 Hey everyone, welcome back to another Illumilani video. Today I'm gonna be talking about a Fall 2022 anime that I actually just got the chance to watch just recently and absolutely adored from start to finish, Bochi the Rock. Here's a brief synopsis for those who haven't seen it. Bochi is a girl who is very socially anxious. She begins learning to play guitar so that she can become a part of a famous band and be well loved without having to directly interact with people. The only problem being, she's too socially anxious to form a band on her own. She spent all of her middle school years honing her guitar skills, posting videos online and gaining a following, but is too nervous to talk to anyone in person to actually form a band. Now that she's started high school, she vows to take this fresh start and attempt to form one. However, she is still too scared to talk to people and instead donts her guitar in attempt to get people to talk to her about playing guitar instead. She goes the whole school day with no one saying anything and is saddened and ready to give up when a girl appears asking her to play in her band as a stand-in. Bochi does not directly accept because she's nervous but this girl drags her along anyways. Eventually she gains the nickname Bochi from her bandmate and well, chaos ensues. First and foremost, I love a good old trope of a socially anxious nerd being accepted by a resident extrovert to do things they wanna do but can't fully bring themselves to. Princess Jellyfish, another favorite of mine being a perfect example of this but that's a video for another time. There's a lot to love about Bochi the Rock from its comedy and humor. It's off the wall animation sequences and all its moment that have you going, damn, she's so me for real. Also her dog, Jimmy Henness, Jimmy Hendricks, bro. What? Are you fucking, I love him. Today I'm gonna be going into how all the aspects of the show make a realistic portrayal of anxiety, the nature of relationships formed with it and just generally the reasons that Bochi is so well loved and relatable. I wanna preface this with that I am in no way a therapist or medical professional and will only be speaking on this as someone who has dealt with and currently deals with social anxiety. As usual, spoiler warning for the show and hope you guys enjoy. Something I see get talked about a lot is how realistic Bochi portrays social anxiety. From specific moments where Bochi says yes to something that stresses her out because she's too much of a people pleaser to say no or the beautifully creative and hilarious animation sequences that have you going, yeah, that's how that feels. I might not actively disintegrate into Ash when I'm doing something stressful but I sure wish I could. The thing about Bochi that it gets especially right is just how much Bochi wants to be social but she can't. She desperately wants to form a band but is paralyzed from doing so all throughout middle school. She wants to perform at her school festival but can't bring herself to turn in the application. However, the thing I love most in the show is the moment Bochi stepped up to play her guitar solo to encourage the rest of the band. Her band is playing to a small crowd but is starting to get discouraged as they notice people aren't enjoying the show. Bochi notices how uncomfortable her bandmates are starting to feel and just when everyone stops paying attention Bochi rips out the sickest fucking guitar riff known to anime girl bands. This part gave me straight chills and perfectly encapsulated something I don't see talked about as much but is something I relate to so hard and that's the fact that Bochi is a socially anxious mess until she knows her friends are in need or in a worse position than she is. I have friends with just as much if not worse social anxiety than me and something I find about myself is that I'm stressed about doing something until I know my friends are more scared than I am. By God, I will make the phone call to the pizza delivery place if I must. When Bochi started playing her banger may I add guitar solo to the rest of her band to continue off of her? That shit resonated with me so hard. What a lot of those scenes say to me is that whoever wrote it has either been through this or know someone who has because goddamn is it so well written. Throughout Bochi's journey in the show she gradually learns more social skills and becomes slightly less anxious over things she does often which brings me to the way the show handles healing and growing. There's actually two aspects of it that I wanna talk about here. One is something that's used in therapy for anxiety and that's exposure therapy. What Bochi essentially goes through the story and what helps her grow through her anxiety is just doing what makes her terrified. Granted, it doesn't cure her but I also don't think it should because anxiety's not really something that you can cure. But it does exactly that for her. It helps her learn to manage it. When she first performs on stage she stays in a little box so that she doesn't have to face the crowd but now that she's done that she's passed the hurdle of just performing in front of people. The very next performance she doesn't need to hide and is able to perform on stage as long as she doesn't look people in the eye. She begins to learn how to interact with people when she works her customer service job a mortifying ordeal that she never thought she'd be able to handle. Girl, same. However, even that is something she ends up getting better at and while she isn't perfect she's clearly showing signs of growth from the last time we see her at her job. Also, side note, her getting scared to quit and wondering if she should just ghost them is the realest shit I've ever seen. I've definitely tried to quit a job only to check it out at the last moment and I think the youth of ours every single time I want to quit a job that automates quitting. A really important exposure therapy moment for Bochi was the street concert scene. Particularly, when Kikuri helped her see that the audience was not her enemy and they only came to see them play. This is a message that Bochi carries onto her future performances where you start to see her become a little more comfortable and connected with her band so that playing isn't quite as hard as it used to be for her. Speaking of Kikuri, she embodies the second aspect of dealing with anxiety that I wanna talk about and that's alcoholism or self-medication. This girl is drunk like the entire show. Like, I don't think we ever see her sober. While I don't think people with anxiety are always predisposed to forming serious alcoholism issues a lot of people with social anxiety, myself included will say that alcohol acts as a coping mechanism for socialization. It allows you to open up to people and not fear repercussions of your words as much. Something people with social anxiety fear quite a lot. Kikuri tells Bochi that she was once a lot like her. She was scared to go on stage or talk to other people and she tells Bochi that's why she started drinking actually to curb that fear. And let me be clear through all of this that I don't think alcohol or any other drugs is a good way of coping with social anxiety. However, I think it does show an important side of coping with anxiety and it also serves to show Bochi what could happen if she isn't careful. She's just like Kikuri before Kikuri started drinking and is befraid, is befraid? The fuck is befraid? And is afraid of becoming like her. One last thing about the portrayal of healing from anxiety that I want to point out is how Bochi shows just how non-linear it can be. She'll somewhat overcome her fear of performing but will still be terrified to perform at her school festival. She'll feel like she's finally ready to do something crazy but totally overshoot how much she can do and end up progressing from the embarrassment thinking it would be easier to just never put herself out there again. She, like the people in real life, will experience a triumphant moment where you think you've defeated the anxiety only to be taken down a peg and feel like you're starting from square one again. It's perfect. And I think this is why so many people relate to Bochi. It's all of these little one-off details that make her feel like a very real person with real social anxiety that a lot of us have felt in real life. Another one of my favorite aspects of Bochi is how Bochi's friends interact with her and her anxiety. They're aware of them but never demonize her for them while always pushing her to be better. Nijika pushing Bochi to join the band and take a customer service job. Ryo pushing Bochi to write lyrics that she actually likes. Keita submitting the band's entry sheet for the school festival. All of these instances make Bochi grow in some ways and make her do things she would have never thought she could do on her own. Nijika also acts as that resident extrovert trope that people experience in real life wherein an extroverted person will drag an introvert into their friend group. This hasn't happened to me specifically but it's a joke I see made online all the time in circles with shy people. And also, all of this isn't even to say that they only serve to be there for Bochi. My favorite part of their friendship is how give and take it really is. Bochi also helps the band down in critical moments like the guitar solo scene where she played to encourage the rest of her band. She brings Keita back to the band to be their singer slash guitar player and then teaches her how to play the guitar. They also aren't completely unlike Bochi either. Ryo and Bochi get along because they're both socially awkward although Ryo doesn't feel bad about this and prefers the solitude of doing things on her own. She's a foil to Bochi in that she's comfortable in her weirdness whereas Bochi struggles with her weirdness and wants to be different. Keita, while being relatively extroverted, bubbly, and bright, still struggles with some social anxiety and feelings of embarrassment. Like for example, when Bochi had considered just ghosting everyone instead of quitting, Keita had already done exactly that. She preferred never speaking to any of them again over facing the embarrassment of telling them that she couldn't actually play guitar. Ryo and Keita also act as somewhat of a bridge between Bochi and Nijika. Nijika is likely one of the friends least like Bochi. However, their friendship feels plausible because they have traits in common with the other two bandmates. I also really, really like how much the band grows together over the course of the show from playing their individual instruments and not having much coordination between them to actively giving each other cues and improvising to pick up the slack for each other when needed. The animation also does a fantastic job at portraying all of this growing chemistry between the bandmates. The looks to give each other to cue them into oncoming parts of the song are rad. And while they're seemingly a small detail, they can take a ton of time to animate just for a little bit of extra characterization. This makes the band feel like real connected friends making real music rather than just an anime band dubbing music over the screen. Anime itself has never been known for writing the best sibling dynamics in media. I'm severely understating that here. I know you all know what I mean. So when I saw the sibling dynamics in the show, I adored them. I mean, I guess it doesn't take a rocket scientist to not write siblings who are in love with each other and act normally with each other and yet. But this is what stands out so much to me with Bochi aside from the whole social anxiety aspect of it. Bochi and her sister are hilarious to watch on screen. The way her younger sister talks about how her sister is socially awkward is if it's nothing because she has no idea it's even a bad thing and sends Bochi into a spiral. And the way her sister instantly becomes friends with Bochi's friends and Bochi has to offer her a popsicle to go away. These moments are absolutely charming. Off topic, but the adorable way that her sister hangs off of her friends and her dad, it's so cute. I think that part specifically goes back to how the little details of animation make a big difference. Hoverworks didn't have to animate the sister sitting on her dad's shoulders or giving hugs to Bochi's friends, but they chose to. And I think it makes a difference. It makes Bochi's little sister feel like a real five-year-old with all kinds of energy and no social filter. One other sibling relationship that I loved was Nijika and her older sister, Seika. Seika somewhat stands in a role of parentification wherein she has taken the role of a parent provider and role model for Nijika. Seika used to be in a band, but when her mom died and her dad stopped taking care of her younger sister, she felt responsible for becoming a guidance for this child. She opened the starry as a space for Nijika to get into music. Adults with siblings that aren't super close in age can feel a sense of responsibility over this teenager or child who is growing and forming thoughts and interests. Something important to note about Nijika as well is that she's the most mature in the friend group, so she recognizes the sacrifice Seika made and wants to do good on Seika's behalf by making the starry a place that people know and come to. These siblings have a lot of respect for each other, but even then, as siblings do, they still squabble. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like people who have parentified siblings or are the parentified sibling will tell you that arguments between these siblings can take on a sort of dynamic where it's like, I'm responsible for this kid and have authority, but they're still my sibling and we act like it. Nijika would probably never end a fight insulting her parents, but she would with the sister that acts as her caretaker. All of these pieces of their relationship make it not only fun to watch, but also make the touching moments about Nijika's backstory with her sister all the more emotionally impactful. Aside from all the stuff I definitely over-analyzed in the show, there's a bunch of other things I love about it as well. The music in the show is among the best of the anime original music I've ever heard. While I loved watching K-On, their band HTT just did not produce music that I actually liked and I kind of found the lead singer to be honestly a little bit annoying. Girls Dead Monster, the band from Angel Beats was one of my favorite anime bands at the time. I still sometimes listened to thousand enemies in Alchemy and I still think it's extremely cool that Lisa was in it and it ended up making Demon Slayer's banger ass opening. But with all that being said, I think Bochi's band still comes out on top for me just off of personal preference. It's the kind of music that if I heard normally I'd listen to it regardless of whether it's tied to a show or not, though admittedly it does help. Also Spotify released a version of that band with Bochi's banger guitar solo challenge. There's also some pretty damn good voice work in the show, especially in the episode where Bochi's voice actress does a couple of other voices that kind of stray from the normal cute anime girl sound like this clip right here. And then of course, as many people have also mentioned, the show is just funny as fuck. Every episode has something to make me laugh my ass off about which is a big reason I kept coming back for more episodes. I think this is also what makes the show so enjoyable too because while it has some great touching moments and some pretty realistic feeling characters, it never takes itself too seriously and at the end of the day, it knows it's a slice of life comedy anime. It never gets boring and is definitely worth the watch. Anyways, thank you guys for coming to this video and I hope you guys enjoyed. Let me know what you guys thought about Bochi in the comments below. Did you like it? Did you hate it? This one's a little bit messier than my last since my thoughts are a little bit more everywhere on this anime. I do plan on making a couple more Alice Menace Returns gameplays before I put up the next video essay but I'm gonna make a poll for which video essay you'd like to see next which is gonna go up in about two weeks so I hope you guys will check that one out but if you guys like to see content like this, please subscribe and I hope you guys will tune in for the next video. Bye. Quiet over there. That's getting put somewhere.