ぼっち・ざ・ろっく！ S1

Synopsis

Socially awkward pink-haired girl gets good at guitar, get recruited in-extremis into a rock band, and through her inability to say 'no' is forced out of her comfort zone and evolves as a person.

Language

The story is set in the contemporary era with a cast consisting of high school girls so you can expect casual modern Japanese without fictional words you'll never use.

Although the music theme is very present throughout the series, the musical jargon is kept to a minimum.

A somewhat challenging point is that characters, in particular the protagonist Hitori, often retreat into their mind where you can hear their thoughts but the thoughts don't always entirely drown out the background conversation currently happening around them so you sometimes get two different dialogues playing simultaneously which I found rather disorientating.

About the Story

The story is a little too predictable and it is missing some tension in my opinion. I find it weird that all their live performances were pretty much flawless (apparently, there were moments where their performance was off but, as a non-musician, I couldn't hear any differences with the instances where they played wonderfully) and how quickly they gained fans even though they're a new band. It seems too good to be true, especially with how little their music practice sessions are showcased. We don't get to see them progress musically and/or confront challenges together.

However, what really turned me down was how over-the-top and cartoony the characters were. Some people may like it but Hitori's regular freak-outs and imaginary worlds felt like too much. There are some anime like 日常nichijou that successfully make use of those cartoony animations for comedic effect but ぼっちざろっく felt more like a musical slice-of-life with exaggerated characters than a comedy.