Guitar, Rock, and Blue Planet
"The guitar hero of Shimokitazawa (sort of)"
The autumn 2022 anime Bocchi the Rock! I only got around to watching in January, and the moment I did, I was completely hooked. I had assumed it would be just another typical Manga Time Kirara cute-girls slice-of-life show; but Bocchi the Rock! turns out to be a genuine gem—rare in an industry growing ever more restless, where the average is something as mechanical as Lycoris Recoil—though the phrase “genuine gem” has long since been worn smooth.
I don’t want to write a “why Bocchi the Rock! is a masterpiece” fanboy rant. I’ve written before that coming-of-age stories from all time and place are essentially Wilhelmian: enlightenment–growth–reaching the goal. But in Bocchi the Rock! the viewer connects with the characters in a particularly deep way.
Bocchi-chan is the unambiguous protagonist and, following convention, the viewer’s self-projection within the story. Contemporary youth are more or less socially anxious, and Bocchi-chan is the archetype; since it’s an anime, there’s no shortage of dramatic exaggeration to heighten this point and turn it into comedy. And who doesn’t love the Great Angel of Shimokitazawa, Mama Nijika? Who doesn’t wish for a companion like that, always brimming with energy, forever cheering you on? The anime’s omniscient perspective can then reveal the fragility behind Nijika’s strength, and the difficult past—two sisters depending on each other for survival (though in Japan it never quite reaches the point of having nothing to eat). That naturally draws out the sister’s character design: the cool, sexy, and handsome live-house manager who sacrificed so much for her little sister’s dream. Though honestly I think the setup has a flaw: wouldn’t a sister who became a pop idol have made it easier for the younger one to enter the industry?
Kita Ikuyo the Inevitable Death of Going Home—there are plenty of memes around Kita Ikuyo. Manga Time Kirara’s Bocchi the Rock! creates memes that are funny enough without being vulgar or offensive. In fact, the jokes in this show are all classically rakugo in style. If Nijika is the core, Bocchi the backbone, then Kita Ikuyo is the lubricant, the pivot, the tie that binds the band together. Unlike Bocchi, she is a social butterfly, and it is she who helps Bocchi integrate into the group and into genuine school life.
Yamada Ryō is the band’s comedian, and in some sense its driving force. From the start we learn that Ryō had been in other bands. Predictably, this will later become a point of dramatic tension. Beneath Ryō’s free-spirited exterior lies a certain unshakable conviction.
Having described the characters, let’s examine Manga Time Kirara’s expressive techniques in producing this anime. The most immediately striking thing is that Bocchi the Rock! uses real location photography plus hand-drawn characters in many scenes. Symbolically this can represent humanity’s acknowledgment of the world, combined with refusal to be satisfied with it; everyone knows the transcendence of anime characters over reality. From a practical standpoint, this technique is unusually evocative of a sense of intimacy—especially since the settings are in Shimokitazawa, roughly equivalent to Sanlitun in Beijing. Predictably more anime will adopt similar techniques, as long as the setting is in the real world; and in that case, the boundary between anime and live-action drama is somewhat blurred.
Bocchi the Rock!, compared with typical anime, compared with Lycoris Recoil, compared with the currently popular Don’t Become an Older Brother’s Lover, differs in one more way: its deconstruction of reality. This deconstruction manifests as comedic scenes that are in some sense like breaking the fourth wall—openly mocking reality and thereby expressing critique of it. Most anime, even if they have comedic set pieces, achieve them through narrative: a love triangle, for example, is a scenario we construct in our minds through reading and watching. This show’s punchlines are built directly from the audience’s own minds, from knowledge about reality. The only comparison I can think of is Gintama. And this deconstruction is achieved precisely through the technique mentioned above. The anime is based on a manga, and the manga’s characters can do this because they are directly inspired by real-world rock musicians—giving them this connection to reality.
If it were merely telling the origin story of a rock band, that would be no great feat. Another core of Bocchi the Rock! is loneliness—a hallmark of modern society. Human relationships can feel terrifying. Society is too complex, which is why Bocchi recoils from socializing; yet ultimately, one must integrate into society. This is the eternal theme of youth, the core of anime expression since EVA, the growth arc of this show, and the very reason the four band members came together. Why form a band, why integrate into society? The reason for opposing loneliness is loneliness itself. Bocchi the Rock! is a cry—a cry against one’s own loneliness and the situation of being misunderstood—the natural expression of each of us at that age; the author has only cried it out for us. Learning guitar, forming a band, performing—this is itself a youth syndrome, expressed simply in the cool and sexy medium of rock.
In terms of plot structure, Manga Time Kirara’s adaptation is consistently reliable. This also owes thanks to the original four-panel manga’s relaxed atmosphere, which generated enough comic moments to ensure the pacing breathes.
As is well known, Japan’s anime industry is the sole survivor of the critical currents of the last century, existing in a beautiful—one might even say sentimental—and harmless form. For sufferers of youth syndrome, Bocchi the Rock! does help resolve some confusion: it may not clarify what you want to do, but it sets up a model for us to follow.