meow_d

6/10

Anilist: [link]

I've been kinda dreading writing this since I started watching Bocchi, because I know I'll likely get some hate for thinking it's pretty mediocre, but so be it. Started watching this one with a friend as it was airing and it took us this long to get round to finishing because... we just weren't really that invested, honestly.

Bocchi is, at its core, an idol show, which isn't something I'm especially interested in personally. The boundaries on genres are always fairly flimsy anyways, and most idol shows fall into slice of life pretty heavily, but I tend to pick out the focal point of a show, and Bocchi is far more about the band dynamics than it is about any individual character. If you've only heard about this show from others and haven't watched it, that might sound odd - everyone talks so much about the cast and the characterisation - but I'll get into it below.
Some mild spoilers ahead, though.

this is the first time i've seen someone relate to Komi more than Bocchi. like, usually people bring up Komi in a bocchi review to show how much they cannot relate to her.

i think i'll try my best to explain the appeal of bocchi and why its portrayal of social anxiety is praised so much.

• first of all, i think it's important to note that, while komi and bocchi both have trouble communicating, they're both in very different situations. you can relate to one while never understanding the other at all.

  • Komi has communication disorder. she isn't just anxious; she also lacks communication skills. She quiet even around people she's familiar with, like Tadano, and her family.
  • bocchi only focuses on social anxiety. She has the communication skills but is being held back by anxiety. She can speak normally with her family and quite well with her bandmates. this is a much less extreme, and more common situation than Komi's.

• bocchi has quite a lot of oddly specific things that you will only understand if you've been through it. because everyone has had some social anxiety at some point, even "extroverts" can pick up a thing or two. sometimes, there will be something that hits too close to home (personally it's the youth complex thing). when added up, it can feel like bocchi is staring into your soul.

  • I don't know if there are any of those oddly specific things in komi, since i don't relate to her situation at all.

• one of those oddly specific things is bocchi's wildness.

  • whenever someone mentions me they'll always go "i don't know anything about him cause he's always quietly sitting in the corner", when i'm in fact a pretty loud person in my own world. i know a lot of introverts are like that too: wild and loud on the inside, but quiet on the outside. bocchi's wild imagination is a pretty relatable thing.
  • however, i do admit that the parts where bocchi actually goes wild is less relatable. though i love seeing bocchi act like the crazy girl that she is, because i rarely get to do that.
  • to me, this is the biggest reason i don't relate to komi. she comes off as a quiet, elegant princess who doesn't like to talk, but she's actually a quiet, elegant princess with communication disorder.
  • to be honest "that's the punchline and nothing else" is extremely confusing to me. yes, it's a punchline, but it's the self-deprecating kind written by a socially anxious person. i don't understand how someone would come to that conclusion, unless their experience of social anxiety is extremely different from most people, or they're a super extrovert or something.

i'm not sure how to end this. hope this helps? thanks for watching? like and sub?