There are some anime characters you like because they’re funny, cool, well-written or just entertaining to watch.
Then there are the characters who make you sit there and think:”Okay, I didn’t ask to be personally attacked today.”
Bocchi the Rock! occasionally falls into that second category for me.
In a previous post, I talked about how anime helped me go from a shy, introverted loner who routinely struggled with social interaction to something resembling a social butterfly.
If you put high school me and current me in the same room, I’m not entirely sure they’d recognize each other.
Well, aside from the anime obsession.
That part isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
Certain anime have a way of attaching themselves to different parts of your personality, whether it’s who you are now or someone you used to be.
My Dress-Up Darling spoke directly to the cosplayer in me and the part of me that long ago stopped apologizing for being passionate about the things I enjoy.
Bocchi the Rock! speaks to someone else entirely:
The painfully shy kid I used to be, the one bullies always targeted first.
To be fair, I was never anywhere close to Hitori Gotoh’s level. Her social anxiety is exaggerated to the point where the laws of reality occasionally stop applying and she transforms into whatever best represents her current emotional collapse.
I’m pretty sure I never physically melted into a pile of goo because somebody tried to talk to me.
Emotionally?
Let’s not rule anything out.
Beneath all of the exaggeration, there’s something about Bocchi that younger me absolutely would have understood.
There was a time when walking into a room full of strangers sounded significantly less appealing than staying home where it was quiet, comfortable and nobody expected me to make small talk. Meeting new people could be intimidating, starting a conversation was worse.
Sometimes you could spend so much time worrying about how an interaction might go that you talked yourself out of having the interaction in the first place.
If you’ve ever rehearsed what you’re going to say before making a phone call, only for the conversation to immediately go off script, congratulations: you probably understand at least a tiny piece of Bocchi.
And if you’re someone who still prefers the quiet sanctuary of your living room over going out?That’s perfectly fine too.
One of the things I appreciate most about Bocchi the Rock! is that while the series constantly exaggerates Bocchi’s anxiety for comedy, it never feels like the show is laughing at her for having it.
There’s an important distinction there.
Bocchi’s reactions are hilarious. The increasingly absurd visual metaphors are hilarious. Watching her brain construct the worst possible outcome from an otherwise completely normal social interaction is hilarious.
Bocchi herself isn’t treated like a punchline, more importantly, the people around her don’t decide that she needs to be “fixed.”
Enter Kessoku Band.
Nijika, Ryo and Kita all recognize fairly quickly that Bocchi is, to put it mildly, not particularly gifted at this whole social interaction thing and they accept her anyway.
They encourage her.
They give her opportunities to step outside her comfort zone.
Occasionally, circumstances give her a loving shove outside of it, but they don’t demand that she suddenly become an extrovert.
Nobody sits Bocchi down and says, “Okay, here’s your problem: you need to stop being Bocchi.” Instead, she gets to grow at her own pace.
Sometimes that growth is tiny, sometimes she takes a step forward and immediately retreats five steps backward.
Sometimes merely surviving the interaction counts as a victory. Honestly, that’s a lot closer to how personal growth actually works.
You don’t wake up one morning, dramatic anime opening playing in the background, and suddenly become a completely different person.
It happens gradually, you meet someone. Then maybe another person you find something in common with you’re passionate about that gives you a reason to interact with them. Eventually, you realize that the thing which once terrified you isn’t quite as terrifying anymore.
That’s one of the reasons Bocchi’s relationship with music works so well for me. The guitar doesn’t magically cure her social anxiety, it gives her an outlet and, eventually, a bridge to other people.
For Bocchi, that bridge is music.
For me, it was anime.
I’ve already written about joining an anime group when I was younger and how much that decision changed my social life. I went into my first meetup barely knowing what to say to anyone and eventually became someone who could spend hours talking with friends after the actual meetup had ended.
That transformation didn’t happen overnight.
There wasn’t a training montage.
There was, however, an incident at my first meetup where we went to Denny’s and I went to the bathroom, only for everyone to think I had bailed because I’d barely spoken all night.
Yes, that actually happened.
Nobody handed me a glowing friendship power-up. I just kept showing up.
Over time, the thing that had originally been an escape from social interaction became the thing that helped me get better at it.
That’s why I appreciate Kessoku Band as much as I appreciate Bocchi herself. They’re very different personalities, and somehow I can see bits of myself in all four of them.
There’s Bocchi, representing the younger version of me who would rather disappear into the nearest wall than initiate an awkward conversation.
There’s Nijika, desperately trying to keep everything and everyone moving in roughly the same direction. I’ve been that person.
There’s Kita, bringing enough cheerful energy to power a small city. I’ve definitely been that person too.
And then there’s Ryo…irresponsible with money because something you wanted seemed more important at the time?
My counsel has advised me not to speak on this matter.
No comment.
Moving on!
The important thing is that none of them are treated as interchangeable pieces of the band. They’re four very different people who somehow work together because of those differences, not despite them.
That’s another thing I think Bocchi the Rock! understands particularly well: finding your people doesn’t necessarily mean finding people exactly like you.
Sometimes it’s finding the people who understand that you’re weird in your own particular way and respond with:”Cool, anyway, are you coming with us?” There’s something comforting about that.
I don’t have the same social anxiety I had when I was younger. Somewhere along the way, the kid who struggled to talk to strangers became someone who travels to conventions, cosplays, staffs events, talks to random people and willingly puts himself into social situations that teenage me would’ve regarded as psychological warfare.
That doesn’t mean the old version of me disappeared completely, though. Every now and then, I still want the quiet room.
Sometimes I don’t feel like being social.
Sometimes the social battery hits zero and the idea of interacting with another human being becomes significantly less appealing. Instead, going home, putting on some anime and not speaking to anyone for several hours is the move.
Which is perfectly fine.
Growing doesn’t mean completely replacing the person you used to be. Sometimes it just means understanding that person a little better.
That’s what Bocchi the Rock! does for me. I can laugh when Bocchi catastrophizes a perfectly ordinary interaction because I’ve been on the much less exaggerated version of that ride.
I can cheer when she manages something that seems trivial to everyone else because I understand why it isn’t trivial to her. I can appreciate the people around her because I know firsthand how much finding the right group of people can change your world.
Thirty years into being an anime fan, there aren’t many things that surprise me about how this hobby connects with different parts of my life anymore.
Apparently, though, I can still watch a pink-haired guitarist have a complete existential collapse because somebody expects her to interact with another human being and think:
“Yeah. I get it.”