Whenever someone asks me what I’m most looking forward to in my visits to Japan, music wouldn’t be the first answer that comes to people’s minds. In the age of mass social media, where anime has never been more popular in the West, music from Japan often conjures up images of virtual singers and poorly remembered anime openings from shows like Demon Slayer and Sword Art Online. Yet, as with everywhere else in the world, Japan’s music scene is more than the popular songs from reels, a lively, storied place filled with experimental rap, electronic, folk, and even rock.

Japanese rock can be best introduced as a first cousin removed, a scene descended from bands as varied as the Beatles to Radiohead. Something that seems familiar, yet with its own looks and mannerisms that identify it. A couple of acts have made it through via osmosis from anime; bands like King Gnu, Linked Horizon, to name a few. Yet, separated by the barriers of distance, lies a rich, storied scene, filled with a passionate audience and a DIY ethos pulled straight out of the great garage acts of Weezer and Nirvana. I love it. It’s a mix of different sounds, alternative, indie, electronic, all iterated on by the myriad creative souls that live and breathe music.

All this admiration, surprisingly, stems from just one single anime, a love letter to the scene that spawned it. A short, 12-episode flick called “Bocchi the Rock!”.

Hitori Gotoh is a high schooler suffering from social anxiety – yet, that doesn’t stop her as she, step by step (and new friend by new friend), helps found and run a new band with the three other main characters (Ryo Yamada, Nijika Ijichi and Kita Ikuyo). The show is as uncomplicated as it gets – there are no secret world-ending plots, no comedy of errors driving the story – all it is is a pure, unadulterated (yet still surprisingly comedic due to the characters’ antics) slice of life story. 

Judging it on its story itself, it’s a refreshing break from the typical releases of the genre – anime with a focus on providing a slice of life often (but not always) get bogged down by being also romance anime driven by misunderstandings, so to have a story where the main driving force is an internal character trait, Bocchi’s social anxiety, rather than intentionally constructed plot contrivances is something refreshing. “Bocchi the Rock” also manages to keep amazing characterisation throughout its 12-episode run, with all the characters (not just the main characters) feeling properly fleshed out – aside from the main cast, the show’s side characters have their own little quirks that writes how they interact with the world around them – Seika’s hard love, PA-san’s silent support and Kikuri’s drunken stumbling. There’s even a pair of unnamed passersby's, introduced when Bocchi plays at a street concert, who end up coming back for her other performances, both at a live venue and at her school. 

Yet, what keeps me entranced by this show is not just the story, but the sheer passion this show oozes. Bocchi the Rock is an unashamed love letter towards Japanese music – the venue, the bands, the listeners, the entire scene. The show captures the lives of musicians as just that – lives. Rather than having a Whiplash-esque passion towards music, each character exists outside of the stage, going out, eating and having fun in a way that lessens the focus on the music and keeps the characters grounded. Yet, even when the band is up on stage and playing, the show still captures a rich depth from the band’s perspective, taking into consideration factors such as the public’s comments, both negative and positive, the band’s morale as well as the improvised resolution of on-stage issues – in a performance at her high school, one Bocchi’s guitar strings breaks, and she resorts to using a glass bottle to play barre chords.

There are also small references to numerous things that the show throws in – the main characters’ names are all taken from the members of one of Japan’s biggest bands, Asian Kung-Fu Generation. Even the general setting, Shimo-Kitazawa, is famous as a hotspot of live music and livehouses – a part bar, all music venue, common in Japan. 

Of course, the star of the show is the music. As is the case with most music-themed anime, the show comes with its own songs, some played by the in-universe band, some as openings and endings, and they are really, really good. Whilst each song is tied together with an underlying tone, none of them sound the same. The slow, Oasis-like ballad of ‘Flashbacker’, the heavy distortion of “That Band” and the upbeat pace of ‘Seishun Complex’; each track wonderfully manages to contrast with each other, an amazing model. To me, each song in the show is an amazing charcuterie board introduction to Japanese rock, whilst not capturing everything, it manages to capture variety. And I’m certainly not the only one who enjoys them – it reached number one on the Billboard Hot Albums chart and was well received by multiple actual music journalists.

It also helps that the songs are written and composed by some recognisable names when it comes to Japanese – the pop rock arrangement of Kana-Boon in ‘Distortion’, the peggies’ joyful rhythmic influences in ‘Nani ga Warui’, and tricot’s math-rock sorcery in ‘Karakara’ (one of my favourite tracks) all manage to not only bring an audible influence to the show’s realism, but also reinforces this idea of variety – the depth of the Japanese scene.

To call Japanese rock a monolithic genre, as with all genres of music, would be doing it a disservice - the only thing that ties these songs together is their place of origin. Stylistically, atmospherically, nothing forces a “Japanese rock” song towards a particular sound. The anime even acknowledges it with a tonal whiplash in the Shibuya-based band Sick Hack’s psychedelic alternative track “Watashi Dake Yuurei” – the bass is the star in the arrangement, the distortion is out of the world, the vocals are stretched out more and the tempo keeps your leg tapping up and down throughout the track. As an area well-renowned for its vibrant nightlife and huge indie scene, the song manages to capture another side of Japan’s music scene.

I first watched this show sometime around the end of high school, a couple of months after the final episode aired in Japan, after seeing some clips of the short, yet brilliant, animated gags the show sprinkles in throughout its runtime. Yet, the atmosphere of the show, the fun of the tracks, was an ember that sparked a curiosity in exploring the scene, finding more bands that had the same tone as the tracks on the song. 

Even as the show is targeted towards capturing the essence of 2000s Japanese rock, the love and passion it shows not just towards musicians but also listeners, gig-pigs, and those on the other side off the stage helps incite you to dig deeper, to really dive in yourself to find new bands, to enjoy yourself and your hobby without remorse, regardless of location, regardless of taste. Whilst I’ve always preferred rock music as my genre of choice, Bocchi the Rock managed to give me a new, rejuvenated lease on this passion, something that, even now, invigorates me to search for new bands, a passion that I’ve never really had up until then.

Bocchi the Rock has a quality like an illuminated sign for a restaurant down a dark alleyway at the dead of night – it sticks out, tickles the back of your brain, tantalising you, introducing you to something deeper and richer than you would expect from something so unassuming.