LogFAQs > #970666487

BONUS. Bocchi the Rock
https://myanimelist.net/anime/47917/Bocchi_the_Rock
Fall 2022 (12 episodes)
My Score: TBA, MAL Score: 8.99/10
Best Character: Gotou Hitori

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlSbEP4V-gI

Premise: Gotou Hitori learned how to play the guitar hoping it would someday help her overcome her social anxiety. Years later, she finally gets a chance to join a band, but she's still as awkward as ever.

The Good: Bocchi the Rock is a cute girls comedic music anime. Hitori joins a band with three other girls, and they do things like practice, earn money at a part-time job, and put on the occasional show. Hitori is nicknamed Bocchi because of her intense social anxiety (hitoribocchi translates to something like "all alone"). As a random aside, I'm tired of characters having pun names like this, especially since this particular pun was already used in the far superior Hitoribocchi anime. Still, I enjoy shy girls (Watamote, Komi Can't Communicate, etc) and I generally enjoy music anime. Bocchi the Rock did a fine job of bringing those two genres together, though I didn't love it as much as a lot of other people did.

In terms of good things, I enjoyed all the characters. Ryou was kind of scummy and the drunk lady wasn't my favorite, but Kita and Nijika were fun. I also loved Bocchi. Her social anxiety is portrayed in a very over-the-top and artistic way. Any time she got too nervous or had a mental meltdown, the art style and animation would shift in lots of interesting ways to represent it. I couldn't relate to Bocchi as much as I have with other shy characters because it all felt too zany, but she was undeniably entertaining. I really loved some of the minor characters too, like Bocchi's little sister and their cute dog. There were plenty of hilarious jokes about Bocchi being insanely anxious, and her personality led to a lot of fun interactions.

The Bad: Theres nothing that Bocchi the Rock does wrong. It simply didn't resonate with me as much as a lot of similar anime have. I usually relate to shy characters, but Bocchi was so zany and over-the-top that I just couldnt with her. Like, it's a funny joke that she first played onstage while wearing a cardboard box to hide herself, but it isnt exactly realistic or relatable. As for the music aspect, I thought it was merely fine. I didn't mention music at all in the good section of this write-up because, outside of the shows being well-animated, I don't have a whole lot else to say.

Overall: Given how it merges two genres that I usually love, shy girls and music, I was surprised how little of an impact Bocchi the Rock had on me. Like I said, it didn't do anything wrong. I just couldnt really relate to Bocchi on any level beyond her being a funny character, and even then I thought the Bocchi from Hitoribocchi was a lot funnier. There are no big negatives I can point to, and there were a lot of interesting or hilarious moments. Overall, though, this anime will end up ranking almost exactly in the middle of everything I've seen.