Why am I even watching this anime instead of reading the original manga? This is a question I increasingly find myself asking as I get older and my free time exponentially begins to dwindle. Why would I invest 3 hours of my time to watch a 12 episode anime series that would likely take me less than an hour to read the original manga for. I’ve sifted through and dropped a bunch of anime adaptations over the years, but in watching Bocchi the Rock, for the first time in a long time, I found an adaptation I can wholeheartedly recommend watching.
Of course there are cases where there is no prior source material, so you have to watch the anime to experience the story but that tends to be the exception rather than the norm. But Bocchi the Rock stands as a prime example of what makes an anime adaptation worth viewing over the original manga.
Specifically, in its unique blend of experimental animation techniques in concert with its suburb sound design, the Bocchi the Rock anime creates an adaptation that far surpasses the original source material and gives it a reason for being over its manga counterpart. Bocchi the Rock is a prime example of what the key to a successful anime adaption is. It lies not merely in visual fidelity, as some people seem to believe, but in the use of the unique properties of the video medium to create a unique experience.
To be clear, the Bocchi the Rock manga is not bad by any stretch of the imagination, but I imagine you would be hard pressed to find a large population of people who heard of Bocchi before the anime aired. It isn’t bad per say but somewhat forgettable. The characters are fun but it’s hardly the pinnacle of its genre. Bocchi the Rock is one the few cases where I can wholeheartedly endorse watching the anime over reading the original manga.
Curiously, Bocchi the Rock is probably not what comes to mind when people talk about a show being “well” animated, especially when you look at some of the more mundane scenes. The backgrounds are visually detailed, but that’s because they are digital scans of photographs from the Tokyo area, leading to backgrounds that are completely static and reliant on foreground movement of the characters. There are cases where the CGI looks a little bizarre, and the show is clearly not immune from the cost saving techniques that have become ubiquitous in the anime industry.
If you watch carefully you’ll see no shortage of still frames and somewhat suspicious camera angles, both designed to save time, effort and money. Oftentimes the animation becomes intentionally bad as a way to reinforce certain story related gags. Despite this, there’s no shortage of people praising the animation and direction of Bocchi the Rock.
When you ask people what makes “good” animation, you’ll often get a response about shows being animated with a very high level of visual fidelity. For instance, Ufotable is a highly praised animation studio because of the remarkable beauty of most of their works, particularly in the action scenes. When people talk about “bad” animation they often refer to weird looking in-between frames or egregious cost cutting measures like overreliance on still images.
Of course there are cases where an anime can look so cheaply made and so visually off putting as to ruin your enjoyment of the product (e.g. Berserk 2016). But I want to make the case that simple visual fidelity is not and has never been the primary goal of the anime medium and it is precisely this willingness to detach from highly realistic animation techniques that has defined anime.
To understand what I mean by this, it’s useful to have a brief discussion of the history of animation, animation techniques and anime. I am by no means an expert on animation or even particularly well-versed in the arts so this explanation might be a bit ruff. But it’s necessary to understand the goals and background of anime as a medium and what makes Bocchi the Rock shine above its compatriots. As a gross simplification, before the advent of computers, all animation was drawn by hand. Those drawings would then be transferred onto plastic sheets called cells, and then photographed and played back in sequence to create the appearance of movement.
Traditional 2D animation can be broadly classified between “full” and “limited” styles of animation. As the name implies, the goal of full animation is the creation of fluid and realistic movement, a goal not shared by limited animation. Prior to the 1960s, the animation market was dominated by Disney and in Japan by Toei Animation as well as its predecessor Nihon Douga. Both companies were heavily focused on polished, full animation, as can be seen in classic Disney cartoons from this era.
One of the most clear ways the difference between full and limited animation manifested was that full animation would require the drawing of completely unique frames for every frame of the animation, whereas the first limited animation shows would reuse the same image for three frames. This “three frame shooting,” as it is called, was ubiquitous among early anime. Other limited animation techniques include the use of stop-images or still frames; sectioning, where only a part of a scene or character is animated moving instead of drawing an entirely new frame; or repetition, where a series of frames are reused for sequences like walking or running. Even though anime has been made by computers for years now, you can still see many of these limited animation techniques at work in modern anime.
While it has its predecessors, the first widespread use of limited animation was the seminal 1963 anime Astro Boy, one of the most famous and consequential anime ever created. Due to the economic and time constraints of producing new weekly episodes of Astro Boy, the anime makes extensive use of limited animation techniques to save money and manpower. Astro Boy and other anime from this era rely on limited animation techniques that convey the sense of movement while remaining largely still. In his book Anime’s Media Mix, Marc Steinberg, professor of cinema studies of Concordia University, refers to this interplay between stillness and motion that is characteristic of anime as “dynamic immobility.”
One of the most classic examples of dynamic immobility would be when a samurai or other swordsman cuts an object. As a way to highlight the swordsman’s incredible precision and speed, the object almost always remains still for a second before cleanly splitting apart. It’s this stillness that helps to enhance the sense of motion, despite the fact that when you cut something in real life it obviously doesn’t stay still before splitting apart.
While this sense of dynamic immobility and application of limited animation techniques is a result of the economic and production constraints on most anime, it’s in these limited animation techniques that anime becomes, well, anime. Consider the iconic image of Gendo from Neon Genesis Evangelion with his hands crossed beneath his face. The image is iconic because of its frequent appearances in the EVA. But this was the result of a limited animation technique known as a “bank system” where a cell is drawn and then reused several times on different backgrounds.
On the flipside, while anime often incorporates a sense of stillness, manga does the opposite to create a sense of movement out of a still medium. For example, consider the use of speed lines that create the sense of movement despite the fact that the image is, in fact, very still. Or consider how manga very frequently changes angles and perspectives from frame to frame. This sounds trite, but this wasn’t always the case. It was actually Tezuka Osamu, famed creator of Astro Boy, that pioneered this idea of making manga feel as though it was moving.
Previously, the way manga was created was highly reminiscent of early cinema. Scenes would generally use one fixed angle and distance from the characters. It was Tezuka who experimented with the idea of using multiple angles and spatial distances in his manga. As one manga critic succinctly put it, “whereas previously, one scene was equal to one frame, Tezuka created a style where one scene was equal to multiple frames.” It was these innovations, among others, that allowed Astro Boy to convey a remarkable degree of motion for a still medium.
The intense popularity of the Astro Boy anime actually puzzled producers at the time, who wondered why audiences so readily accepted the limited animation of Astro Boy compared to the highly fluid full animation that was the norm at the time. Steinberg argues that the answer to that question lies in the interplay between manga and anime. As he explains, the “feat of limited anime [was] not only making still images feel like they were moving but also making moving images feel like they were still.” It’s not through the creation of highly realistic, smooth animation that makes viewers feel as though their favorite anime had come to life, it’s through the deliberate use of stillness to bring continuity to the original manga that defines animation.
This continuity is important for the business implications of what’s referred to as “media mix” or the serialization of entertainment franchises across many mediums like TV, books, manga, toys, and video games. The dynamic immobility of anime helps bring continuity with other aspects of the media franchise and encourages the sale of character goods like figurines, posters or keychains as well as sales of the original source material. This is relevant because anime itself is often not a particularly large money maker, resulting in anime sometimes being seen as a kind of glorified advertisement to drive sales to more profitable aspects of the media mix.
The unfortunate consequence here is that this kind of business incentive often does not leave room for particularly creative or inventive use of the unique audiovisual medium that anime provides. Manga naturally provides a storyboard for an anime to work off of, which is why when you compare any anime adaptation of a manga you can usually see very clearly what scene is being adapted.
Particularly when you are working with an established and popular source, it’s very tempting to just play it safe with the anime, churn out something with passable production values and popular voice talent. Then you sit back and let the anime coast off the quality and popularity of the manga. But what this creates is a whole host of anime adaptations that feel more like animated versions of the original manga rather than a unique, anime version of the manga.
This brings us back to the original question of what makes an anime worth watching over its manga originator. If most anime exist to simply evoke a sense of the manga, why should I even bother watching the anime instead of reading the manga? The difference between an average adaptation and a truly special one lies in their ability to experiment and play with the medium of animation to enhance the original story.
One of the key innovations of anime’s limited animation was how it was able to break free of the “ideology of realism” that defined full animation and create a whole new style and aesthetic. While creating a work that is visually appealing and enjoyable to look at will no doubt create an anime that is fun to watch, it’s through experimenting with the bounds of anime and animation techniques that you create a series that stands apart from the source material.
And of course, the most memorable aspects of Bocchi the Rock are its many “Bocchi time” sequences that employ a variety of often quite surreal scenes and animation techniques to reinforce Bocchi’s social anxiety. The intersplicing of claymation, live action, minimalist among other animation styles are not only highly entertaining but dynamically reinforce to the viewer the depth of Bocchi’s anxiety. It’s through these Bocchi time sequences that the show is able to turn what is otherwise a one panel, passing gag from the manga into something memorable and striking.
Take the Tsuchinoko gag when Kessoku band goes to take group pictures in episode 4. The original scene from the manga is only eight panels long but the scene becomes one of the most memorable parts of the entire anime through its creative use of animation and audio design. Bocchi’s dissociation and flailing around on the ground vividly drives home her social isolation in a way drives home the degree of her social isolation.
When Kita suggests that Bocchi open her own social media account, Bocchi and the show begin to break down in dramatic fashion, as if the video itself is experiencing some kind of error. The use of inventive animation is both narratively interesting to artistically illustrate how deep Bocchi’s social instability goes but is also visually striking in a way that the original source material is not.
This inventive animation also helps to disguise instances of cost saving limited animation techniques from the viewers. While the show is no stranger to limited animation, I barely noticed them on my first viewing because of how seamless they often are. Take SICK HACK’s performance in episode 10. Funnily enough there is extremely little animated footage of SICK HACK actually playing. There’s a small bit at the beginning with short shot lengths and zoomed in angles, likely to save time to work on Kessoku Band’s beautifully animated performance during the culture festival.
Instead the scene is mostly composed of stop images imposed over computer animated, psychedelic background effects. One because SICK HACK plays psychedelic rock, but also as a way to visually show how the performance impacts Bocchi. We see how she goes from being perturbed from the environment to the crowd visually melting away as Bocchi becomes completely enraptured in the music and divorced from her surroundings. The scene was likely conceived in part out of an inability to invest significant resources in animating SICK HACK’s performance but the end result is actually more narratively effective and visually interesting than if they had cobbled together some CGI.
This is a good segway into how the music and sound design work in concert with the animation.. The music from Bocchi is extremely good. The studio went out of their way to get many famous Japanese musicians to work on the sound track. Taniguchi Maguro, lead vocalist for KANA-BOON of Naruto fame, wrote and composed the first ending, Distortion!. Nakajima Ikkyu, vocalist and guitarist for the math rock band Tricot wrote and composed the second ending, Karakara. Kitazawa Yuho, lead vocalist and guitarist of The Peggies, known for their the openings of Bunny Girl Senpai and Rent a Girlfriend, wrote and composed the third ending, Nani ga Warui. The lyrics for Guitar to Kodoku to Aoi Hoshi and Wasureta Yaranai were written by ZAQ, known for her work on the Chunibyo series.
One of the key advantages of anime over manga is, of course, the fact that anime is both an auditory as well as visual medium. It’s no coincidence that many music focused anime like, Bocchi the Rock, K-on! or Hibike Euphonium are generally considered vastly better than their original source material. What’s amazing about Bocchi the Rock is the incredible effort and attention to detail that went into the audio and visual design, allowing them to mesh seamlessly with the narrative, both mutually reinforcing each other..
Take for instance, the first time Kessoku band auditions to earn the right to perform at Starry. When you look at Kita playing the guitar, she looks stiff and a little unnatural. Compare this to Bocchi who’s guitar playing is much more fluid, a nice bit of visual storytelling to reinforce how Kita is still a novice at guitar compared to Bocchi’s extensive experience. At the end of their performance, Nijika’s sister gives them all advice. She tells Kita and Bocchi to stop looking down so much, Nijika to stop looking so tense, and Ryo to have greater awareness of her bandmates.
Now fast forward to episode 12 performance of Seiza ni Naretara. Gone is Kita’s stiff and unnatural strumming, reflective of the effort she put into practice. Furthermore we also see her spending more time looking up and directly at the audience instead of down at her guitar. Nijika looks significantly more relaxed behind her drumset. When Bocchi’s guitar string snaps, Ryo has the awareness to turn and cue Nijika into repeating the last 8 bars of the song so Bocchi can get her chance at the guitar solo. Through the girls’ glances and nonverbal communication, we can see just how much more in sync and comfortable they’ve become playing with each other. The visuals and audio work seamlessly in this performance to convey just how far Kessoku band has come since their first performance together.
The sheer degree of effort and attention to detail that went into all of Kessoku band’s performances is truly remarkable. My understanding is that the band is animated correctly to match whatever song they’re playing, though I don’t have the musical knowledge to confirm this. An obvious example even a greenhorn like myself can notice is that Nijika hitting the cymbals is correctly synced.
When you hear them play, the audio is panned to give the impression that the viewer is watching from the audience. Bocchi’s guitar plays out of the right ear and Ryo’s bass plays out of the left. When we watch them play for a real live audience for the first time you can hear that the song is off tempo and that the members are out of sync with each other. In all of their performances the shadows and lighting dynamically move, giving the sense that they are actually being lit by the stage.
There’s this truly wonderful moment towards the end of their performance of Seiza ni naretara where after Bocchi successfully recovers from her string snapping, we hear her take a deep breath and stare upwards, directly into the lights before finishing off the song, a simple but potent way of relieving the tension built by the string snapping fiasco.
When they finish playing we finally see Bocchi look directly into the crowd for the first time. The rapturous applause of the audience slowly fades out and the audio focuses on the Bocchi’s slow and deep breaths as we see her soak in the performance she and her friends just gave. It’s all of these details, the breathing, the glances, the musical flourishes that makes these scenes so remarkable. All details that there would simply be no way to convey in a manga panel.
Bocchi the Rock’s adaptation is what I wish more anime adaptations would look like. The show is clearly a labor of love, born of a production staff who intuitively and deeply understood the feelings and story of the original manga. From interviews we know the animation director has been a huge fan of the manga since the very beginning and that familiarity and respect for the original source material shines through.
Rather than just string together the original 4koma manga and add some music and vocals, the show uses the unique characteristics of anime as medium to bring the manga to life with details and techniques only possible in video. Funnily enough, this level of experimentalism and creativity is likely only possible coming from a lesser known source material. Why take the risk with a Chainsaw Man, Spy x Family or Komi-san? Bocchi the Rock is a masterclass in adaptation, in what makes anime as a medium special and how much more anime adaptations can be than just long form commercials for books and character goods.
Source another further reading:
Steinberg, Mark. Anime’s Media Mix: Franchising Toys and Characters in Japan. University of Minnesota Press. 2012.
Furness, Maureen. “Full and Limited Animation.” Art in Motion. 131–149. 2007.
