Pink rock! On the Internet quite a lot of positive reviews on the anime Bocchi the Rock! and I also fell for this advertisement, expecting an interesting light comedy describing the life of a typical young musician, but got a rather boring interpretation of the dreams of an introvert, but about everything in order.
At first, in the first series, you don’t even notice the catch. Yes, the plot is banal - the heroine sees the band's performance on TV and lights up also to become a guitarist - but, so to speak, the genre orientation and affiliation of the work to the anime allows. But the heroine wants to learn to play the guitar for a reason, but to gain fame and find friends. The former in some way succeeds – she gets popularity thanks to her channel with covers – but the latter does not. Who knew that wearing unusual jewelry, laying out discs with popular artists on the desk and creating a rock atmosphere around yourself do not make you popular. One way or another, the heroine was still alone, without friends, and did not play to her advantage her absolute isolation, penalization and fear of any social interaction. So she would have remained useless in reality, if - what luck, right? - she is not noticed by one girl on the playground and does not offer her to replace in her musical group a guitarist who in time decided to leave them.
And again, at first, no catch is noticed. The main character quite amusingly emphasizes her shyness, inflating her problems. This is expressed in good inserts, hyperbolized showing her reaction. Some of these inserts, by the way, have an unusual implementation, for example in stop motion animation, with 3D graphics or with a change in the style of 2D animation. Many of the reviewers of this anime focused on this, but in fact these inserts are not so much to talk about the graphical unusualness of the entire anime, but, nevertheless, it is still not bad. At the end of the introduction, we will be presented with some of the other permanent members of the band. Soon, the heroine is already participating in her first real concert as a guitarist... hiding in a mango box. Yeah, who'd expect her to have stage fright. Moreover, it is noted that she is bad in tandem, which shakes her already weak self-confidence. However, the girls do not tease her - almost - but on the contrary, encourage and in the future will try in every possible way to "round the corners" of her introverted jumps. After the heroine begins to work in the basement bar, in which her first concert took place, and a little later another member is added to the group, which increases its volume to four people.
And here, perhaps, we will stop with a retelling of the plot, because, unexpectedly, the plot at this point also gives the brakes. No, there will be events, of course, but for me, the next series has turned into a set of fillers. And it's time to talk about my main problems with this anime:
1. The conflict does not appear further in the plot, and the story goes as straight as possible. The semblance of some kind of resistance is still there, but for the most part it is associated, again, with the fear of the main character to socialize. However, this does not become a serious obstacle along her path and most often serves as a staple for the next gag. And hints of possible obstacles also do not get developed. Is the heroine afraid to play in public? In her next talk, she gets over it at the snap of her fingers. Is it difficult for her to play tandem? This will be mentioned a couple of times and forgotten. One of the characters can't play the guitar at all? In a few lessons she can play the guitar. And if something does not succeed at all, then ordinary luck comes into play: at least with the same ticket sale.
2. Graphics. The inserts, again, are fun, but the anime is uneven overall. The animation and graphics are worked out, then in a bad way minimalistic and clumsy. And the "operator" constantly shyly lingers on the hands and fingers of the characters while playing instruments for only a second or two, indicating a meager budget. The performances of the heroines could be done much better in terms of the overall picture, given that the anime is still about music. But the priority of the creators was precisely on “spiritual torment”.
3. The plot is extremely uneven. After watching, I can tell you that the anime has a twist, and it has everything else. The arches are extremely conditional and barely noticeable (partially, again, for the reason described in the first paragraph).
4. The music is mediocre. I’m not going to talk about it anymore, it’s subjective.
5. Pink glasses. This is probably my main reason for dissatisfaction. And did you guys know that it is very easy to become a real rocker, it is enough for a couple of years to learn to rattle on the guitar no worse than famous musicians and after a certain moment constantly throw out six on the cubes of life (and even be born in Japan). On the Internet, your covers will only be praised and maximum – well, absolutely maximum – will write about the fact that you have been doing them for a very long time. It’s easy to get an audience, because it’s pretty cool to play, isn’t it? And no, you don't even have to talk to fans to be popular, why? People who come together in a band will rally radically quickly, as if they were born friends. Introvert? So it's cool, an introvert on stage in front of a crowd differs from an extrovert only in that he sticks constantly to the floor, and there is clearly no problem with this. And most importantly, know that your girlfriends will run with you like a chicken and an egg, paying careful attention to every bout of shyness. I’m not saying anime has to be realistic, but when it’s such an obvious gum for an introvert, it starts to fall asleep at some point.
Of course, anime has protruding pluses and the main plus, because of which, in fact, he can forgive a lot, these are characters. Girls are quite charismatic and funny, although caricatured, and watching how they interact with each other and with the world around them is a pleasure. I would even say that they pull the whole anime out of the quagmire of despondency.
Anime, in fact, quite funny, and eventually I began to perceive as a set of sketches due to the lack of, as such, the development of the plot.
The end of the review came out crumpled, as, in fact, the anime itself came out. To sum up, it turned out to be funny, with good characters, but with a plot too simple and direct, like a stick. The whole review for the first season, what will happen next – we will see, but hopefully the plot will shake up at least a little. In the meantime,
6 out of 10