Danseur Raw
Finding the "raw" (original Japanese) version of Dance Dance Danseur
Chapter 173 can be tricky because official English translations often lag far behind the Japanese release. As of late 2024, the manga has over 200 chapters published in Japan. Where to Look for Chapter 173 Raws
While specific "raw" sites like welovemanga often host unofficial scans, they frequently change URLs or get taken down. For the most reliable access to Chapter 173 and beyond, you can check these sources:
Official Japanese Site: The series is serialized in Weekly Big Comic Spirits. You can often find the latest chapters and back issues on the official Shogakukan site.
Reddit & Discord: The r/DanceDanceDanseur and r/manga communities often have discussion threads (labeled "[DISC]") for specific chapters like Chapter 173, which sometimes include links to where others are reading the raws.
Digital Stores: If you want to support the author, George Asakura, Japanese digital storefronts like BookWalker or Amazon Japan sell the digital volumes (Tankōbon). Chapter 173 is included in the later volumes (the series had 29 volumes as of late 2024). Current Series Status
Please note that as of February 2025, the manga is currently on hiatus. The author, George Asakura, recently underwent a second successful craniotomy surgery and is taking time off to recover.
The fluorescent lights of the studio hummed, a monotonous drone that usually faded into the background of Jumpei Murao's focus. But tonight, the silence between the tracks was deafening.
Chapter 173: The Weight of the Prelude
Murao stood center stage, his chest heaving, a sheen of sweat slicking his skin under the harsh white glare. He had been staring at the mirror for the past hour, dissecting the arc of his arm, the extension of his leg, searching for the intangible "something" that had been plaguing his dreams.
In the raw, unpolished pages of his mind, this was the draft—the "raw" version of his dance before the ink of perfection set in. Lately, he felt less like a polished professional and more like those early, gritty manga sketches he used to devour—full of potential, but rough around the edges, desperate for structure.
"You're stiff," a voice cut through the air.
It was Godai. The veteran dancer leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed. He looked as if he had been watching for a long time.
"I’m precise," Murao corrected, though the defensiveness in his voice was weak.
"Precision without soul is just calisthenics," Godai pushed off the frame, walking into the room. His footsteps were silent, a reminder of the control he possessed. "You’re dancing the steps, Jumpei. But where is the music?"
Murao clicked his tongue, turning away from his reflection. "The music is the accompaniment. I am the lead."
"That’s your problem." Godai walked to the sound system. "You think you’re the protagonist of a story that only belongs to you. But the audience—they want to feel the ink on the page. They want the raw emotion."
Godai pressed play. The piano concerto filled the room, swelling with melancholy.
"Do the combination again," Godai commanded. "But this time, imagine this is Chapter 173."
Murao blinked. "What?"
"Imagine you've been fighting for a hundred and seventy-two chapters," Godai said, his voice dropping to a serious timbre. "You’re tired. You’ve been injured. You’ve lost friends. You’ve loved and lost. Chapter 173 isn’t the climax. It isn’t the ending. It’s the moment the hero realizes the war never ends. It’s the moment you stop dancing for glory and start dancing because if you stop, you’ll disappear."
Murao stared at him. It was a strange analogy, but then again, Murao’s life had always felt like a serialized drama—full of cliffhangers, training arcs, and crushing defeats. The raw reality of his ambition was the ink that stained his hands; the stage was his paper.
He took a breath. Chapter 173.
He didn't move immediately. He let the melody wash over him, visualizing the weight of those "previous chapters." The injury that almost ended him. The mentor he disappointed. The rivals who pushed him further than he thought possible.
He moved.
The first jump was different. It wasn't just height; it was gravity pulling at him, daring him to stay grounded. He spun, the pirouette blurring the room, the world outside the studio fading away. He wasn't just executing a tour en l'air; he was fighting against the stagnation of his own growth.
Raw, he thought. Show them the raw.
He thought of the feeling of reading a new chapter before the edits, before the tones were perfectly placed. The sketches were messy, chaotic, but they held a vibrant energy that polished art sometimes lost. That was the dance he needed to find—the dangerous, unfiltered drive that made people fall in love with the art in the first place.
He landed the final sequence not with the sharp, military precision he had been practicing, but with a fluidity that rippled through his body like a shockwave. He held the pose, his fingers trembling not from fatigue, but from the sheer exertion of emotion.
Silence returned to the room, but it was heavy now, charged with electricity.
Godai didn't clap. He simply nodded, a ghost of a smile on his lips. "Now you’re reading the right page."
Murao stood up, wiping the sweat from his brow. He looked back at the mirror. The reflection showed a dancer who was exhausted, battered, and maybe a little desperate. But for the first time in months, he liked what he saw. It was a work in progress. It was raw.
"Again," Murao whispered, walking back to the starting position. He wasn't done with this chapter yet.
In Chapter 173 of the Dance Dance Danseur manga, the emotional intensity reaches a peak as Junpei continues his journey toward professional mastery under the strict guidance of Nico and Olga. This chapter, often discussed for its raw portrayal of a dancer's psyche, focuses on the "human" aspect of performance—specifically the struggle to balance technical perfection with the deep, painful longing required for classical roles. The Psychological Weight of Performance
Building on the momentum of his training in Europe, Junpei is pushed to "dig deep" into his own history of loss and isolation to capture the essence of Albert in
. The narrative emphasizes that technical skill alone isn't enough; the raw grief and fear Junpei feels are being redirected into his artistry. Insecurity and Growth
: The chapter highlights Junpei’s persistent self-doubt. Despite his progress, he remains vulnerable to the pressure of the professional world, a trait that fans and reviewers find deeply relatable. A Father Figure
: Nico continues to act as a rigorous, almost father-like mentor. His strictness is balanced by moments of reassurance, providing Junpei with the vital support system he lacked in his younger years when he hid his passion for ballet. Supporting Characters and Dynamics
While the focus remains on Junpei, the chapter touches on the shifting roles of his peers: Hyota’s Influence
: Recent developments have shown Hyota evolving from a peer to a potential support pillar. His observations of Junpei’s motivations suggest he may take on a managerial or deeply supportive role, bridging the gap between Junpei's art and his social identity. Miyako and Luou
: Though their roles have shifted in later arcs, the lingering impact of the original love triangle continues to color Junpei’s emotional depth. His ability to perform "longing and sadness" is rooted in the complex relationships he left behind in Japan. Artistic Impact
Visually, the chapter is noted for its powerful "double spreads" that capture the raw infusion of the self into the dance. George Asakura’s art style remains distinctively kinetic, emphasizing the physical strain and ethereal beauty of the ballet world even as the series has faced production hiatuses due to the author's health.
For those following the latest releases, you can check platforms like for community discussions or Crunchyroll for the anime adaptation that covers the earlier arcs. Junpei’s training style has changed since the earlier arcs or more details on Nico’s teaching philosophy
Dance Dance Danseur Raw Chap 173: The Wait is Over – Where to Find the Raw Manga on WeLoveManga
The world of ballet manga has seen a renaissance in recent years, but few titles capture the visceral grit, physical torment, and breathtaking beauty of the art form quite like Dance Dance Danseur by George Asakura. For fans following the turbulent journey of Junpei Muraoka, the release of a new chapter is not just a weekly event—it’s an emotional marathon. As of this week, the search term on everyone’s lips is “dance dance danseur raw chap 173 raw manga welovemanga.”
If you are here, you are likely a dedicated reader who cannot wait for the English scanlations or the official Shogakukan releases. You want the unedited, pure Japanese raw chapter 173, and you want to know if WeLoveManga is the right destination. This article will break down everything you need to know about the raw chapter, its plot significance, the status of the scanlation war, and whether WeLoveManga is currently hosting the file. dance dance danseur raw chap 173 raw manga welovemanga
Dance Dance Danseur Raw Chap 173: The Wait for the Next Pirouette (and Where Fans Are Looking)
In the high-stakes world of ballet manga, few series capture the visceral intensity of competition, the agony of physical limitation, and the sheer beauty of movement quite like Dance Dance Danseur by George Asakura. For fans who have been following the emotional journey of Junpei Murakami—the boy torn between traditional masculinity and his passion for ballet—the release schedule of new chapters is a constant source of anticipation.
Currently, the search term heating up the manga community is “dance dance danseur raw chap 173 raw manga welovemanga.” This specific query tells us a lot: readers are hungry for the un-translated, raw版本 (raw version) of Chapter 173, and they are looking toward platforms like WeLoveManga to find it.
But what makes this particular chapter so critical? And what should readers know before diving into the world of raw scans? Let’s break down the current state of the manga, the significance of Chapter 173, and the landscape of accessing Dance Dance Danseur online.
The Last Performance
No stage lights. Just rain and the cold click of a shutter on the theater’s old doors. Kaito stood beneath the archway as if waiting for permission the world had already taken away. He held a single worn pair of pointe shoes in his left hand — not for him, not anymore, but because they had belonged to Ren.
Ren had been the company’s brilliant, reckless danseur: lithe, sharp, dangerous when he moved. He fell the way broken glass falls — glittering, unpredictable, impossible to catch. Kaito had watched him from the wings for years, training until the skin on his knees and the ache in his shoulders matched each other in stubbornness. They were different kinds of fierce: Ren, a storm; Kaito, the harbor that tried to steady it.
The theater smelled of dust and cheap coffee. Posters with peeling corners proclaimed shows no one would ever stage again. The rehearsal hall upstairs, where the sun used to catch a dust mote and turn it gold, was now a deadroom of echoes. Kaito climbed the narrow stairs, each step a memory: morning calluses, applause, the night Ren didn’t come home.
“Don’t leave it,” Ren had said once, fingers skimming the satin of Kaito’s shoestrings. “Promise me you’ll dance even if I don’t.”
He had meant it simply. He had meant it as a dare. He had not meant that Kaito would stand here three winters later, steadying himself against the same banister, rehearsing a duet of silence.
Inside the empty studio, Kaito tied the pointe shoes with slow, ritual precision. He laced the ribbons until his hands turned tremulous. Bones remembered positions his mind tried to forget. He eased into first position. The floor creaked like an old thought being reopened. He inhaled. The city outside thudded on, indifferent.
He started with a tremor — a small oscillation of the shoulder, a shrug pushed through to the spine. It felt obscene at first to perform without an audience: obscene and honest in a way the lights had never permitted. Movement began like a pulse. A foot found tendu, then passé, then everything sped and softened until the music that had lived only in his head became a ribbon of feeling. Kaito imagined Ren beside him, not as ghost but as partner: the exact angle of his head, the quickness of his eyes, the way his laugh snapped like a final chord.
This was the rawness of dance, he thought: to expose the inside of yourself and shape it into something that asked nothing in return. He thought of the chapter of their lives that had ended with sirens and broken promises; of the manga illustrations he had once scrawled in margins — dramatic panels frozen where Ren’s fist smashed through a window, where Kaito fell to his knees and then rose like a phoenix with a crooked wing. He used to joke that life was a serialized story, each crisis feeding the next issue. But the serialization had stopped the night Ren left the stage for good.
Kaito lifted into a series of turns, each spin a redraft of the last. He imagined the cameras of a thousand readers circling him, but he kept his eyes soft, not for spectacle but for confession. He let the music swell in his chest — not music from speakers but the cadence of memory: the cadence of calls at dawn, the cadence of Ren’s breath in sleep. His arms arced in comic-book flourishes, lines long enough to cut through printed panels. He let himself be ridiculous, tragic, sublime.
Halfway through the piece, he faltered. A tendon knotted, an old injury crying foul. He stopped on one foot, breath rich, lungs shaking. In the stillness a sound came: a small laugh, surprised and delighted, like the clink of a spoon against a teacup. Kaito expected it to be a memory too—but the laugh was real.
“Figured you’d make a show of it,” said a voice from the doorway.
Kaito blinked. Ren stood there not like the storm he once was but like a storm’s afterimage: softened edges, eyes contrite and bright. He hadn’t come back with fanfare; he had come quietly, hair damp from rain, coat still dripping. The pointe shoes in Kaito’s hand were the mirror between them — proof of promises kept, and of how complicated keeping them could be.
“You can’t just—” Kaito began, voice high with something like accusation. But the words flattened as Ren crossed the room. His steps were measured, careful as a man stepping through broken glass.
“I had to see you,” Ren said. He looked at the shoes, then at Kaito’s swollen ankles and the bruise blooming on his hip. “I thought—after all this time—I could ask for another thing. Forgive me.”
Kaito’s jaw clenched. Anger was easier: tidy and loud. It made him feel tall. But anger didn’t match the sudden softness in Ren’s face. They had both been carved out by the same dance: one into sharpness, one into hollowness.
They moved without speaking, because speech risked becoming a script. Ren extended his hand, tentative. Kaito took it. The grip was an old choreography. For a moment they were balanced on an axis that belonged to both of them. Ren’s touch was everywhere—a weight, a promise, a warning.
“Why now?” Kaito asked.
Ren’s laugh was small. “I was writing the last chapter on my own,” he said. “Turns out it was a rough draft.” He tilted his head. “You kept dancing anyway.”
Kaito swallowed. “You left.”
“And I left because I didn’t know how to stay.” Ren’s voice was honesty pressed thin. “I thought I could come back the way people in stories do, with an explanation that fixes everything. Life isn’t like that. But this—” He glanced at the studio, at the sunlight catching a speck of dust. “This might be.”
Kaito lifted onto relevé, the old balance returning. They tried a simple phrase: an exchange of weight, a counterbalance, an echo of practices that had once turned blood into art. Ren’s shoulders still remembered the angle of lifts. Kaito’s back still held the courage to hold someone aloft. The movement was clumsy at first, then raw and clean, as if they were carving a new panel of their manga together.
They danced for the room and against it. Time contracted; what should have been awkward turned into bridgework. Their duet was not a triumphant reunion but a negotiation: apologies embedded like stitches in the seams of their bodies. Each step they took toward one another was an editorial change—erasing, redrawing, leaving margins for future issues.
When the music ended — a private ending without fanfare — they stood breathing, a small universe of sweat and quiet between them. Ren didn’t beg. Kaito didn’t forgive on the spot. They only bowed to each other, the old ritual acknowledging that something had been seen and that the seeing itself mattered.
“You promised,” Ren said softly, eyes fierce. “You promised you’d dance even without me.”
Kaito set the pointe shoes on the barre, their satin dull but clean. “I did.”
Ren reached for the shoes and, with a look that was part apology and part plea, slipped them back into Kaito’s hands. “Then keep going,” he said. “Not because I told you to, but because you deserve the stage for yourself.”
Kaito stared at the shoes as if they were a map. Outside, rain kept tapping its own rhythm against the windows. In the doorway, the world waited with the patient cruelty of serialized stories. But inside the studio, something fundamental had shifted: a chapter closed, another cautiously opened.
They left the theater together without making promises they couldn’t keep. There would be rehearsals, awkward conversations, perhaps other departures. But the duet they had rebuilt — raw, honest, and dangerous as ever — would live in the space between them: in movement that neither could fully control and both could not quite resist.
Later, Kaito would sketch the scene into a new manga panel: two figures, mid-lift, one hand steadying the other while rain sketches vertical lines behind them. He would ink Ren’s expression with the same conflicted line he’d used for heroes before: not fully villain, not fully saint. The caption at the bottom would be spare, an honest flourish.
For now, they walked into the rain, letting it wash the theater’s dust into small rivers on the pavement. It cleansed nothing and everything. Kaito felt the shoes heavy in his bag, a weight that was equal parts burden and compass.
He did not know if this would be the last performance. He only knew one thing: he would keep opening the studio door, year after year, and keep shaping the raw pieces of his life into movement. That, perhaps, was the only chapter that truly mattered.
—END—
If you’d like this expanded into a longer serialized scene, a manga script with panel descriptions, or a version with different character dynamics (rivalry, teacher-student, tragic ending), tell me which and I’ll draft it.
Expected Release Timeline
- Raw Scans (Japanese): Expected on We Love Manga around April 3–4, 2026 (depending on leaks).
- Summary/Translation Script: Available on the same forum within 24 hours of the raw.
- Official English Release: Usually lags 2–3 weeks behind.
Summary of Chapter 173 (Based on Leaked Spoilers)
Warning: Light spoilers for the visual direction of Chapter 173. Dialogue unknown.
From the 4-panel preview that leaked on Twitter (X) under the hashtag #ダンスダンスダンサー173, the raw chapter opens with a double-page spread of Junpei’s foot inside a ballet shoe, veins popping, blood seeping through the satin. This is classic Asakura—beautiful and horrifying.
The middle pages show a flashback to Misaki (his late father) performing the same role. The raw text is likely a monologue about “breaking bones to become a swan.” The final page, which has driven the search for “dance dance danseur raw chap 173 raw manga welovemanga,” shows Luou crying—a character who has literally never shed a tear in the entire serialization.
What Does "Raw Manga" Mean?
For the uninitiated, "raw manga" refers to the original, untranslated, unedited Japanese version of the comic. These are typically ripped from digital magazine sources like Shogakukan’s Monthly Sunday (where Dance Dance Danseur is serialized). Raw chapters are prized by:
- Speed readers who can understand Japanese.
- Scanlation groups who need the source file to add English text.
- Desperate fans who want to see the art immediately, even if they can’t read the kanji.
The keyword includes welovemanga because that site has historically been a hub for raw uploads, though its status fluctuates due to copyright takedowns.
The Importance of Supporting the Source
While reading the raw scans on WeLoveManga is a great way to stay current, Dance Dance Danseur is a serialized masterpiece that deserves support. If you enjoy the story, consider purchasing the official tankobon volumes when they become available. The physical releases offer superior paper
Let me clarify each part for you:
