Make Believe Mailer 70: Just Wanna "Bocchi The Rock!!"
Mid-life Crisises, Livehouses And Redevelopment
I knew my life had taken a turn south when I found myself trying not to catch the attention of nearby pedestrians while trying to snap a photo of a building. I don’t know why so many people were passing by the backstreets surrounding Shimokitazawa’s Shelter in the early afternoon on some random Tuesday, but they were seriously getting in the way of my quest to take a picture of a livehouse inspiring a central setting of…an anime I like.
So this is a mid-life crisis.
To be clear…I didn’t travel to Shimokitazawa just to indulge my alternate-universe otaku self. An editor who happened to live in the area wanted to meet up for coffee. I was thrilled to be given the chance to head to Shelter for a quick addition to my iPhone photo roll, as this subterranean livehouse serves as the inspiration for animated venue called Starry in the series Bocchi The Rock!! Forget that I have been to this very place to see actual humans play shows in the past…I was drawn to it, moth-to-flame-like, because of a cartoon about high school students trying to become the next Asian Kung-Fu Generation.
My loitering paid off…the people left, I swooped in, snapped a pic, and walked off to the cafe for a work meeting.
The fruits of my labor
I watched far more anime than ever before in my life — and like, I grew up concurrently with Toonami, it was right there — in 2022. I tell myself this happened because Japanese music writ large intersected with Japan’s animation industry more than ever before in the past year, and I was simply being a good journalist. This falls apart completely when you learn I excitedly awaited the arrival of new episodes of the show where high schoolers murk terrorists and now follow multiple Anya parody accounts on Twitter.
At least Bocchi The Rock!!, my personal favorite of 2022 and quite possibly my favorite series of the year period, centers around music. Debuting in the fall, the series follows high schooler Hitori Goto (the titular Bocchi, as her nickname comes to be) as she attempts to overcome crippling social anxiety in order to make her dreams of rock stardom true. Along the way, she forms a band with other adolescents, learns how to step out of her shell and navigates Tokyo’s livehouse ecosystem.
Spoilers For Bocchi The Rock!!, Now On Netflix, Ahead
It was those glances at the capital’s live music landscape that truly hooked me in. Part of it was the care the creators took to explain how it all functions — that this is, I’m willing to bet, the only anime to spend screen time talking about Japan’s pay-to-play ticket sales quota (which becomes a major plot point), a constant fixture and constant annoyance in this space. Attention to details like this make Bocchi feel more grounded in its inspiration, less about friends forming a band and more about the ever-mutating world of live music.
What drives that home the most is the feeling of otherworldliness the livehouses in the series boast. The irony of the entire first season is that Bocchi and her buds’ band fret frequently over meeting ticket requirements and generally wowing the paltry crowds that show up to Starry…but that their climatic performance at a high school culture festival attracts like seven times the crowd any of those live house gigs draw out. But that feels different in the show. That school performance is about our protagonist battling through anxiety. Those descents into the underground are about escaping into a new world.
Haru Nemuri’s “Underground,” a song I’ve always read (and embraced) as celebration of the power of slipping into a live house and getting a break from the overworld.
My favorite episode of Bocchi comes when the central teens step away from the comforts of Starry to head out to a new-to-them livehouse in Shinjuku — one clearly based off of the long-running Loft, a glorious example of a literally underground space. This is just another building housing bands, but to them — a whole ten-minute train ride from their base in Shimokitazawa — it might as while be a different world. It scares them to just go in. That’s an achingly familiar feeling — one I felt all the time when I first moved to Tokyo and wanted to find an entrance into the live music scene, and one I’m still thrilled to come across today, when I have the chance.
The live houses in Bocchi aren’t gateways to fame — once again, when the band central to this whole story dream of making it big, it’s because a record company executive decides to schlep out to a high school cultural festival, which seems silly until you think of Bocchi’s Kessoku Band as kind of a Gen Z Whiteberry. Rather, they are escapes, and almost alternate dimensions from reality.
An Aside About Ryo Yamada, A Character You Love Because She’s Just Like You Until You Realize She’s Just Like You
Bassist Ryo Yamada is either the most damning critique of the 21st-century music nerd found in anime to date…or just accidentally so. The blue-haired member of Kessoku Band is the biggest music expert of the group — she shoots off facts about Tokyo indie bands, lends members CDs from her collection to help them develop their chops, and generally exudes a knowledge of music history beyond her years. She’s the perfect avatar for any music geek — or, honestly, writer / critic — today, and for the majority of the first season I related most to her, making her my favorite character. Just look at those two screenshots above! I too love techno kayo and going through random charts originating from far-flung countries. Have you heard “Baby Otaku?” Here’s a scene of her literally dashing into a conversation to share useless history…which I do an alarming amount of time.
The twist, though, is seeing all the ugly parts of that obsession come out through Yamada . She’s introduced as coming from a rich family, but always personally broke because she keeps buying new instruments (*eyeing New York nervously*). She’s a trickster and also kind of an oddball. Most damning, though, is that her love of music gives her a perspective that makes her insufferable and fixated on money (also, insufferable). In a show mostly innocent of modern marketing, she’s the only one to bring up clicks as an incentive, and basically plays the role of “music industry insider” with her tips — amounting to “be sexy” and pander to online.
It’s a goof, until you remember that anyone who closely follows the inner workings of this space kind of operates this way, and that means a lot of people who in their head love music actually love talking about marketing…which includes many a music writer, including the one penning this newsletter, who isn’t above thinking about “the views.” And that makes them suck. If Yamada wanted to pivot to media, she’d kill as an editor at a lot of publications.
Shimokitazawa, perpetually under construction. Photo by author, February 2023
The setting of Bocchi The Rock!! has long offered the experience of — or at least idea of — escaping from the daily doldrums of Tokyo into something different. Shimokitazawa has long been held up as one of the “coolest” and most “bohemian” neighborhoods of not just Tokyo, but the world. A large chunk of that charm comes from the musical culture of the area. The number of live houses dotting the map and the bands playing them nightly helped influence the funky thrift stores, chill rock bars and other spaces that have become favorites. It’s the perfect setting for a show about kids trying to make it as an indie band, because this is where they really go to do it.
The animators behind Bocchi capture Shimokitazawa circa 2023 in great detail. Yet that accidentally reveals a tension surrounding the area — the backdrops and hangouts Kessoku Band occupy often didn’t exist 10 years ago. I’ve been living in Tokyo long enough to watch residents of a certain age change their tune about Shimokitazawa, from center of hipness and youth to losing its edge to fully gentrified. That last point comes from massive redevelopment in Shimokitazawa, starting with a massive overhaul of the train station that spurred the development of various new shopping complexes, highlighted by a massive one attached to the station containing various restaurants, a Tsutaya bookstore and more (it’s the structure featured in that linked tweet). These new creations appear all the time in Bocchi, but often as a backdrop as the characters talk or walk.
I’m not totally on board with the narrative of “they ruined our Shimokitazawa!” One of my first visits to the area was in 2012 with a friend to experience KFC’s Route 25, a bluegrass-state-tinged outlet of the fast food chain where you could order mint juleps and eat Original Recipe with silverware — not exactly “Le Vie Boheme.” I also think this specific re-development is a bit trickier, as while it is definitely jarring, it also adds plenty of value to the neighborhood1 and, as my editor friend I met up with after indulging my weeb spirit pointed out, is a billion times more accessible to disabled individuals.
Yet spiritually, I get it, because the massive changes to Shimokitazawa are just a reminder of the great tension of going about your life here. To live in Tokyo is to live in a state of constant change — construction cranes loom over every major area, and what was once familiar can vanish in favor of the new very quickly. That’s how it has always been in Tokyo — my familiar could very well have replaced some older individual’s familiar — and there’s plenty of good reasons for that. But the actual emotional impact of seeing the sights you held dear — a restaurant, a mom-and-pop grocery store, a livehouse — close is heavy, especially when it happens over and over again.2
New shopping development near Shimokitazawa Station. Photo by author, February 2023.
But Tokyo goes on, as does the culture scene in the city. One of the most earnest choices Bocchi makes is to not dwell on what was, despite the presence of more seasoned rockers who would absolutely rag on all these changes in real life. Shimokitazawa is just a place — one in constant flux, but which people still navigate as they pursue whatever they want. New faces and places3 appear, but the familiar still plays out.
Besides…that’s just the surface. The beauty of Shimokitazawa is that it connects you to the underground, and the chance to go to a place outside the regular. Bocchi knows this — Tokyo always changes, but the music — and livehouses — always remain.
Written by Patrick St. Michel (patrickstmichel@gmail.com)
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I mean, here’s where I state…Shimokitazawa has always been pretty “meh” and one reason I find it hard to get worked up over all the re-development is this area has never done it for me, either when it comes to fun or even art. Now…if they tried to pull the same stuff in Koenji, an actual hub of creativity and counterculture with better thrift stores? I’m marching against those people (and, uhhhh, it might actually be starting to happen).
Similarly, the experience of seeing your friends go away — whether because they’ve been transferred out to another city for work or decided to go back to their home country — never really gets less painful, even when it becomes an expectation.
What I absolutely love about Bocchi the Rock! -- apart from the absurdist humor -- is all the love it has for the Japanese music scene, a scene that I, perhaps like most outside Japan, have found impenetrable. It felt like an education I didn't know I need. And it timed very well with me dipping my feet back into music writing!
And then I remember I am in my mid-30s as well and probably will not have the strength to do any of this. Like I ever had when I was in my 20s, but that's a different thing altogether.
Really glad I was not the only person that felt incredibly called out every time Ryo was the main focus!