Bocchi The Rock!'s Kessoku Band earn Gold album in Japan
Bocchi The Rock!'s Kessoku Band has made some noise in the real world.
Revealed yesterday, the fictional band’s self-titled album has earned a Gold certification in Japan (100,000 albums sold). The 14-song album features a slew of songs performed by the in-show band. The album, which was released back in December via Aniplex, topped the Oricon Albums and the Japanese Hot Albums charts.
The real-life band behind the scenes features Osamu Hidai (drums), Yūichi Takama (bass guitar), Akkin (guitar) and Ritsuo Mitsui (guitar). Ikumi Hasegawa, who lends their voice to Ikuyo Kita on the show, performs vocals on most songs. Saku Mizuno (Ryō Yamada), Sayumi Suzushiro (Nijika Ijichi), and Yoshino Aoyama (Hitori Gotō) also perform vocals. The album features a cover of Kung-Fu Generation’s "Rockn' Roll, Morning Light Falls on You." The characters’ names are inspired by the J-rock band.
The release of the Bocchi The Rock! anime led to a spike of kids purchasing instruments in Japan. The manga series, which is written and illustrated by Aki Hamaji, has been flying off the shelves since the show’s release as well.
A synopsis for the show reads:
Hitori Gotoh, “Bocchi-chan,” is a girl who’s so introverted and shy around people that she’d always start her conversations with “Ah...”
During her middle school years, she started playing the guitar, wanting to join a band because she thought it could be an opportunity for even someone shy like her to also shine. But because she had no friends, she ended up practicing guitar for six hours every day all by herself.
After becoming a skilled guitar player, she uploaded videos of herself playing the guitar to the internet under the name “Guitar Hero” and fantasized about performing at her school’s cultural festival concert. But not only could she not find any bandmates, before she knew it, she was in high school and still wasn’t able to make a single friend!
She was really close to becoming a shut-in, but one day, Nijika Ijichi, the drummer in Kessoku Band, reached out to her. And because of that, her everyday life started to change little by little...
Bocchi The Rock! is available to watch on Crunchyroll right now. Read our reviews of previous episodes here.