When it comes to reading, writing, and creating media in general, I abide by the philosophy that pretty much everything has been done before, but as long as you're passionate about what you make and create believable characters, you can make even the most cliche premises enjoyable. It all comes down to execution. Granted, the premise of a bunch of kids getting together to form a band has been done lots of times before—K-On, Given, Angel's 3Piece, Bang Dream, Kids on the Slope, Show By Rock, Beck: Mongolian Chop Squad, and so on—but there's a lot you can do with it, and as long as you're able to make your audience care about what's happening, it doesn't matter how cliche your premise is. For example, I can't stand K-On because it seemed way more interested in cashing in on the moe trend than telling a compelling story, whereas another band-focused anime I watched, Given, while not having the best animation and ending on an open-ended note, had stronger characters, better writing, and actually went into the nitty-gritty about music, instruments, the items used for them, and starting a band in general. One anime that came out in 2022, which I had admittedly missed out on, takes the fluid animation of K-On and the character writing in Given and manages to make something truly wonderful. What's this anime you ask? A little recently discovered gem called Bocchi The Rock.

Now, a premise like this has obviously been done before. Hitori Gotoh is a young girl who really loves playing guitar and wants to start a band. Unfortunately, she's so shy and anxious that she can barely function if someone so much as talks to her. Everything she's tried to remedy this has failed, so she's spent a good chunk of her life without friends. One day, a girl named Nijika Ichiji notices her guitar and approaches Hitori, begging her to fill in for her band Kessoku Band, as their guitarist recently ditched them. Hitori finds herself getting dragged into Nijika's band and putting on a concert with them that very day. As anxious as this makes Hitori, she decides to stick with Kessoku Band and become their guitarist full-time, thinking this might be the opportunity she's been waiting for. But she's woefully unprepared for just how hard life in a band really is.

If there's one thing that made the anime for Bocchi The Rock famous, its not just its animation, but the sheer creativity that went into it. Motion is fluid and kinetic, the backgrounds are given the appropriate amount of detail without much in the way of clutter, and I'm so glad it didn't render the girls in CGI during the concert sequences. But the thing that makes Bocchi The Rock stand out in the animation department is the different art styles used to convey Bocchi's anxiety or state of mind, ranging from stop-motion claymation to intentionally low poly Nintendo 64-level CGI. The series even goes so far as to use stock live-action footage, not to hide animation short cuts, of which there are few, but for the sake of a joke, a visual gag, or to yet again convey something happening with Bocchi. For example: When Bocchi barfs from anxiety after a concert, footage of various waterfalls from the Yuda Dam in Iwate Prefecture to convey what's happening without showing actual vomit. Do I even need to mention the memetic scene of Bocchi literally glitching out on the ground when presented with the idea of starting a social media account to promote the band? CloverWorks went all out in getting really experimental with the animation. Would you guys kill me if I said I feel Bocchi The Rock is better animated than K-On?

Of course, you can't have an anime about music without a good soundtrack to back it up, right? I admit I'm not an expert on music in and of itself, so I can't really comment on things like composition and the more technical aspects of music. Plus, all of Kessoku Band's songs consist of rock numbers, and rock isn't normally my preferred genre of music. That being said, the songs are all well-sung, well-made, and all serve their purpose in the narrative. The soundtrack itself is pretty good on its own, both in and out of context, so while there are some anime whose soundtracks I like better, Bocchi The Rock makes good use of its soundtrack, especially since it's an anime that's about making music. Speaking of that, one thing I really appreciate is that Bocchi The Rock actually goes out of its way to show just how hard being in a band is and making it big, such as selling tickets to meet quotas, the band making pretty common mistakes during their concerts, dealing with broken instruments, indifferent concert-goers, and the consequences that rise from those things. Given touched upon stuff like this very briefly, but not to the extent Bocchi The Rock does. That was one thing I admittedly didn't like about K-On: whenever the girls in that show had to deal with certain issues, they were always conveniently resolved by some contrivance that would never happen in real life, and they never really learned from said mistakes. Bocchi The Rock actually has the girls struggle and deal with the pros and cons of being in a new band and allows them to make mistakes.

Which is a nice segue into the characters and their overall characterization, and...I'm not gonna lie, the girls from Bocchi The Rock are much more developed and three-dimensional than the characters from K-On could ever hope to be, mainly because Bocchi actually allows its characters to have a good mix of both strengths and flaws that make them feel like regular high school kids and more than just simple moeblobs. Plus, any flaws they do have are used to meaningful effect and aren't presented as simple cute quirks that we're supposed to d'awww at, nor does the writing try to reduce them to nothing but walking moe stereotypes. For example, one thing I absolutely HATE about K-On is one particular scene where Yui has to get her guitar fixed, but apparently Yui, a teenager, legitimately had NO IDEA that she was supposed to actually pay money to have it fixed, and the only reason she got out of that situation was because Mugi paid for the repairs since Yui didn't have the money on her. This, to me, is bad writing because no teenager is so stupid that they don't know that you have to pay money for basically any repairs for anything, and because Yui doesn't face any consequences for this, as Mugi pays for the repairs because she's a convenient rich girl. This scene, to me, exemplifies K-On's problem as a whole: It's much more interested in infantilizing its characters for the sake of cashing in on the moe trend than actually caring about telling a story and fleshing out its characters beyond their main archetype. In Bocchi The Rock, the character Kita buys a bass which she mistook for a guitar, but she didn't know she bought a bass because the instrument she bought has six strings, and most basses have four strings. Since Kita flat-out admits that she's not very music-savvy and only took up playing guitar recently, it makes sense for her not to know much about basses, and the only reason she learns she made a mistake is because Ryo, who not only plays the bass but is very knowledgeable about them, informs her that some basses are made with six strings. So it makes sense that Kita would make this kind of mistake, and it's the kind of mistake any dumb teenager would make if they didn't know about this stuff beforehand. Plus, this mistake plays into the conflict that jump starts the series as a whole and has consequences for Kessoku Band, which I think is a stroke of genius on the creator's part.

But the big question is, how is its portrayal of Bocchi's anxiety? Honestly, as someone who has Generalized Anxiety Disorder and is autistic, I think Bocchi The Rock depicts anxiety pretty well. As over-the-top as it is, I found a lot of Bocchi's worries to be pretty relatable. I too have a tendency to overanalyze situations to the point of misreading them and assuming the worst, though unlike Bocchi, I often got bullied pretty badly throughout a good portion of my life, which was the main contributor to my own lack of self-esteem, self-worth, and sometimes self-loathing. I also appreciate that Bocchi The Rock depicts Bocchi's anxiety as a genuine issue that causes legitimate problems for her rather than trying to make it into a cute moe quirk to milk for easy sympathy, and any jokes made about it never cross the line into being mean-spirited (Except for one instance in episode 7, but that's as far as it goes). Plus the anime doesn't make her issues magically go away with the power of music and being in the spotlight, even in the final episode, which I definitely appreciate.

Honestly, to me, Bocchi The Rock has very little in terms of flaws. My only real gripes with it are that as much as I like Kikuri as a character, she was mainly just there to be the drunk lady whose antics are always played for laughs, though even that's offset by the fact that she often gets called out on her actions, along with the one bit of mean-spiritedness on the part of Bocchi's parents in episode 7. Plus, the anime ends on a pretty open-ended "read the manga" note, which some might not appreciate. But those are small potatoes compared to the big picture, and I'm happy I finally sat down and gave Bocchi The Rock a chance, because it's pretty much everything I wish K-On had been, and I can absolutely see why it became so popular, and in my opinion, it earned its popularity. Now I'm hoping some company will release the manga in English, because now I want to read it. Hey Crunchyroll! Care to give Bocchi The Rock an English dub and blu-ray release anytime soon? Because I'd love to own it!