But that's not what makes me rate the show what I did.
With NANA, Sakamichi no Apollon, and Given, music means much more than it did in Bocchi the Rock. In SnA and Given, characters conversed to each other with music, and that is what often gave the two shows larger staying power for me. Music as not some way to express a moment of youth and aspiration, but to actually open up to someone or to others by speaking to them with timings, jams, and "locking-in" to the general groove and direction everyone playing is feeling. Bocchi the Rock doesn't carry that same feeling. Bocchi doesn't have a musical conversation with anyone she's playing with. She's just playing with them and hoping to play her role in the group and hope they all can make some meaningful memories. Yes, she does muster up courage and takes charge, but it's mostly when she feels the need to carry the band through their inadequacies rather than make a musical break and organically jam with them. And that's fine and all, but with someone as introverted as her, it feels like wasted potential to not have her experience musical conversations similar to SnA and Given and lock-in with the people she plays with. Instead, she's an introverted girl in an anime landscape of introverted girls where "they dreamed they could so they did" but cuts herself short of becoming something greater, and really something more meaningful.
All of that being said, it's a show I would recommend since a LOT of people really like everything going for it, and with the popularity it has now, when another season pops up, hopefully Bocchi can actually "talk" to someone.
