Bocchi The Rock! Anime Review: Dark Horse of This Season

In this season of heavy hitters like Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War, Chainsaw Man, and successful sequels like Spy x Family Part 2, there is one anime that blew the competition out of the water, Bocchi The Rock! The show is about a gloomy, shy high school girl with social anxiety who wants to make friends and play rock music. Seems like a pretty standard slice-of-life anime, right? Wrong. Let’s explore what makes Bocchi The Rock! special in my text without further ado. 

The Splendid Adaptation of Bocchi The Rock!

Normally I separate production and series as a whole when reviewing both animes and games. Storytelling is an important factor alongside animation when reviewing animes, but this is not the case in Bocchi's The Rock! It is known that animation is how the story is projected based on the source material, and what separates Bocchi's The Rock! from other works is that the animation is so integrated into the anime that it becomes a crucial part that elevates the content. 

Bocchi The Rock! is a Yonkoma series, it is adapted from a manga style that is split into a series of four panels that usually focuses on telling short comedy in general. The manga is much more plain compared to anime. It is significantly simpler, even the most iconic scenes like the live performances or Bocchi faces that are scattered all over the internet consist of a few panels. Many people went to manga after finishing the anime, only to find themselves disappointed, and realize the style is much more restrained and simplistic.

The reason I told you this was not to insult the manga but to make you understand how Bocchi The Rock! is made with love. For instance, there are sequences in anime that are much more elevated compared to the manga, like when Bocchi tries to create their band’s first song and imagines that she is an extrovert person who surfs pools at night, parties, and drinks. When you look at the scene in anime it is much more detailed. Bocchi The Rock! takes concepts and scripts from manga and makes them unrecognizable as far as creativity goes.

So What Makes Bocchi The Rock? That Special?

Bocchi The Rock! is not only a funny slice-of-life anime but also a coming-of-age story for Bocchi as a character. It is probably expected Bocchi to have little character development since the comedy element is mostly tied to Bocchi’s character. How would one change the sole element that the show relies on? Bocchi grows not suddenly but gradually, in little ways, throughout the story. She gets more comfortable around her bandmates, puts herself out more and more, and slowly defeats her stage fright by blasting her music. 

Unlike comedy scenes that Bocchi projects to us, there are realistic and nuanced scenes where characters perform live on stage. These scenes are well constructed by talented people playing as if they are inexperienced characters of Bocchi The Rock! performing. There is a lot of intentionality in delivering this contrast.

Lastly, the reason that many talented people who worked on Bocchi The Rock! were able to produce such a beautiful work is that they all loved and appreciated the series. They transferred and elevated what fans loved in the series in a way that hooks an entirely new audience. I hope that they show us what makes Bocchi the rock cool in the next seasons.