I think little SingleH here is coming to a calm, slow, natural conclusion.
I think little SingleH here is becoming too much of a so-called “normie” to write like themselves anymore, or at least that of them you’ve come to know. I think little SingleH here is getting too much of a life, and I think that if left to continue on present course, the writing produced by this profile will increasingly lean towards the modern-day Hideaki Anno-style preaching and condescension. The writing output of an individual who was depressed and hyper-relatable at one point, but who got out of it and who, as a result, became out-of-touch and…I don’t know…old, for lack of a better term? Granted, I definitely continue to be depressed out of my fucking mind—no worries there, plus the fucking alcohol—but I’m still living WAY too much. I’m making too many real friends; I’m having to much success at work; I’m making too many connections; I’m having too much casual sex; I’m fucking around with things and aspects of people and society that, barely a few years ago, I couldn’t have ever possibly imagined. I don’t even know what I’m doing anymore, and as of the day in which I’m writing this, I hugged someone. A friend. Having a real, in-the-flesh “friend” is already fucking bizarre enough, but that I would be able to platonically and emotionally hug her??? Where the fuck am I? WHO the fuck am I??? She asked if I needed a hug during my lunch, and I just straight-up took it as a joke. When I was walking away to clock back in, I turned around and said, “You would hug me?” And she just laughed. Later, when I was getting ready to leave, she tells me to “check back in” with her before I left, and I was like, “Okay…? Am I in trouble?” To which the answer was no. She just wanted to have another impromptu therapy session to make sure I wasn’t collapsing completely, but at the end, I said, “Also, I take it back from earlier. Can I have a hug?” She puts on this big, stupid smile, and then we hugged, for like, a while.
These past few nights I’ve been religiously watching this trash, this gutter filth, perhaps the literal polar opposite of Bocchi the Rock!. It’s just twenty-year-olds, I mean totally teenage actors engagingly in endless sex and drugs. Sheer trash. Euphoria on HBO. But I like watching it at, I don’t know, what time is it? 3:37am? And the reason I do so is the same reasoning I gave for enjoying Kanojo, Okrishimasu. “I love allowing myself to get invested in trash like this just so it can frustrate me and force my cold, dead, icy heart to feel literally anything other than passivity and dejection.” And the scene I watched just a second ago, of this character texting her boyfriend while she was drunk? The manner in which her phone autocorrected certain typos and not others? That was EACTLY me. That scene, in this fucking braindead retard schlock teen melodrama, was without dialogue or music, deeply relatable. Ask any of these poor motherfuckers who talk to me via Discord regularly and who know how I type when I’m drunk, because that shit was precise. However, as much as I respect Bocchi the Rock!, and as little as I respect Euphoria, I’m fairly certain I can’t say anything like that about the former. This isn’t a disconnect exclusive to cute girl anime either. Like, if I were to throw on K-On!, a show to which this has seen much comparison, then I don’t think I would be saying this about any of their particular interactions. I don’t think I could see any of their particular moments and memories and think anything to the effect of, “I can’t see real girls doing this.” Because that was always the appeal of K-On! in the first place, their eccentricity almost paradoxically juxtaposed with the series’ realism. Maybe it was Yamada Naoko’s direction, maybe it was the super naturalistic color design, maybe it was something I can’t even put into words. But whatever it was, K-On! had it, and Bocchi the Rock! doesn’t.
You want a show about four or five cute moe girls with multicolored hair, multicolored eyes, and multicolored personalities? Because the anime community has a fucking ocean of options for you to choose from in that department. Some might argue a landfill to be a much more fitting analogy though, because, after all, quantity doesn’t always equal quality. There’s a lot of unexceptional sewage that flows through every season and every genre of anime, and Bocchi the Rock! is miles above any of that, but I’m quite positive we are not witnessing a modern classic in the making. The visual direction is impressive outright—no surprise considering the director’s association with Shingo Natsume, one of the industry’s currently active creative geniuses—but while it may be just enough to carry the series’ more unexceptional elements, it’s nowhere near enough to elevate it…which is kind of a picky distinction to make, but a distinction I would argue is more than a little necessary considering the wildly high mean score Bocchi the Rock! boasts as of time of writing. I apologize for failing to escape comparison, but keep in mind that from where I’m standing, you people started it, not me. You people were the ones talking about “the K-On! of our generation,” not me, and when I read proclamations such as these, I have certain expectations in mind, because the last time I heard such proclamations was in winter of 2018. A Place Further Than The Universe was a special anime. It had powerful performances, fantastic direction, a satisfying sense of progression and growth, and a heartrending emotional arc; it had a more-or-less high-quality production, a plethora of fantastic insert songs, and simply beautiful imagery. It at the same time, however, failed to hit that level of sheer believability and down-to-Earth realism that a K-On!-class masterpiece would, and if you ask me, Bocchi the Rock! falls even shorter.
“Wow, my latest video already has so many comments. [giggles] I’ve been racking up the views lately, too, and people are telling me I’m good… Yeah, maybe it’s okay if I can’t handle real life? There are tons of people cheering for me online!”
There’s a lot of blatantly obvious reasons why I, of all fucking people, would be compelled to call this series and specifically this character “relatable,” but relating to her isn’t my problem. My problem is believing in her. In winter of 2018, some anons on /a/ were criticizing a scene in A Place Further Than The Universe which they felt to have been a shameless rip-off of a scene from K-On!, and whether or not I agreed with their cynical assessment or not, I couldn’t help but entertain the comparison. The scene was in one of the earlier episodes, when the girls were training and first spending a night together outdoors, sleeping in a tent. As they laid back and tried to sleep, they kept each other awake with silly small-talk and dumb jokes, and this thread on /a/ had completely convinced themselves that the scene was attempting to directly mimic the scene from the Kyoto trip in K-On!, the scene after the pillow fight where Ritsu keeps trying to prod at Mio, scare her, and make Yui and Mugi laugh. If you read a text summary of both those scenes, they would seem to be fundamentally identical, but when you actually sit down and watch them, one feels ever so slightly fake (or perhaps “forced” is a better word), while the other feels deeply real. Bocchi the Rock! has cute character designs and good voice acting; it has a surprisingly consistent and well-balanced production considering the studio behind it; it has a clear sense of inspiration and emotion spearheaded by an up-and-coming director who clearly learned all the right lessons from mentors past; and it has dialogue, monologue, and audiovisual expression that will 100% make you feel at times emotional, be it for a second, a minute, or a while. It does not, however, have a scene of Tainaka Ritsu saying goofy shit to keep her best friends from falling asleep on their trip to Kyoto, because she loves them and doesn’t want the moment to end.
Of all the human, real-life person things I’ve been newly dabbling in lately, by far the most profound and telling has been my willingness and desire to take pictures. You see, I’ve never taken or had pictures. Pictures are friends, family, loved ones, memories. None of which I’ve ever had. But now that I think I’m starting to have them, I want to save these moments, these jokes, these things to think about later, to tell other friends about some other time, smiling, laughing, or simply reminiscing. The sense of belonging I feel when I see someone who missed out on something, turn my phone to face them, and see a smile on their face is one that I still haven’t comprehended enough to fully express the feeling of catharsis from which I receive. Memories I have of K-On! can stand emotionally on par with memories I now seem to be making at an increasingly rapid pace, whereas memories I have of this show and many others will likely not survive the alcohol, let alone the passing time. I would be very impressed with myself if I was still writing as SingleH this time next year, because I don’t see any of what I’m currently building crashing and burning anytime soon. I’ve fallen in love with these people, and I’ve grown addicted to the warmth they make me feel, even in this weather. It is fourteen fucking degrees fucking Fahrenheit in fucking Dallas right now, and as corny and stupid as it sounds, I’d say Bocchi the Rock! provided me with about as much warmth as this glass of Aberlour. I obviously first turned to my beloved rum to find some solace, but when it failed to do the trick and soothe my freezing body, I figured the time to stop being a dainty little bitch had finally come, and only the spice of whiskey could truly warm me up, but I appear to have underestimated the diversity of my options. The warmth of Bocchi the Rock! didn’t even need to be spicy either. It just needed to be warm. Like that hug from Ali.
Thinking back, I could hear her heartbeat. Hopefully she couldn’t hear mine…
Thank you for reading.
