Bocchi the rockBocchi is a weird one for me
The anime itself is about this asocial girl who joins a band but has lots of social anxiety, kinda like hitori bocchi if she was older and played the guitar, this is an adaptation of a kirara magazine manga, a magazine specialized in cute girls doing cute things manga, i'm quite a big fan of them actually
like most slice of life, a lot of bocchi is on the feelings, bocchi IS a relatable character for many, mainly for the audience that watch CGDCT anime, and I think the way bocchi tackles social anxiety has actually a good amount of nuance, this isn't really your typical sheldon cooper autism, the ways bocchi portrait social anxiety feels accurate with at least my life experiences, not really being that shy online, recording herself playing the guitar and uploading it online to her youtube channel isn't really a problem for her, but then, she's more afraid and clueless when it comes to using social media like twitter, she can talk to her friends about whatever, but it's really hard for her to really express more conflictive thoughts and often has to talk it with other people feel, and of course, she has a lot of scenic panic.
I feel that most other movies (not so much with anime, anime does this pretty well) would just fall into a more generic stereotype and not really go into the topic of what situations are hard for bocchi to deal and which are not. And again, I think bocchi does a REALLY good job in tackling internet related topics, a lot better than works like oshi no ko or similar, since it feels less like trying to cash in stuff like idol culture or vtubers and more grounded
The actual anime does add a lot of visual gags that went really viral, kinda pushing in the direction that works like girls last tour did in the past of using more abstract character representations/ignoring biology to portray certain feelings, this helps the anime and it's pretty good
Although, for as much praise I have towards bocchi, I feel their position and prestige in our current cultural landscape is a little bit unwarranted, bocchi is a good anime, but we must not ignore how much our current anime culture and seasonal system contributes to that
Anime grew a lot during the pandemic, it basically started a whole new wave of anime watchers which mainly only really follow seasonal animes, and bocchi the rock is the first really good, original slice of life, since most of the best recent slice of life are sequels, so, that means bocchi IS the first exposure a lot of people have had to the slice of life genre. We live in an age of hype and fandom, so it just exploded
Thing is, a lot of the praise the general audience is giving to bocchi is less a bocchi specific thing and more a slice of life thing, which is something that saddens me a little bit, since slice of life and kirara are peak and I want more attention on them
In fact, I would go as far to say that I feel bocchi is overrated, not personally, I think it's where it should be and i'm really happy for that, but knowing the general anime audience and what the bias supporting bocchi is, I feel the rating of bocchi is a little bit unfair compared to the rest of the genre.
Moving into another topic, we have the "i'm literally bocchi the rock" phenomenon, something that has been criticized a lot, this is people claiming they're quite like literally bocchi while not being that similar to her or even without having seen the anime, and honestly, I don't mind it, let me explain
There are different archetypes for "literally me" characters, the most known one is the edgy one, claiming that characters like kaneki or sasuke are just like me frfr. There are SO MANY characters like this, and even more if we count the OCs people make and stuff, yet, this isn't the only type of literally me characters, bocchi instead is in the "i'm a social wreck" type of literally me, and for this, there aren't that many characters, well, there ARE, but they're not very popular
Bocchi is the first time a character like this has been that popular in a little while. If you were to say "i'm literally ao from koisuru asteroid frfr", people would have no fucking clue what you are talking about, but if you were to say "i'm literally bocchi the rock", most people interested in anime know what that is and what that means, so even if there is a character that you relate to more or that is closer to you as a person, bocchi is the one character that people will understand.
It's also important to mention that hitori gotoh is really good LGBT representation, specifically for a work that doesn't even feature romance, in fact, the reveal that bocchi is a lesbian is something that most people who have some sort of adversity against it wont really notice, while, the audience of a work like bocchi which are autistic as fuck people, would notice, the reveal is a scene that has yet to be adapted where
bocchi is playing splatoon, she finds out she has a natural talent for it and starts daydreaming as her becoming a professional gamer in the future, and in that future, she imagines herself with a cosplayer girlfriend.so yeah, I can't really blame anyone for saying bocchi is literally me frfr
actually, if all of society could kinda relate to bocchi, we would live in a utopia
slice of life anime are underrated and I hope bocchi helps impulse this genre even further
placed in S rank
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reffty_gag wrote:
watch Parasite (2019)
already watched
Parasite is a korean film about a family that just lies and conspire to get jobs working in the mansion of some rich guys and be able to escape poverty
This movie is a criticism of capitalism, how the system is unfair, about how rich people are out of touch and care too much about certain problems that the middle class or lower class would find elementary, about how violence can be born in such a system
but, my favourite thing that parasite has done, is being the first ever foreign movie to win best picture at the oscars. This is at least from my perspective, a BIG FUCKING DEAL, and when you take into consideration what the actual message of the movie is, I think it's even a bigger deal
For as long as I can remember, Hollywood has been king, if you think of 80's movies, you probably think of 80's American action movies, which often than not are not very good or deep. The only movies you've probably seen in your life are american movies and movies from your local country, maybe you've even watched an european movie, but mainly only if you're a film buff
This isn't because there aren't any good movies from outside america, or even that they started producing them after the 80's, is that even during the early stages of the internet, hollywood has controlled a monopoly on movie discussion, abraker would here claim "AMERICAN CULTURE VICTORY!", but that is something that has been degrading over time
Historically, the two greatest films ever created have been citizen kane and the godfather, these movies aren't that good, but we have constructed our definition of what a good movie looks like around those two movies
Most foreign movies didn't make it to america or europe, if they made it here it was heavily censored thanks to the cold war, or at least here in spain, thanks to franco, american movies, and specifically pro america movies, were the only ones we could watch and the only ones that received marketing and wide theatrical releases
In fact, IMDB which is what the whole internet used to use for movie discussions had soft censorship of foreign movies. Foreign movies were less popular due to the censorship in the non internet era and IMDB placed a LARGE emphasis on popularity for their scores to actually be counted in things like the top 250
However, with time, foreign movies have started gaining influence on the internet, teenage girls are really into k-dramas and j-dramas, film buffs are using letterboxd which doesn't censor foreign films, indian movies are as popular as ever just look at things like RRR, and even 50 year old women are watching turkish dramas.
parasite was one of the biggest hits of that years and it wasn't american, parasite is a representation of hollywood losing their monopoly, and i'm down for it
so yeah, shoutouts to parasite, good movie
placed in A rank