Yes, it may be hard to hear after the whole hype wave this show has received this season, especially on here, but you have to come to your senses now. Bocchi The Rock! is mid. In this review I'll explain why I think this show, while far from being bad, is overrated and shouldn't be seen as more than a decent seasonal release. Btw, I'm not going to waste your time and recap the story in here, I find it pointless to do that anyway since this review is mostly aimed to people who watched it, refer to the synopsis if you want to know what Bocchi The Rock! is about.

Now I hear you. There has been tons of hugely praised shows that ended up being straight up bad these past ten years, so taking that into account, Bocchi The Rock! is a pretty good surprise especially in this supposedly "stacked" season. Sure it doesn't reinvent anything, but it has CGDCT moments that just works well and the whole anime feels heartwarming in a sense. Now if you expected any focus on the music thing, try again. The band is just a pretext for the whole setting and it never goes really deeper than that. Most episodes will be about Bocchi fighting her social awkwardness through funny situations. I had the same issue with K-On (not too much emphasis on music) and it seems like writing a great story focusing on a band is not easy. After all, we can't all be BECK or Ongaku. What makes the matter worse is that Bocchi The Rock! tries to bring a coming-of-age aspect to the plate, but fails miserably at it and just end up making the main character an obnoxious, unreliable teenager.

but she has le social anxiety and is a loner... Just like me!

And her writing is still shallow at best. Nothing in her character truly feels genuine, which is probably also due to the overwhelming comedic side of the anime, taking too much place in what could have, maybe, been a subtle coming-of-age story revolving around music. Really the problems resides more in the direction and writing abilities than in what it shows on the surface. Which brings me to another positive feature of Bocchi The Rock! : its sense of visual cohesion and, like highlighted by many, the creativity of some of its sequences. Some of which could even remind of more artsy works from studios like Science Saru. To me it's nothing new but it's still a breath of fresh air in a very cluttered genre that tends to rely too often on easy ways to animate what's happening. The use of live footage for example gives a few scenes a particular appeal and I was surprised to see how well it was integrated to the blend. Too bad it doesn't apply to anything that's sub-layer, you'll still have to bear the same cliché tropes we've been enduring since forever in 99% of these "moe" productions. Very few actually succeed in being unique in that regard, most noticeably perhaps would be Shoujo Shuumatsu Ryokou, which on top of its moe front, had super interesting world building, attaching yet not cheesy main characters, both having their own ways of dealing with the remains of the doomed world that surrounded them.

It's just hard to recommend Bocchi The Rock! when it's so obviously flawed in everything that's not surface level, and a few great panels won't be enough to make up for everything that's just too basic. I'll end this review by talking about what should have been more of a priority, the soundtrack. As both a musician and a jmusic enjoyer, I was a bit disappointed in what I heard. Sure Kessoku Band have some cute, poppy songs in their repertoire but for an alternative rock band I was expecting a riskier and more experimental approach here too. I wish I could praise it like I did for its refreshing visual expression.

Bocchi The Rock! could have been much better if it decided to completely get rid of all the tropes that ties it to its slice-of-life genre (or what people like to call CGDCT nowadays) and go all out in its attempt to bring a creative and passionate anime. In the end, it just ends up being a mid seasonal anime that will possibly be remembered for a long time by people discovering anime now (like K-On did 15 years back), but it doesn't make it a great, flawless show like a lot of people would like to believe it is. The verdict is now clear: it's MID.