Bocchi the Rock Ch. 78 Review - Personal Lives

Written by Rei Caldombra 7/3/2024 Video: https://youtu.be/R3Wf9w33T-U?si=vvUC_tzzWEeNaA2D

Previous BTR chapter review: https://www.blogunderalog.com/blog-collection/bocchi-the-rock-manga-chapter-77-review-hard-work-and-memories

Kessoku Band has been practicing their new song super hard, which they can now perform perfectly. They’re really hyped up for the upcoming CD release event. Kita thinks Ryo has been working harder than anyone else for the sake of the band, but the reality is that she just does not want to go back home to her parents who are pushing her out of the house. This was brought up in the last chapter. Sorry Ryo, adulthood is coming for you whether you like it or not. 

A new development is that they will be playing one of Klimnt Night’s songs during their CD release party. This leads them to the conundrum of which 1 song to pick. They debate over a few songs with everyone putting in some thoughts. Ryo has the funniest line in the chapter here.

This is hilarious self-awareness considering Bocchi the Rock has an anime that was the big popularizer for them, very much including their great songs. Ryo is that elitist who brags about being a fan of Bocchi the Rock before it was cool. The band can’t come to a decision, so they put it off until later. 

While heading home from the venue, Bocchi is thinking about what song she thinks they should cover when she overhears people talking about the composer of Klimnt’s Night (Ame). Her past was apparently leaked and one of the people said it was shocking. Bocchi first finds one of those clickbaity articles/posts where there is no actual substance- it’s all basic pointless assumptions you can make based on her being a musician. Something like this is pretty harmless, as it does not actually reveal anything personal or portray her in a negative light. It’s just a pointless clickbait article. This is obviously portraying the fake drama posts that are constantly going around that don’t accomplish anything other than getting clicks. 

But sadly that’s not all, as next Bocchi finds the real drama article. It turns out that according to the article, Ame is the daughter of a musical power couple- a singer and a music producer. When she released a debut album early on, she was apparently accused of nepotism. This likely is people assuming that it was not actually her who made the music, it was her parents. The article says it has been turned into a “scandal” but this is a blatant exaggeration. The positive side of this is that it is just this one spot where people are talking about this, it has not hit the public consciousness at all. It’s likely that only major fans who regularly look into Ame and/or Klimnt’s Night would find this article, and would likely do the same thing as Bocchi and fact check. So it’s not as bad as many of the past life/real life exposures that we see on the internet. 

After seeing this, Bocchi is sweet and wants to make sure Ame is alright. So she reaches out to her, but of course this is Bocchi so it's not straightforward or normal. I love Bocchi’s cringey texts in this chapter. 

She’s gotten better at being social, but she still has some of that wannabe party person in her that she uses to cover up her awkwardness. She still struggles with reaching out enough that she has to put on a persona to make the move, but it is still significant progress that she was able to reach out at all. Proud of you Bocchi. 

Like in chapter 76, a big focus of the chapter is on a conversation between Bocchi and Ame. It starts with Ame having an early Bocchi level freakout, again showing their similarities. We’ve seen Bocchi many times get a big head over a little bit of attention, including in this chapter where she has said stuff like being Ame’s “Senpai at life” and how Ame’s fans should basically be her fans. Ame is doing the crazy expectations of a grandeur thing while at the same time being negative, more like early Bocchi, thinking the drama is making headlines. I like the detail that it was their manager who brought it up. It is normal for the staff of creators to keep an eye on public perception, so they were able to spot this even though it was relatively minor. 

Here Bocchi makes a big mistake, though she intended to help. She gets that Ame extreme negative reactions out over little things and gets easily carried away. I think Bocchi is a bit more self aware now, and realizes that she has done that too. So with the intention of not wanting to embarrass her by calling out her delusion, she lies and says the drama has actually spread a bit. This backfires, sending Ame into a spiral of fear about the ramifications of the drama. She says she is going to quit and drops the call. Realizing what she did, she tries to fix this the only way she knows how- by going back to her roots of acting on the internet. Of course this is not a good way to fix things. There were already plenty of nice comments online about Ame, that’s not the problem. 

Ame in her self loathing hyper fixates on negative comments, actions etc. It’s a common thing everyone can deal with, but it is an especially big problem for online creators who have issues with self esteem. There is tons of adoration towards her that we have seen since her introduction, but here all she can think about is this drama spreading. She has made huge progress by being able to join Klimnt’s night and be successful, but she still thinks she is a screw up. 

We’ve seen the topic of anonymous creatives having their pasts exposed and facing issues because of it more often recently. Jellyfish Can't Swim in the Night just recently tackled this topic, with one of the character’s going through a similar situation as Ame but far worse, involving a real scandal and idol culture. This general topic is also highly focused on in series like Oshi no Ko. The vtuber boom also plays a part in this increased exposure to the topic, as they are popular anonymous creators. As we get more series focused on online content creators this topic will continue to come up more often. I’ll go more into the heavy topic that this is at the end so anyone who just wants to focus on the chapter can ignore it if they'd like to. Bocchi the Rock is pretty light in tone and I do not want to get too heavy on a topic expanded from the chapter. 

Gotta love that after all this, Bocchi has her own extreme jump in logic freak out.

While making dummy accounts to post nice things about Ame, she comes across her debut song. Bocchi decides that this is the song they should play, and invites Ame to come to see their CD release show. We end the chapter with the other band members reacting, but it’s obvious that they’re going to say yes. This is another moment of Bocchi showing her growth and comfort with the Kessoku Band members, being willing to make the suggestion without any prompting from the others. We can definitely guess where this is going. Bocchi is likely trying to use their cover to remind Ame about what she has accomplished. She is using her awareness of being Ame’s inspiration to further inspire her into ignoring the supposed bad press. I’m looking forward to that scene more than anything, I hope to see a really wholesome conclusion for this.

Thanks for reading! Some of my more serious thoughts on the topic of info leaks are below if curious. 

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Furious typing Bocchi as a breaker.

This side of internet fandom behavior is generally pretty toxic. Thankfully this situation is not as bad as many real life ones. The leaking of a creator's personal lives and past is something that has always been a thing, and is a nuanced topic. People will be curious about people they like, that is inevitable. But I personally discourage people from indulging in it in a public setting or in any way that clearly violates basic standards of respect and privacy that you should have for others. And I take the situation of real names, family, etc much more seriously than info such as alternate online aliases that are also anonymous. If we take this situation with Ame very seriously, Ame’s life is genuinely at risk with people leaking who her parents are. She could be harassed, stalked or worse. It is bad enough even in this less severe case, with Ame getting paranoid and fearful of how this can hurt her and Klimnt’s Night. Even just by spreading real life info of anonymous people who did not put out that info themselves, you are contributing to the problem and increasing the risk on that person. I choose not to look into people’s personal lives because that should not matter in most situations and is not my business to know. I prefer to respect how someone chooses to present themselves, but sadly I recognize that other people are not like that. Some fans often act very entitled towards their idols, acting as if they deserve this information since they support them or for other reasons. And with the internet people have become very entitled to accessing information, including information they have no right to have like someone’s irl info. It’s obsessive cyberstalking, not “research so you can better understand the person and their content”. I discourage you from looking up irl info like a creep, but if that is something you for some reason cannot do, please keep it to yourself and obviously do not act on it in any way that breaches personal space and laws. Just wanted to give some of my two cents on this very serious topic. TLDR please respect people’s privacy, don’t be a creep coping about why they are looking up real life info on someone, and do not contribute to the problem. Thanks again for reading! Please debate this topic respectfully if you choose to.