Sometimes I consume a piece of media and I'm adamant that it's going to my favorite of that year. Kirby And The Forgotten Land was always going to be my Game Of The Year, and I was sure that Spy X Family would be my anime of the year. But then Bocchi The Rock happened.
Hitori Gotoh (later nicknamed Bocchi) has crippling social anxiety and learned guitar to make friends in school, to no avail. However, it eventually gets her dragged into an amateur band with students Nijika, Ryo, and Kita. It's a lot like K-On but if Yui was really bad at social interaction, though where that show focused on coming of age and slice of life, Bocchi The Rock focuses more on character growth and the band actually making progress. Bocchi is the obvious highlight, as she not only comes out of her shell throughout the course of the season, making rewarding bits of progress each episode, but every character has their own backstory and bits of depth. Bocchi The Rock does a good job of putting the members of the cast in unique pairings and groups, giving everyone opportunities to have heart-to-hearts and develop their relationships to each other. Like with K-On, the anime doesn't actually have that many performances in it, but the character development in between the songs make them all the more impactful.
I've brought up in several of my other reviews (Celeste and Laid-Back Camp in-particular) that I'm an introvert with anxiety myself, so how does Bocchi The Rock tackle its subject matter? Really well, actually! Bocchi's social anxiety is over-exaggerated for comedic purposes, but the underlying fears remain relatable and hits hard sometimes. Bocchi's friends are perfectly accepting of her struggles and yet are willing to gently nudge her out of her comfort zone. But most of all, Bocchi The Rock doesn't fall into that trap of portraying introversion as an issue, and that all introverts secretly want to make friends too but just have something wrong with them. Where Bocchi wants to make friends but is unable to because of her social anxiety, Ryo is entirely secure in her introversion by comparison. Similarly, Nijika is good in social situations but not always willing to seek them out, comparing to the absolute social butterfly that is Kita. Bocchi The Rock does a fantastic job of showing off the different types of social interaction people can be gravitated towards, as well as how people of those differing personalities can still become great friends.
Aside from that, though, Bocchi The Rock is just really fucking funny. The anime has such an unhinged energy to it, the jokes fly fast and furiously, and the direction is ridiculously creative and inventive. From the way the characters bounce off each other, to Bocchi's many hysterical reaction shots, to the Spongebob-esque mixed media cutaways, to that goddamn fake credits gag, Bocchi The Rock has quite possibly the most creative sense of humor I've seen in a TV show in a very long time. Along with the experimental animation and direction, the presentation as a whole is really polished and well-done. The animation is fluid and expressive even when it's not going absolutely nuts, the character designs are cute while having more of a rock edge compared to those in K-On, and Aoyama Yoshino's voice acting for Bocchi is fantastic, making noises and screams I never thought a human could actually make.
And then there's the music, holy shit. The madlads at Cloverworks made an entire Kessoku Band album sung by the cast members, with its music being slowly unveiled throughout the season during performances and EDs, and they're all so good! Look, I adore After School Tea Time and I don't want to keep negatively comparing one of my favorite shows of all time to this, but K-On's music is a bit on the fluffy side (Don't Say Lazy excluded) and work best when paired with the anime's big emotional beats. Kessoku Band's songs, on the other hand, are just damn great pieces of music that I could totally listen to outside of the context of the anime. The angsty lyrics, polyrhythmic flow, and grittier feel of Kessoku Band's tracks are definitely more my style, with my favorite being the opening Seisyun Complex, possibly my favorite OP since Vivy's. And the hype of slowly getting new songs from the band over every episode was genuinely fantastic, it was super fun trying to guess who would get to lead the next new track. But that's not even it, Bocchi The Rock also has plenty of songs made entirely for comedic bits, and they're good too!!
Highlights:
Be Right There: This is one of the most chaotic episodes of an already chaotic anime. The gags are especially top-notch, from Bocchi's "identity" popping, to the puppets cutaway, to Double Dark Past, and that's just like the first five minutes. It also does a stellar job at introducing and developing Kita, along with the very fun twist of her being the runaway guitarist, and ended on a surprisingly heartwarming and genuine note.
Flightless Fish: After five episodes, we finally see Kessoku Band play, and it was great! That foot stomp gave me genuine chills. We also got to learn more about Nijika and her sister, and that dam gag was downright inspired.
Bocchi The Rock: This felt like a season finale, yet it was just the eighth episode! We got the big concert the season was building up to, Kikuri met the rest of the cast, Nijika reveals her backstory and realizes Bocchi is guitarhero, and we learn a lot about most of the characters through the afterparty. It really is a strong blend of everything that makes Bocchi The Rock great, from the top-notch humor (Kikuri's concerts slayed me), to the great music (that concert scene was fantastic), to the sweet heart-to-hearts (Nijika and Bocchi's talk at the end really got to me). The attention to detail between the two performances we got to see absolutely floored me too, this episode has one of the best depictions of an out-of-sync concert I've ever seen in any sort of media. I also love how the anime completely dodged any sort of contrived drama about Bocchi keeping her identity a secret.
Duodecimal Sunset: This was everything I wanted from a penultimate episode, easily rivaling Be Right There as the most balls-to-the-walls episode of the season while also setting up the finale perfectly. The sheer amount of art style shifts, animation bumps, medium breaks, and niche-as-hell references is on another level as we see the band explore the cultural festival, participate in a maid cafe, and prepare for their concert. And the ending where Bocchi sees all of her fans on stage is super heartwarming, at least until Kikuri embarrasses her.
Morning Light Falls On You: Cloverworks doesn't have the best track record with finales from what I've heard, but this was a truly satisfying way to end the season. We have a fun and tense concert sequence, Bocchi pulling off her most badass and idiotic stunts back-to-back, fun hijinks at a music store, three entirely new songs, lots of sweet interactions between the group, and confirmation that Kita is in fact the absolute best.
Overall, Bocchi The Rock is easily my favorite anime of the year and rivals Severance as my favorite show of the year period. Bocchi is such a memorable protagonist and her struggles are super relatable, the music made for Kessoku Band is great, the whole cast is lovable and well-developed, the writing is uproariously funny, and of course, the animation goes absolutely wild in the best way possible. It's been a while since each episode of a season left my jaw on floor in awe (Episode 11 did it three times!), and I think that's the mark of something truly special.
5/5 Stars
My ranking of Bocchi The Rock's episodes is:
- Bocchi The Rock (Episode 8)
- Duodecimal Sunset (Episode 11)
- Be Right There (Episode 3)
- Morning Light Falls On You (Episode 12)
- Flightless Fish (Episode 5)
- Eight Views (Episode 6)
- Jumping Girl(s) (Episode 4)
- After Dark (Episode 10)
- See You Tomorrow (Episode 2)
- To Your House (Episode 7)
- Enoshima Escar (Episode 9)
- Lonely Rolling Bocchi (Episode 1)
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