Character · Bocchi the Rock!
Hitori Gotoh
Three years of guitar practice in a cupboard, and she still cannot say hello to a stranger.
In Otakana the clue reads: Pink-haired guitarist with crushing social anxiety
- Type
- Character
- Series
- Bocchi the Rock!
- Letters
- 6 · Normal
Hitori Gotoh taught herself guitar alone in her bedroom, six hours a day, because she had read that being in a band makes shy people popular. By the time Nijika Ijichi drags her into Kessoku Band she plays very well and functions socially not at all. Her nickname, Bocchi, is cut from hitoribocchi, meaning all alone, and it doubles as a pun on the given name her parents happened to choose.
The anime animates her panic literally rather than describing it. She melts into a puddle, dries into clay, sprouts mould, gets replayed as stop-motion or as grainy camcorder footage, and once turns up as a black-and-white art film. CloverWorks changed technique whenever her mood did. Underneath all of it the music is played straight, and the live house scenes are what the jokes have been paying for.
Aki Hamaji started the four-panel manga in Manga Time Kirara Max in 2018, and the 2022 anime turned a modest gag strip into a hit, with Kessoku Band's album charting in Japan and Shimokitazawa filling up with fans photographing street corners. Bocchi works because the show never cures her. She gets slightly braver in specific situations and stays a disaster everywhere else.
Spelling BOCCHI
BOCCHI has six letters and a doubled C that comes straight out of the Japanese. The small tsu written before the sound doubles the consonant after it, so the C arrives twice. Drop one and you get BOCHI, which is what most people type first. The word means alone, from hitoribocchi, and it is her nickname rather than the name on her school register.