Bocchi the Rock! Volume 2 Review

Toward the end of the year, Yen Press began releasing the highly anticipated Bocchi the Rock! manga series. Having risen to stardom due to the popular anime adaptation, the original certainly had a lot to live up to and while it fell somewhat short of my expectations, it still proved entertaining. Now with Volume 2 in hand, let’s find out if it continues to be an enjoyable read!

In Volume 1 of Bocchi the Rock! we met our protagonist Hitori Goto, a girl with crippling anxiety who finds herself dragged into a band when second-year student Nijika Ijichi discovers that Hitori plays guitar. Now she’s been playing in Kessoku Band for a while along with bassist Ryou Yamada and additional guitarist Ikuyo Kita; she’s even working a part-time job to fund their activities.

However, now it’s summer vacation and faced with having to arrange meet-ups and activities if she wants to spend time with her newfound friends, Hitori has decided to stay home and play her guitar. After all, surely the others will ask her out themselves, right?

Unfortunately for Hitori, the whole summer passes with no one inviting her out so by the time the group are returning to school, she feels more anxious than ever. And back at school, things go from bad to worse when it’s announced the school cultural festival is fast approaching! Nijika suggests that Kessoku Band perform and while Hitori has always dreamed of an opportunity like this, she can’t help but fear she’s going to embarrass herself in front of the entire school!

Those of you who have watched the anime already will recognise this arc as the end of the TV series, which I think was fitting as in many ways this sets Hitori on a new path. Preparing for the cultural festival is difficult, not just because of Kessoku Band performing but also because her class has decided to open a maid café as their group activity. And we all know Hitori is not enthusiastic about working in such a customer-facing role.

Still, performing at the school festival is something Hitori has always dreamed of. And as a reader, I appreciated that it loops back to the start of the series where she lamented not being able to create a band in middle school to play in their cultural festival. Being able to achieve this is a major turning point in her story and I can see why the anime chose to stop here, particularly as the performance is filled with excitement (and some drama!).

Compared to its first outing, I think Volume 2 of the series shows much improvement. Perhaps because of having a big storyline to focus on, each chapter feels like it has more of a through-line and is less episodic. There’s more emphasis on the music side as well, which I appreciated as that’s the reason I got into the anime originally. The performance at the festival certainly gets the focus it deserves for what is such an important moment in Hitori’s history.

In some ways, I think the fact that Volume 3 will be beyond the content of the anime will help too, simply because right now it’s difficult not to make comparisons between the two mediums, despite the fact they’re quite different beasts. I’m certainly looking forward to seeing where Hitori’s story goes next, especially as the end of this instalment sets up an interesting plot twist.

Bocchi the Rock! Volume 2 comes to the West thanks to Yen Press and continues to be translated by John Neal with lettering by Chiho Christie. Like the first volume, this release opens with some colour pages and includes several pages of translation notes fielding many of the references made throughout the book.

Volume 3 is already available in English with #4 set to follow in August and #5 in November, so we’re still on a fairly fast release schedule here especially considering the Japanese releases are only at Volume 6 currently.

Overall, Volume 2 of Bocchi the Rock! proves an improvement on the first instalment as it focuses on one major arc for the majority of its pages. And now that we find ourselves at the end of what the anime adapted, there’s plenty to look forward to in #3 where we’re into whole new content. One to pick up if you enjoyed Volume 1!

Our review copy from Yen Press was supplied by Diamond Book Distributors UK.