Bocchi the Rock!

Episode 8

If you ask any performer what the worst possible crowd response is, nearly all of them will tell you that it's apathy. Sure, boos and heckling aren't exactly optimal, but many a musician or comedian has made it through a set, or even built entire careers, by capitalizing on antagonistic crowds; a negative response is still a response, after all. No, what's really terrifying to anyone going up on stage is the thought of getting stonewalled, and the classic tragedy of any opening band is that you're most likely going to face that horror your first (dozen) time(s) on stage. After all, you're a bunch of nobodies acting as the movie previews for the band they're actually here to see. What reason do they have to care about you if you can't give them one? And no amount of practicing and positive energy can make a dead-silent crowd less intimidating.

In that respect, Kessoku Band does an admirable job handling their first time on stage, though it's still difficult to watch their opening song. Kudos once more to the production for making that so authentically amateur and out of sync, even compared to episode five's rendition. You can legit hear Kita fumbling lyrics or peaking too early as nerves catch up with her, and you can even make out Nijika's percussion dragging compared to their audition. It's not a complete disaster, which puts them ahead of a number of real bands, but there's nothing that'll shake a newbie's already flaccid confidence like a crowd of people looking down at their phones – or worse, looking up at you with thinly-veiled concern. In a show built on hitting as close to home as possible, that sequence still stands out as an uncomfortably accurate portrayal of my own living hell.

Which is what makes Bocchi's show-saving solo so incredibly satisfying. It doesn't suddenly make the crowd love them, nor does it turn Kessoku Band into an overnight sensation. But being up on stage is a battle for attention, for recognition, and for as much as she's cowered from both before, this is our little ball of anxiety's chance to grab them with both fists. Seeing Bocchi not just stand her ground, but pull the rest of the band out of their fears, before losing herself in her guitar, has to go down as one of the best moments in anime this year, and I loved every second of it. It's a killer performance, expertly directed and animated, and a new pinnacle for a show already sporting an embarrassment of riches. Doesn't hurt that the song itself rules too.

After delivering something that great, you'd almost expect the episode to end right there, even if we were only nine minutes in. But instead Bocchi cools things off with the after-party, letting the rest of the cast decompress while Bocchi dies of belated nerves in the corner. It's a fun little intermission, mostly for letting Kikuri interact with everyone, along with another classically bleak look into Bocchi's imagined future. But it's what comes after the party dies down that really solidifies this as Bocchi's best episode yet.

If you've watched...really any anime, but especially music-adjacent and specifically Idol anime, you're most certainly familiar with Nijika's backstory. The image of a starry-eyed anime child looking up at somebody on stage, falling in love with the spectacle of a performance, is so deeply ingrained in anime's visual language that you probably just thought of five different shows reading this sentence. Sure, there's some flavor to it with Nijika's sister partly founding Starry to foster her little sister's dream, but otherwise you could probably swap out our blond sunshine girl's name with a Love Live! protagonist and not notice the difference. It gives the girl some welcome texture, and her parting words in this episode hit like a truck, but for me it mostly highlighted what gives Bocchi the Rock! its edge in this subgenre. In any other show, Nijika would be our main character, the indefatigable bundle of energy who steamrolls through every obstacle to bring her band of quirky misfits together, and Bocchi herself might at most get a dedicated two-parter about convincing her to overcome her shyness and join the band. That hypothetical show might still be pretty fun, but realizing we've been witnessing all of this from what would traditionally be a side character's eyes really illuminates how much being inside Bocchi's chaotic head changes things, and how special that perspective is in hindsight. This gnarled tangle of adolescent anxiety, unhealthy coping mechanisms, and math rock chord progressions is our heroine, and neither I nor Kessoku Band would ever trade her for the world.

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Bocchi the Rock! is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.