ぼっち・ざ・ろっく！ Home Thread (IMC) - Now Reading Week 8

Japanese Language Book Clubs
1

Welcome to the ぼっち・ざ・ろっく！ Book Club!

Star date: Nov 16th

This is the main thread for reading the manga ぼっち・ざ・ろっく！volume 1 together with the Intermediate Manga Club.

We’ll be reading together according to a weekly schedule, ask and answer questions in weekly threads, and we have a vocabulary sheet we’re building together to make this easier for everyone.

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View this book on Natively

Story summary

Japanese

きららMAXの大人気バンド4コマ、待望の第1巻がついに登場！
「ぼっちちゃん」こと後藤ひとりは、ギターを愛する孤独な少女。
家で一人寂しく弾くだけの毎日でしたが、
ひょんなことから伊地知虹夏が率いる「結束バンド」に加入することに。
人前での演奏に不慣れな後藤は、立派なバンドマンになれるのか――！？
全国のぼっちな少年少女に届ける、いま最高にアツい音楽漫画！！
陰キャならロックをやれ！！！

English

Hitori Goto just wants to make friends, but the thought of approaching a stranger on her own makes her so nervous that she’s spent the entirety of middle school teaching herself how to shred on the guitar-to moderately successful (albeit anonymous) YouTube fame-in the hopes of seeming cool enough for someone else to reach out to her instead. After bringing her guitar to school provokes zero interest, Hitori’s just about ready to shrivel up and die…which is when Nijika Ijichi comes across her moping in a playground and begs her to fill in for her band’s flakey guitarist for their first-ever live performance! It’s like her wish came true-but does this most antisocial of introverts have what it takes to perform in front of real people?!

Schedule & Discussion Thread Links

  • Start date: November 16th, 2024
Week Start Date Chapter Start
Page		 Page
Count
Week 1 Nov 16 0 2 4
1 7 10
Week 2 Nov 23 2 17 8
Week 3 Nov 30 3 25 8
Week 4 Dec 07 4 33 10
Week 5 Dec 14 5 43 8
Week 6 Dec 21 6 51 8
Week 7 Dec 28 7 59 10
Week 8 Jan 04 8 69 8
9 77 8
Week 9 Jan 11 10 85 10
11 95 8
Week 10 Jan 18 12 103 8
13 111 8

1 The pace will be evaluated after every odd-numbered week - if we’re feeling confident enough in one of those weeks, we’ll increase speed to two chapters per week after that point.

Where to buy

Amazon JP
Bookwalker

Vocabulary Sheet

Sheet generated by @ChristopherFritz. I’ll do my best to proofread it before each reading, but if I miss anything, feel free to add it yourself, after first reading the guidelines on the first tab of the document.

Spoiler Courtesy

Please follow these rules to avoid inadvertent ネタバレ. If you’re unsure whether something should have a spoiler tag, err on the side of using one.

  1. Any potential spoiler for the current week’s reading need only be covered by a spoiler tag. Predictions and conjecture made by somebody who has not read ahead still falls into this category.
  2. Any potential spoilers for external sources need to be covered by a spoiler tag and include a label (outside of the spoiler tag) of what might be spoiled. These include but are not limited to: other book club picks, other books, games, movies, anime, etc. I recommend also tagging the severity of the spoiler (for example, I may still look at minor spoilers for something that I don’t intend to read soon).
  3. Any information from later in the book than the current week’s reading (including trigger warnings that haven’t yet manifested) needs to be hidden by spoiler tags and labeled as coming from later sections.
Instructions for Spoiler Tags

Click the cog above the text box and use either the “Hide Details” or “Blur Spoiler” options. The text which says “This text will be hidden” should be replaced with what you are wishing to write. In the case of “Hide Details”, the section in the brackets that is labelled “Summary” can be replaced with whatever you like also (i.e, [details=”Chapter 1, Pg. 1”]).

Hide Details results in the dropdown box like below:

Example

This is an example of the “Hide Details” option.

The “Blur Spoiler” option will simply blur the text it surrounds.

This is an example of the “Blur Spoiler” option.

Posting Advice

  • When asking for help, please mention the page number, and check before posting that your question hasn’t already been asked. As the threads get longer, it becomes more convenient to use the Search function, which is located in the upper right corner of the forum. It is the magnifying glass which is near your profile picture! The best way to search is usually to type part of the sentence you are confused about, and select “in this topic”. This will show you all posts within the current thread which has that string of text.
  • Be sure to join the conversation! It’s fun, and it’s what keeps these book clubs lively! There’s no such thing as a stupid question! We are all learning here, and if the question has crossed your mind, there’s a very good chance it has crossed somebody else’s also! Asking and answering questions is a great learning opportunity for everyone involved, so never hesitate to do so!

Will you be reading with us?

  • Yeah!
  • Yeah, but I’ll start late
  • I’m not sure yet
  • I’m skipping this one
  • I’ve read this before, but will join in the discussion
0 voters

How will you be reading?

  • Physical
  • Digital
  • With my eyes
  • I’m not sure yet
0 voters

Don’t forget to set this thread to Watching in order to be notified when weekly threads get posted!

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A general comment on yonkoma

For those new to the format, here’s a brief introduction. Firstly, the golden rule, the one most important point, for being able to understand what’s going on:

The reading order for panels is vertically.

Even if you skip over the rest of this post, make sure you remember this point. A typical page of yonkoma manga has eight panels arranged in a two-by-four grid, and the correct order to read these panels is the column of four on the right from top to bottom, then the column on four on the left. Each column comprises a single comic strip. This rule also applies on the “title page” pages, which feature a large image at the top and a two-by-two grid of panels at the bottom - read the two panels on the right, then the two panels on the left.

So, with the golden rule established, I’ll describe some of the more technical aspects of yonkoma. In Japanese, the word is typically written 4コマ漫画, where the コマ comes from 齣, meaning “panel (of a comic)”, so it’s just four-panel manga. The format does sometimes appear in newspaper strips in the west - for example, Peanuts scripts generally had four panels.

The format is typically used in Japanese for the comedy genre, and the structure traditionally follows a formula called 起承転結きしょうてんけつ, a term originally taken from classical Chinese poetry. 起 = introduction, the scene is set. 承 = development, the story expands on the foundation. 転 = the twist, something surprising and unexpected happens! 結 = conclusion, the punchline.

Yonkoma is essentially the manzai of manga. Dialogue is delivered at a breakneck pace, represented by there being a lot of words per panel. In addition, characters take the roles of boke - the funny man - and tsukkomi - the straight man, but which role each character takes depends on who else is in the strip. It’s a spectrum, you see. For example, in Bocchi, Ryo and Bocchi are usually boke, while Kita and Nijika are usually tsukkomi, but in a strip with just Ryo and Bocchi, Bocchi becomes the tsukkomi.

A general comment on Bocchi the Rock

This manga makes quite a few references to the modern Japanese music scene. For example, most of the chapter images are references to real album covers. I’ll post each of those in the week-to-week threads, but for a more general reference: the family names and instruments of the four main characters correspond directly to the members of the band Asian Kung-Fu Generation (though the roles of the two guitarists are switched - Kita Kensuke is the lead guitarist for the real band, while Kita in Bocchi is the rhythm guitarist instead).

There’s also a few real-world locations visited, which I’ll post in the threads too.

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Schedule discussion

The manga is divided up into thirteen “chapters”, demarked by a page with a big image and a single strip arranged two-by-two, plus a short “chapter zero” of free-panel format manga. I’m firmly in the “read whole chapters” camp on how to divide this up, but the question is how to balance speed with not-being-overwhelmed.

The chapters are arranged as follows:

Chapter Start
Page		 Count
0 2 4
1 7 10
2 17 8
3 25 8
4 33 10
5 43 8
6 51 8
7 59 10
8 69 8
9 77 8
10 85 10
11 95 8
12 103 8
13 111 8

Here’s some pacing ideas. I figure we’ll read “chapter zero” along with chapter one regardless of how we pace it, but let me just throw up some other thoughts:

Pace Wk
1		 Wk
2		 Wk
3		 Wk
4		 Wk
5		 Wk
6		 Wk
7		 Wk
8		 Wk
9		 Wk
10		 Wk
11		 Wk
12		 Wk
13
Slow and steady
(13 wks)		 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
A bit faster
(7 wks)		 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 - - - - - -
Ramp up
(6 wks)		 1 2 2 3 2 3 - - - - - - -
Arithmetic increase
(5 wks)		 1 2 3 3 4 - - - - - - - -
Geometric increase
(4 wks)		 1 2 4 6 - - - - - - - - -

We do, of course, have the option of reevaluating the pace as we go, but there’s some starting thoughts. Keep in mind if we go too slow, the IMC isn’t going to wait for us, and will start the next book while we’re in the middle, potentially adding to everyone’s reading load.

What pace seems reasonable?
  • Slow and steady (13 wks)
  • A bit faster (7 wks)
  • Ramp up (6 wks)
  • Something else (please post)
  • Arithmetic increase (5 wks)
  • Geometric increase (4 wks)
0 voters
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Didn’t know Bocchi was a time traveller :wink:

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Of course she is. She does it in the very first chapter. Only in the forwards direction, though.

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We live in a society

Also your “a bit faster” is a lot faster IMO. For 紡ぐ we did one chapter for 3 weeks before ramping up:

And as I mentioned in the IMC thread I think that two chapters/week was uncomfortable for many of us.

What I would propose is to do one chapter/week for at least two weeks and then vote for the pace once people understand what they’re dealing with.

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I’m really not ready to join in with this book club (if I were to try reading along at this point, it would be necessary for me to put a cardboard box over my head, which would complicate things) - but I will set this thread on ‘tracking’ which should make it easier for me to find it in the future if/when I get to the point where I’m able to take it on… :cowboy_hat_face:

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I like this idea the most :slight_smile:

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Bocchi the Rock is so funny that everyone’s the funny man. :joy:

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Oh yeah, I considered an option like that too. Just apparently forgot to write it in. :stuck_out_tongue:

If Bocchi can play guitar on a stage in a cardboard box, you can read a manga in a cardboard box. :stuck_out_tongue:

Aha, whoops.

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Thanks for that post, very informative! Never heard of manzai / boke / tsukkomi before :open_mouth:
Also as someone who knows 0 about Bocchi, I’m curious, how many volumes, and was it manga first and anime adaptation then, and does the anime follow the manga? (I can probably find the answers online but might as well have a discussion)

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I’m interested in this manga, but all the discussion on how difficult it is makes me not sure if I could keep up :thinking: Might have to return later.

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The 7th volume is coming out this month and the series is ongoing. The manga came first and then the first two volumes or so were adapted into an anime. Generally speaking a 4-koma manga will come first before an anime. (The only time I’ve heard of a 4-koma manga being adapted from an anime was within a 4-koma manga… i.e. a 4-koma manga about making manga included the creation of a 4-koma manga based on a fictional anime. So just a bit meta and not a real example. :laughing:)

You could always give it a shot and come back to it later if it’s too hard. :slight_smile:

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Interesting, I was expecting somehow something much longer as it seems already quite popular! Thanks for the answer! Haha with the meta example.

I agree! Either you can make it now, either you decide to give up and later in the future it will feel really good when you attempt again and can see a difference :smiley:

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You should give it a try, I would say that it’s not that hard, it’s more that it’s very dense and because of the increased density you get less context to guide you. Sometimes I would struggle to figure out who was talking to whom for instance.

I would say that 鋼の錬金術師 was harder than this when it comes to pure Japanese vocab/grammar. But also you would have pages and pages of action with very little said. That basically never happens in a 4koma.

With 4koma you really need to take your time to analyze every cell because, due to the constraints of the format, a lot is crammed it very little space, both in terms of text but also drawings.

To give you an idea here’s me trying to break down a particularly tricky strip in our 紡ぐ club:

This is a rather extreme example but you can see how there’s a lot happening in not a whole lot of space and you sometimes need to infer a lot of context.

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All the 4-koma from Manga Time Kirara (like Bocchi) only publish one chapter per month, and since volumes tend to have around 12-13 chapters they can only release one volume every year or so. With that in mind, the publication rate for Bocchi is actually faster than average for a 4-koma.

Also, the longest Kirara 4-koma series are only barely above 10 volumes (I think I’ve seen some around 14+, but very few), so 7 volumes and ongoing isn’t too bad.

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Well, if you insist! [adds to cart]

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If you really don’t want to commit you may even check if the preview doesn’t cover at least the first chapter.

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Ah, I don’t mind. If it’s too hard for me I’ll just come back in a few months and try again.

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It doesn’t anyway. Annoyingly, Kirara previews are really short. :cry:

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