“Bocchi the Rock” (October 2022, CloverWorks) is an anime about a socially anxious girl trying her best to let her voice be heard.

This show follows Hitori Gotoh (voiced by Yoshino Aoyama) also known as Bocchi, a nickname given to her by Ryo Yamada (Saku Mizuno), learning the guitar in middle school to try and form a band for the culture festival. Unfortunately for Bocchi, 3 years fly by having her end up in high school and unable to communicate with her classmates.

“Bocchi the Rock” aired during the Fall of 2022 going up against many long awaited heavy hitters but ended up being found and praised for standing out against the crowd. This show has been labeled as a diamond in the rough, even going above and beyond similar shows known as cute girls doing cute things.

One thing that has to be addressed right off the bat is the music, a genre that anime doesn’t usually use, rock. A pivotal point that the show is named after, which helps bind things together to make the content of the show even more phenomenal.

When “Bocchi the Rock” is compared to other slice-of-life anime, it stands out as having a unique animation style and completely breaking down narrative walls just to emphasize the content. This show utilizes not only different styles of animation like 3D, CG, and claymation but also using footage of real people and actual pictures of the Shimokitazawa area in Tokyo. 

The background in this show, although semi-lifelike, actually works well to blend together with the characters making it feel like the audience is there. Along with the types of camera angles that are used like “fisheye lenses” when Bocchi is feeling tense makes the viewer relate to her all the more.

As for character designs, they’re all very unique, not the average “anime characters have unrealistic hair colors”, but rather the hair design shows how well they can communicate. With Hitori’s hair being shown on the left being in the negative, showing how little she can speak, and Nijika Ijichi’s (Sayumi Suzushiro) hair is so overflowingly on the right side that she could be considered the complete opposite of Bocchi.

There is so much that this show does well that there’s not much an average viewer can complain about.

A slight problem for some people is how hard it is for Bocchi to stand up for herself and communicate with the band members. Another issue could be Ryo’s personality, being purposely alone and being too honest.

Honestly, this anime is a perfect show to sit down with someone and let the viewer’s sides hurt from how much they’d be laughing, however if they don’t want to watch such a funny anime then that’s a loss on their part.