Bocchi the Rock Ch. 83 - Ryo’s Reality Check
Written by Rei Caldombra 1/10/25 Previous Chapter: Bocchi the Rock Ch. 82 - Stressed Bocchi and Weird Adults — Blog Under a Log
Starting the year off with Bocchi the Rock!
Nijika is having a rough time balancing her workload now that she is in college. For anyone who hasn’t been keeping up closely, Nijika has graduated high school and is a college student. Ryo also graduated but is just doing the band stuff and working part time at Starry like before, and is under pressure from her parents to move out.
This development is one of the things that has been very satisfying about the manga. I love that the characters are not in high school perpetually until the series ends. We get to see the characters grow as they get older. Many cute girls do cute things series can get so bogged down by sticking to the high school setting and the related tropes that they get boring, repetitive and blend in with the many other CGDCT series and high school anime as a whole. Bocchi the Rock stands out by moving outside of high school. If anyone who loved the anime but hasn’t read the manga is reading this, I highly recommend it. Obviously it doesn’t have all the great production value the anime does, but if you love these characters and their story, I think you’ll enjoy the manga too. And you’ll still get to see how the anime makes these scenes crazy in the eventual season 2 that I’m 99% certain we will get.
Back in chapter 77 I talked about how our dorito is in my opinion the overlooked hardest worker in the band. Writing songs, composing songs and singing are the 3 key processes for creating music obviously, with the other members each primarily taking on one of those roles. What is also important to a band’s success though, is the boring but very necessary logistical and technical tasks that need to get done behind the scenes. Nijika is currently doing all those things for the band while being a college student and working part time at Starry. Nijika has the right to call herself an overworked college student who can barely handle it.
Poor Nijika also has the additional burden of taking care of the star of this chapter, our girlfailure of a bassist Ryo. Ryo is mooching off of Nijika’s college food and avoiding being at home so she doesn’t have to face her parents about moving out. It's sweet that Nijika and Otsuki have become college buddies. She shouts her trauma about the apartment search process and offers to help Ryo and Nijika in their search.
Otsuki connects them with a real estate agent who is saddled with the monumental task of finding an apartment within Ryo’s budget and needs. This poor agent has to hear all of Ryo’s ridiculously unrealistic expectations for a very cheap apartment.
Ryo basically wants a very nice and convenient apartment in an optimal location in the Tokyo metro area for ~$300 rent. I’ll give Ryo some credit, her need for being able to play instruments and desire to be near ochanomizu are understandable. From here on out this chapter is about a pampered rich kid getting a reality check. The apartment Ryo desires would more realistically have ~$2000 rent. Ryo is horrified by the conditions of the first apartment presented to her that doesn’t even make it in her budget, saying it doesn’t even sound livable. It's old, tiny and requires a long walk to a station. It does legitimately seem terrible to be fair, but she isn’t working with a good budget here and Tokyo is not cheap.
They check out another apartment, which is also pretty old and dilapidated. We gave Ryo too much credit for eating weeds, she still has a rich home to return to. Sorry to the Ryo superfans, this chapter does not do your oshi any favors for her reputation. Nijika calling Ryo a poverty poser is absolutely savage and hilarious. And is accurate. Ryo has a breakdown, further showing how privileged she is by comparing this situation to Marie Antoinette. I shouldn't have to explain why that’s an extreme jump lol. Ryo didn’t even know you also need to pay for all the little additional things required for a home that may not be covered within your rent like electricity and insurance. We get a good gag of Ryo going baby mode to her parents, but then continue the same conversation. She clearly cannot afford metro Tokyo, so she should look further out. But again Ryo being a brat calls Saitama comparable to what we call the boonies. But it’s not all negative for Ryo, rejoice Ryojika fans! Ryo says that she insists on being near ochanomizu because it would let her easily hang out with Nijika. I am interpreting Ryo as being truthful here due to how she is drawn looking embarrassed and this is not followed up with a “she’s so easy” type of gag. This wins Nijika back as a supporter even after all of Ryo’s complaining. Cute.
The agent comes running stating that she found a cheap apartment near ochanomizu that allows instruments. It's ridiculously cheap at ~$150 rent, but you can easily see why that’s justified. This place is truly run down, had an accident, and barely anyone stays for long.
Being the diehard Demon Girl Next Door superfan that I am, I have to point out the similarities between this apartment building and the apartment building where Shamiko’s family lives in Demon Girl Next Door / Machikado Mazoku.
The design of the buildings are very similar, from the barred windows to where parts like the lights are placed. They both are super run down, they both have tons of talismans on/in the walls, indicating these places are so bad they think it's cursed, and they’re both abnormally cheap. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not so delusional that I am unaware that this is a common design of apartment buildings in Japan. But it also isn’t abnormal for Kirara series to reference each other. A relevant example is that one of the recent Kikuri spinoff manga chapters very directly referenced Yuru Camp (the Sick Hack members are very based and love Yuru Camp same as I do). I highly recommend the Kikuri manga for any Bocchi the Rock fans, but do be aware there are no official English translation of it coming out until April so you’ll have to rely on fan translations or do it yourself until then. Regardless please officially support it when it comes out if you can. This ends the Demon Girl Next Door aside as well as the Kikuri manga aside. I will never apologize for talking about Kikuri (or Demon Girl Next Door), but mentioning her is not irrelevant to this chapter.
Speaking of Kikuri, she lives in this terrible apartment complex, which honestly makes complete sense. This apartment building has a lot of red flags outside of living near Kikuri, and Ryo can't handle this anymore. After thinking things through, she compromises on living in Saitama, which she is way more distraught over than she should be, to the point of not wanting to talk about it even to the band members. We finish off with learning that Ryo has been composing like crazy so she can get money to leave Saitama.
This was a fun chapter where we get to explore the brutal reality of moving out and living on your own within your means. Everyone has to do it one day. I’ll end off by saying that while I will absolutely call out Ryo for her bs, it's out of love. She is genuinely a very endearing character. I don’t think she is annoying or anything like that at all. She just has her flaws more out in the open and is poked fun at more often than some of the other characters like Nijika and Kita. In recent chapters Bocchi has really been putting in work so she is not the butt of as many jokes nowadays either. But yeah I love Kessoku Band and all the characters in this show. This show excels as having lovable characters that also have a good amount of depth an development to them, especially when you compare it to the usual comedy and wholesome shows. Thanks for reading!
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The first Bocchi the Rock manga chapter I covered: Bocchi the Rock Ch. 76 Review - Anxious Heart to Heart — Blog Under a Log
Check out my Demon Girl Next Door / Machikado Mazoku overview (another one of my favorites I hyperfixate on like Bocchi the Rock): Demon Girl Next Door Series Overview - I Love this Series Dearly. — Blog Under a Log
I also covered Chapter 89 of DGND and will continue covering chapters when they release: Demon Girl Next Door Chapter 89 Review — Blog Under a Log
