Guitar, Loneliness, and Blue Planet: A deeper look into Bocchi the Rock’s protagonist.
If you ask me what my favorite anime from 2022 is, I will definitely always answer with Bocchi the Rock. The animation, characters, music, sound design, almost every aspect of it hits me in the right spot that not much anime in recent years can do.
Though today, I don’t really want to talk about all of that. I already wrote about how I feel about Bocchi the Rock as a whole on my twitter (albeit in Indonesian), so this time I want to talk about Bocchi herself; her journey as a character, how characters affect her and in turn, how she affects others around her. I would also like to talk about myself; How I relate to her and see my past self in her, because as the kids on Twitter would say…she is just like me for real.
Like my previous article about Xenoblade Chronicles 3, this also will be quite personal to me. I know, I’m a slave to my feelings and medias that makes me feel it so please bear with me.
Suffocating loneliness.
It’s not enough, not enough, no one knows I’m here.
I let out a scream, even though I couldn’t make a scribble of a sound.
Who am I supposed to show that “Just who I am” to?
Singing like the fool that I am, I vent out to the stars.
If you want to talk about Bocchi, I think it’s best to start from one of her core traits first: Her feelings of loneliness. The first episode of Bocchi the Rock starts with Bocchi narrating how since childhood, she’s always the hitoribocchina ko; the girl who is always alone, unable to make friends. The girl who eats her bento together with a teacher during a picnic; an adult who is obligated to provide her with at least that much social interaction.
She laments about it, all the while the anime presents her experience in dim and muted colors; to show how bland and suffocating life is at this point for her. While this aspect of her isn’t shown as much as her social anxiety when faced with social situations, the first episode framed this core feeling perfectly; framing her being alone a lot, even in the presence of a crowd. For me, it’s spot on. Being lonely isn’t always about you being around people or not anyways.
I think we all agree that at some point in their lives, everyone feels loneliness to some degree. To feel lonely is human nature; we are, after all, social creatures that has survived up to this point in this blue planet we call Earth because we work together in a group. If it’s such a core component of human nature, you may wonder, what is loneliness, exactly?
If you look it up on the internet, you can find multiple definitions; Oxford dictionary defines it as “a feeling of being unhappy because you have no friends or people to talk to”, or according to Wikipedia it’s “an unpleasant emotional response to perceived isolation”. Though those two definitions aren’t wrong, I think it simplifies on the term a little bit; focusing only on the low level of social contact someone may achieve, which isn’t everything about loneliness, as it may happen to someone who meets with a lot of people.
Personally, the definition I like the most is psychologists' views on it: In their paper titled Towards a Social Psychology of Loneliness, Perlman and Peplau (1981) defined loneliness as a subjective, unwelcome feeling of lack or loss of companionship, which happens when there is a mismatch between the quantity and quality of the social relationships that we have, and those that we want. We feel lonely not because we don’t have friends or social circles; It’s just the current social relationships that we have now doesn’t match what we want at the moment.
In the anime itself, even after Bocchi joined Kessoku Band and made friends with the other members, she still feels lonely sometimes. As shown on #9 during summer break, on days where there’s no practice, or on days when she’s doesn’t work at Starry, she feels lonely; doing nothing at home but watch videos or practicing with her guitar. She caused it herself due to her anxiety, yes, but her friends not inviting her to hang out during summer break doesn’t meet her expectations; hence why she feels lonely, even though she clearly has friends at that point.
The same paper also talked about causes for loneliness that a person may have; it may have been the end of a close emotional relationship, the change in the relationship’s quality, physical separation from someone, or what I think is related the most to Bocchi the Rock: low self-esteem. An example of Bocchi’s low self-esteem is shown during the first episode, where during her childhood days, Bocchi thinks to herself: “Is it even okay for someone like me to join?” as her friends started playing hide-and-seek. Her low opinion of herself here acts as an obstacle for her to initiate social interaction with others, which in turn cause her to feel loneliness even further.
In their paper, Perlman and Peplau stated that the link between low self-esteem and loneliness is reciprocal; as in low self-esteem cause loneliness, but at the same time people with low self-esteem often blame themselves for having a low level of social contact, thus perpetuating their already low self-esteem. In Bocchi’s case, as we all know, due to her anxiety and low self-esteem she often imagined of worst-case scenarios in every social interaction before it even happened; further disabling her from having a proper interaction with anyone as she just…runs away and tries to avoid it.
That is, if there’s no people around to help her navigate through social interactions. Someone to help her go through it, to encourage her forward, even if it’s just one little, tiny step.
Guitar, bands, and the change it brings.
Grabbing the air and punching the sky.
Nothing seems to happen, I’m powerless.
But, with that hand, when you strum that iron.
Something seems to change, right?
We previously talked about loneliness and how Bocchi experiences it, and now, I want to talk about how she handles it with the help of the people around her. In Ask the Therapist: How to Cope with Loneliness by Dr. Therese Mascardo on YouTube, she describes loneliness as a feeling of not being seen, heard, understood, or known enough. According to her, one of the best ways to reducing feelings of loneliness is by being vulnerable with other people, which can be done by doing something that you love with them. Playing music together, for example.
With that in mind, I think Bocchi’s decision to pick up and learn the guitar during middle school is the best thing she could’ve done and ultimately changed her life, forever. Even if it didn’t pay off instantly like she initially expected it to be, picking up the guitar leads her to meet a lot of new people who loves music like her. Friends to confide in and do music together with.
Because of that, I think it’s not much of an exaggeration that her guitar is the catalyst for her change throughout the anime. Bocchi initially met Nijika, someone who is really cheerful, optimistic, and supportive of her. She even understands her perfectly from time to time, knowing what Bocchi is thinking without her even needing to say it. She’s the one who practically dragged Bocchi along into the world of bands, invited her to work at the live house, and encouraged her to be brave when interacting with people.
Most importantly though, Nijika is the one who made Bocchi think more about her reasons for wanting to be in a band; which was initially because she wants to be fawn over by a lot of people, but after the bonds she has made with Nijika and the rest of Kessoku Band, she now wants people to fawn over the four of them as a band and ultimately make Nijika’s dream come true too, even if she doesn’t know what it was at that point.
Okay, next up, Ryo. If you have watched the anime, you know she thrives on being alone. She sometimes willingly goes on trips alone, and one time she turned down the other band members’ invitation to play at Bocchi’s house because she wants to have a moment by herself, going around Tokyo’s shops and restaurants.
Because of this, while Ryo is…not what I would call someone who’s really helpful towards Bocchi’s growth, I think one thing that she contributed to expanding Bocchi’s perspective is making her understand the difference between someone who is struck with loneliness and someone who is in solitude. While the two may seem similar, they’re both a state that comes with being alone, after all; They’re different in a way that solitude is desired, while loneliness isn’t. John Cacioppo, a professor from University of Chicago in the field of social neuroscience, refers to loneliness in his book as painful isolation; The emphasis on painful here is used to make a clear distinction with solitude, which is qualified as desired isolation.
Another interesting research paper I have found about Solitude is by Christopher R. Long and James R. Averill titled Solitude: An Exploration on Benefits of Being Alone. Long and Averill in their paper talks about the benefits of solitude, because while solitude can have positive and negative effects, the negative side of solitude — loneliness — are much more talked about than its positives. One of its benefits are freedom; For example, when they asked backpackers and students to identify the positive effects of their previous experiences on solitude, they indicated that “freedom of choice with respect to actions and thoughts was among its most important benefits.”
Okay, the fact that solitude brings freedom seems painfully obvious, but Long and Averill emphasized to put freedom as one of the benefits from solitude because it’s the prerequisite for other benefits from solitude that they’re talking about in their paper. One of those other benefits is creativity. Csikszentmihalyi on his book Creativity: Flow and the psychology of discovery and invention found that adolescents who can't tolerate being alone often fail to develop their creative talents because such development, like practicing an instrument or writing on a journal, usually relies on being alone.
I might have gone a little bit too off tangent there, but my point is: Ryo is thriving from being in solitude, as it allows her to be free, and in turn develops her creative talents — making music — further. While the anime doesn’t go too far into Ryo’s process in making music for Kessoku Band (do tell me if the manga does though, I’m curious.) I think I’m not too far off when I say her time in solitude helps her to write music too.
I am trying my HARDEST here to not wear my yuri goggles while writing about Kita in relation to Bocchi, but if I’m going to look at it seriously…Kita, as far as Bocchi’s life goes, is the first person who looks up to her.
In my opinion, and by my own experience, having someone who admires you and acknowledges your skill is such a huge boost to your own self-esteem. In Bocchi’s case, so much as to make her melt into a goopy mess every time she’s praised by Kita (relatable).
Adding to that, Kita’s existence only pushes Bocchi forward more; Kita thinks Bocchi’s skill with the guitar is amazing and wants people to notice her skills for it. So much that Kita practically forced the band to play in the school festival, even though Bocchi initially threw away the application form for performing in the festival. She has that much admiration for Bocchi, and Bocchi herself is grateful to her for it; It might have been against her will at first, but in the end playing in the school festival is a necessary step forward for her to improve.
Before we move on though, honorable mention, but someone who I think is just as important as the other band members to Bocchi is our lovable drunk bassist: Hiroi Kikuri. Her…very concerning alcoholism aside, Hiroi as a character in my opinion is the closest we have to a role model for Bocchi, for a few reasons.
Above all, I think her pointing out to Bocchi that people aren’t really out to get her all the time is the most important thing she has ever did. When you have social anxiety…you really do interpret almost every interaction as threatening. In a paper titled Social Anxiety and Social Anxiety Disorder written by Amanda S. Morrison and Richard G. Heimberg, this is called interpretation bias; a tendency for people with social anxiety to interpret ambiguous or neutral stimuli, or even positive ones as threatening to them.
The same paper also stated that by giving subjects with interpretation bias repeated training to more good-natured interpretations of ambiguous scenarios, it modifies their interpretation bias and results in the reduction of social anxiety in them. While it isn’t exactly repeated and not in a clinical setting, I think what Hiroi did to Bocchi by giving her hints like “You’re not in combat with the people in front of you” and “Don’t get it twisted who your enemies are” modifies Bocchi’s interpretation bias a little bit and allowed her to be more courageous when facing her audience.
Not only that, but she was also the same as Bocchi, being introverted and socially anxious up to her high school days. She’s someone Bocchi looks up to that has similar experiences to her in life, knowing exactly how it feels to be anxious around someone, to be scared of talking to a stranger, and the nervousness they feel before a live show. Her coping mechanisms might not be healthy (thank God the show paints her alcoholism as something destructive) but she‘s still a good influence on Bocchi and even gives her advice to move forward from her anxiety, in a healthy way.
It’s not just Bocchi who gets a positive impact though, people around her does too, by meeting her. A relationship is supposed to be a two-way lane after all; Bocchi isn’t only receiving things as she interacts with others, because unknowingly, she affects others around her too.
Our existence on this vast blue planet.
Alone on this blue planet, I’ve heard many different sounds.
Continuously swirling for billions of years, even if it’s just for a moment… Ah,
Hear me, listen to me!
As a human, I think it’s inevitable that you’re going to affect each other’s life as you interact, socialize, and spend your day-to-day life together with someone. This is just me being poetic, but the people you know, their memories of you, is the proof that you existed in this world; even after you die, that proof of existence will last as long as your story get passed on to someone else.
That opening paragraph might have been way too out there in an essay talking about Bocchi the Rock (It does, however, reminds me of the Hamilton musical’s final score…I need to revisit that musical again when I have the time) but what I mean is, as she starts socializing with other people, making songs, and performing with Kessoku Band, in a way Bocchi leaves trails of her existence in this world in the memories of people. Some are stronger than others, I might argue, and I want to talk about it here.
Obviously, I can’t quantify the exact amount of people who are affected by Bocchi throughout the anime, as there would be too much and with varying degrees. I still want to discuss about that later, but I want to talk about two people who I think are so important in the show when talking about this topic. They’re both members of Kessoku Band: Kita Ikuyo and Nijika Ijichi.
Nijika is…someone who is carrying a dream for two people: Her own dream, and her sister’s, who is unable to reach that dream anymore ever since they lost their mother. As a front she says she wants to form a band and perform live at the Budokan, but her real dream is to form a band popular enough for both her and her sister, and also making Starry, the live house her sister made for her, even more famous.
It’s a dream that stems from her love towards her sister…but as she starts forming her band, she starts to feel like that dream is out of reach for her. She’s faced with tons of hurdles, like how Kita, who was their guitarist at the beginning, ran away for example. Even so…Bocchi was there. Even though by chance, she met Bocchi in a park while she was searching for a guitarist. She even brings Kita back into the band (by sheer luck, to be fair, but I digress) making the band’s line up finally complete. Nijika finally gathered enough people for the band she has always wanted to make.
More importantly though, on #8 when the band is in a mess while performing their first ever live show at Starry because of their nervousness, Bocchi’s sudden guitar solo practically saved the band from completely bombing their first performance, leaving a good impression for the audience.
Because of this, to Nijika, Bocchi is her hero. She’s always there to save her whenever she’s in a pinch, and because Bocchi is there with her, even though she’s progressing in small steps, she finally feels that her dream isn’t that much out of reach after all. In the same way that Nijika changed Bocchi’s life for the better by inviting her into the band, Bocchi’s existence in the band also helps Nijika’s dream to be more attainable. They changed each other’s life, positively.
How about Kita though? How did Bocchi affect her? She surely doesn’t really need it, she’s an extroverted girl who is popular with everyone, right? Well…maybe not. In my opinion, Kita is, in multiple ways, the exact opposite of Bocchi. Not just the introverted-extroverted part, but especially I want to talk about how the two of them handle their social anxiety.
You might be wondering, how in the hell does that cheerful and energetic Kita has social anxiety? Well…this is purely conjecture on my part, but while Bocchi’s social anxiety leads her to isolates herself from the crowd, Kita on the other hand conforms to the crowd. She follows them, blends with them so she can belong there. I think it shows in the anime when Kita is afraid of meeting Nijika and Ryo again after running away from the band; She did something that she considers as unacceptable to the band, therefore making her unable to belong with them. She runs away from it because of her anxiety.
This is also why, according to Kita herself, she can’t “shine”. In order to conform to the crowd, she loses her individuality along with it. In contrast, Bocchi who is always in isolation prior to meeting with the band has a very distinct individualism to her; she can “shine” on her own because of this individuality she has. Kita is in awe towards Bocchi (probably Ryo too, to be honest) for that because Kita can’t do that herself.
Through meeting Bocchi, I think, Kita finds a way for her to shine: by supporting others she cares about. She has been always good with keeping up with others around her, after all. She founds the drive to be good at something, in this case the guitar, in order for her to be able to support the others in the band…especially Bocchi. She got so good at playing the guitar to the point she’s able to ad-lib a guitar solo in order to cover up for Bocchi’s technical problems in the final episode. While Kita still thinks lowly of herself, saying that her skills are only good “for a rhythm guitarist”, I think this is a huge change, and one of her defining character moments in the anime.
While we’re still on the topic of Kita, I want to gush a bit about Seiza ni Naretara/If I could become a constellation. Narratively, I think it’s the best song in Kessoku Band’s discography, because of the show’s usage of the song and the song’s lyric writing itself.
In the anime, it’s used in the final episode as the second song played during the school festival. The scene serves a couple purposes: to show Kita’s growth in guitar skills and her determination to support Bocchi by doing an ad-lib guitar solo, and also showing how far the band has come in understanding each other. It’s really hard to show if you’re not watching the episode as I’m describing this, but in that scene, you really can see each of the band members noticing Bocchi’s technical problems with her guitars one by one, like Kita slightly looking at Bocchi from the corner of her eye, Nijika and Ryo nodding to each other as a sign to stretch the current part a little bit in order to give Bocchi time dealing with her problem, and topped off by Kita’s guitar solo improv. As a scene, it’s full of small details and show how much the band has grown closer over time.
The song itself though…while I think like the scene, it also talks about the union of the band, It’s still mainly about the mutual longing between Bocchi and Kita. I’m putting on my yuri goggles here (I’m sorry, it’s inevitable) but both Bocchi and Kita longs for each other for the things that they don’t have in them: Bocchi is envy of Kita because she’s extroverted, has a lot of friends, and can get along with everyone, while Kita is envy of Bocchi for her individuality. The song’s lyrics can be seen from both of their perspectives; the line that says “It’s nice that you are loved by everyone.” and “No, I’m all alone.” can be seen as Bocchi saying that to Kita because unlike her, Kita has a lot of friends, or Kita feeling alone because she’s the only one without an individuality.
It’s just…a really beautifully written song about their relationship that can be interpreted in multiple ways, and I really love it for that.
I’m going to admit that I just wanted to gush about Seiza ni Naretara in the last two paragraphs there because I thought it’s fitting to talk about it while we’re talking about Kita, sorry. Bocchi and Kita’s relationship activates the goblins in my brain so hard that I have to do that.
In conclusion, by being a hero for Nijika, and someone to look up to for Kita, I think even someone like Bocchi can leave her mark in the memories of people, affecting their lives for the better, and ultimately proves her existence in this blue planet we live in.
It’s not limited to the anime itself; we in the real world can connect with Bocchi and continues to be affected positively by her from watching the anime. The impact of Bocchi the Rock on social media, from my own observation, is massive. It ranges from memes to conversations about the nature of social anxiety on social media. What I’m trying to say is, there’s a lot of people who connects with Bocchi and sees themselves in her too.
Who knows, maybe you’re feeling the loneliness Bocchi once felt right now. You felt that you couldn’t fit in or conform to the crowd as Kita does. You felt that… no one could accept you as you are. I think that’s okay though — one day, you’ll finally find the people who accepts you; just like how Bocchi found hers. A place where you can finally belong just by being yourself.
Maybe…at the end of the day, I’m talking about me.
Me.
At first, when I started writing this essay, I was really conflicted on how to approach this aspect of the essay: I wanted to write about Bocchi and how she reminds me of myself from a few years ago, but…I’m not really good at letting myself be vulnerable in my writings. So, I kind of avoided writing about it until the very last section. I don’t even think I can do it right now, but I guess I’ll try.
My love for Bocchi the Rock has always stemmed from how much I can relate with Bocchi and connect with her on an emotional level, because I’ve been there. I was the kid who is always alone in their childhood.
Ever since I was just a kid, I always felt like the weird one out. If I’m going to be honest, my body is pretty plus sized until now, and the very first day of elementary school, I was mocked for it. This leads me to just…ignore my classmates, sitting by myself in the corner and read a book I brought from home most of the time. Heck, even on outings the school had to the zoo I mostly hang around my homeroom teacher who was incidentally a friend of my dad, so I’m already comfortable with her at the time. Maybe she was concerned about me, but to me she was my savior back during the early days of my elementary school.
So, I can relate with Bocchi for feeling lonely during her childhood. Only having a teacher to accompany her most of the time, because she was unable to make friends with her peers.
As a kid, I was also very anxious when talking to strangers. It’s hard for me to strike up a conversation, heck I can’t even order food by myself if I’m at a street food stall. I think…my parents, no matter how much complicated my relationship with them is right now, was a huge positive influence on me for this matter. They pushed me to be brave when interacting with other people, and how I shouldn’t be too worried about what other people think of me. It at least helped a bit, because while I do still have anxieties when in complicated social situations, I can handle simple ones like conversing with a taxi driver or a restaurant waitress now, at least.
Just like Bocchi discovered the guitar during her middle school, a hobby that helps her eventually connect with people around her, I too, got into a hobby during middle school: Japanese pop culture. I know, you’re probably rolling your eyes while you’re reading this, but I’m not exaggerating when I say it helped me so much in befriending people during middle school. It was a small circle of friends consisted mostly of my classmates, but it was enough.
In a way, they influenced me to be more open to people. I was…a pretty closed kid who is picky about people I hang out with back then. I’ve been judgmental of people that approached me, even. Maybe it was because of my negative experience back in elementary school…but despite that, the enthusiasm my middle school friends have to connect with me when they first met me, trying to know what I like, kind of rubbed on me. They’re the ones that made me finally break out of my shell, and I’m forever grateful for that.
If I have to compare it to Bocchi, they’re somewhat like…Hiroi Kikuri to me. They made me realize that not everyone looks at me negatively, and I don’t always have to be defensive when I interact with people. I used to get it twisted who my enemies are, and I’m glad my friends made me realize that.
I have been really lucky to meet good people back then as friends. Just like Bocchi who I think, is also very lucky to meet someone as kindhearted as Nijika and the other Kessoku Band members who tries to understand her despite her weird antics.
Now, while we don’t hang out as much, when we do decide to do a reunion and meet up in a coffee shop somewhere it always felt like…nothing ever changed. Sure, they looked different, but our interactions felt like how it has always been in during our middle school days.
While highschool is…mostly uneventful, I also found one of my closest friends over there, so it’s not that bad in my opinion. Even in university I’ve found a clique to be in too, through various communities of stuff I like. Elaborating every single one of my life journeys would be too long, but my point is: just like Bocchi who found her home in Kessoku Band, I too eventually meet people who understands me and accepts me for who I am; people I can call home and always go back to.
Because of that, watching Bocchi the Rock and looking at how Bocchi reacts and navigates through social interactions has always reminded me of my past self. I loved how accurate the anime presents Bocchi’s state of mind whenever she’s having panic attacks, because while the real world isn’t that exaggerated…it really does feel like that. To me, the anime is so special because of that connection I feel with the protagonist, how similar it feels like I am to her.
You may have been looking at Bocchi the Rock and wonder why Bocchi’s character progress is so slow too, and sometimes she even takes a step back, even. I feel that though. I can’t even say that I’m a completely different person now, I STILL get anxious and overwhelmed when I feel like interacting with someone is too much, and outright ignored people sometimes. Social anxiety is not something you instantly get over with just a couple of good experiences. It’s so ingrained in you to the point your mind just…automatically goes into that state of anxiousness, even if you know it’s wrong.
I hope that somehow gets my point across…this is the second(?) time I’m open about my personal experience and how it relates to the media I consume, and I feel like I’m still not really good at it. I’m really happy if you get what I’m trying to say, though. Bottom line is, Bocchi is just like me frfr.
That’s it! Thanks for reading up until this point! This essay is ultimately a love letter to Bocchi the Rock and works as a catharsis for my feelings ever since I first watched it back in 2022, so I’m really glad I finally got to finish writing it. It’s honestly just a really roundabout and elaborate way to say “Bocchi is just like me fr” but if you guys know me, you know I like to write a lot about my brainrots.
Anyway, see you guys on the next one!
