ぼっち・ざ・ろっく！ (IMC) - Week 10

[Belthazar]

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ぼっち・ざ・ろっく！ Home Thread

Week 10

Start Date: Jan 18
Previous Part: Week 9
Next Part: End of Volume 1

Reading:

Week	Start Date	Chapter	Start Page	Page Count
Week 10	Jan 18	12	103	8
		13	111	8

Vocab Sheet

ぼっち・ざ・ろっく！ Volume 1 Vocabulary List

Discussion Rules

• Please use spoiler tags for major events in the current section(s) and any content in future sections.
• When asking for help, please mention the volume and page number. Also mention what version of the book you are reading.
• Don’t be afraid of asking questions, even if they seem embarrassing at first. All of us are here to learn.
• To you lurkers out there: Join the conversation, it’s fun!

Participants

Mark your participation status by voting in this poll.
(Please feel free to update your status whenever you like!)

• I’m reading along
• I have finished this part
• I’m planning to catch up later
• I’m skipping this book

[Belthazar]

It’s the final reading! (Da-na na na, da-na na na na)

This week’s two chapters collectively comprise the eighth episode of the anime.

Chapter twelve’s title image is from SYNCHRONISICA, by POLKADOT STINGRAY.

ポルカドットスティングレイ「シンクロニシカ」MV

Chapter thirteen’s is Wakamono no Subete, by Fujifabric. (Love that empty piano - Fujifabric, unlike Kessoku Band, has a keyboardist.)

フジファブリック (Fujifabric) - 若者のすべて(Wakamono No Subete)

And these two chapters spend more time with PLOT! than making references, so there’s not much else to add. Which is possibly for the best, because chapter 13 is, by a fair margin, the wordiest chapter in the volume.

Bocchi’s sashes at the bottom of page 104 are advertising an exhibit that was held in Akihabara in 2018 to celebrate Kirara’s fifteenth anniversary (in the anime, she instead wears both of the sashes she was wearing last episode).

Based on clues in the anime, the izakaya where they have their afterparty in chapter thirteen is Kokera.

Bocchi’s pose in the final panel of page 112 is, of course, a classic reference to the (in)famous final panel of Ashita no Joe (the “he burned out to pure white ash” panel). Page 113, スタパ is スタバ… Starbucks, is what I’m saying. On page 114, the names on the board in the second panel of Bocchi’s imaginary coworkers who out-sold her are the members of CreepHyp.

And that’s it! Though, for a bonus round, try reading the Afterword. Also, don’t forget to check out the bonus comic underneath the front dustcover.

Is anyone considering a spinoff club for a continuation?

• Sure!
• Maybe in a bit…
• Yeah, nah.

[pembo]

I think the manga was well above my level but I got most of it, I wanna go back and finish the pokemans but I did buy 4 volumes of bocchers so maybe I should try to read both

[Jintor]

Yeah, I have four vols of bocchers I bought in a fit of optimism. I would definitely go through with a club (especially one with a word list because holy shit that made going through this so much less tedious)

[pembo]

just watch the anime and cut out the middle man

maybe we should read the Kikuri spin off, there’s a chapter where she, Seika, and PA-san go to yoga class and it’s very fan service

[Jintor]

please the anime makes me want to play bass, not study jpn

[Akashelia]

I think I would have missed a lot of things reading this manga, if it hadn’t been for the club, so I prefer to continue with the club! (Even though that’s starting to be a lot of offshoot clubs )

[prath]

Same! I thought the “Maybe in a bit…” option meant starting after a break loll, but I guess it means I’ll consider it in a bit? I’m gonna change my vote to ‘Sure’

[simias]

I discovered the existence of these てるてる坊主 dolls like a month ago and it’s already the third time they pop up in a thing I read.

[pembo]

Wait until you hear about Baader Meinhof

[simias]

In this case I think it has more to do with me ramping up the Japanese reading a lot over the past year or so, increasing the odds pretty dramatically. In particular until recently I was mostly only reading fantasy stuff instead of stories that took place in Japan.

[awesometownrocks]

I wasn’t expecting the wikipedia article to say kids sing a nursery rhyme about giving them sake, you would think they’d try to soften it by replacing it with juice or something, but then again I guess lots of nursery rhymes are like that, ring around the rosie being about a plague then death for example

[awesometownrocks]

I was considering the “maybe in a bit…” option, because I do want to read a bit more Sakamoto Days before I binge watch the first season, but…

I can’t hold the band back!

[simias]

I’m leaving Bocchi behind. The 4koma curse is lifted. I am free.

I also thought it was cute and all but also not extremely engaging for me. There’s not a whole lot of drama, everything seems to work out fine pretty much all the time, and even when it doesn’t really it’s still no big deal. The art style is pretty basic as well.

If anything it made me want to check out the anime one day, it seems to have much higher production value.

[Jintor]

Generally I’ve been finding for a lot of Kiara 4koma manga the animes tend to thread everything together in a much more cohesive way. (Well okay, that’s just new game and bocchi. Yuru Yuri is equally bizarre in anime form)

/edit oh and of course it’s a music anime, so adding music to it by really professional artists really makes it pop

[pembo]

antonblast is far too based

[Jintor]

finished again!

i forgot to link this earlier, but here’s bocchi’s twitter account. (I don’t know if you can see it without an ‘active’ twitter account…)

https://x.com/guitarhero_0221

[awesometownrocks]

Right off the bat in that panel with the てるてる坊主 Simias posted earlier, a character says おはようございます despite in the previous panel saying “It’s evening so I wonder if the rain will come down harder”. I found a note saying in some industries, it’s used at any time of day so I guess that would explain it (No blurred text for this one since it’s the very first set of panels in this chapter, but I’ll spoiler this next part)

Ch. 12

I’m assuming in this panel Bocchi is wondering if the two know each other because Nijika’s big sister uses お前? Probably because if she was just a random customer, it would be extremely rude to refer to her that way, but I thought I would double check. She uses お前 a lot and used it when she first met Bocchi, but when that happened she thought she was suspicious

[Belthazar]

@awesometownrocks

a character

PA-san. I don’t think she ever gets an actual name, but everyone calls her PA-san.

@awesometownrocks

“It’s evening so I wonder if the rain will come down harder”

“I wonder if the rain will come down harder in the evening” - i.e. “from” rather than “because”. That doesn’t negate your main point, just that we can’t tell the exact time of day just from this comment.

@awesometownrocks

I’m assuming in this panel Bocchi is wondering if the two know each other because Nijika’s big sister uses お前?

Reckon so.

[simias]

p144

I didn’t know that NEET was also Japanese slang. Pretty funny

@Belthazar

or a bonus round, try reading the Afterword

Pretty nice handwriting. Makes me feel better about my own calligraphy when I see that even skilled natives struggle to keep the correct proportions of the kanji.