Ryo Yamada

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Ryo Yamada
Japanese	山(やま)田(だ) リョウ
Romaji	Yamada Ryō
Alias	Silent-senpai by Nene
Characteristics
Birthday	September 18
Age	16-17
Gender	Female
Height	163 cm
Weight	50 kg
Hair color	Blue
Eye color	Yellow
Blood type	AB
Occupation	Student
Affiliation	The Hamukitasu (former member) Shimokitazawa High School (student) Kessoku Band (bassist, backing vocalist)
Relatives	Kyoichi Yamada (father) Kyoka Yamada (mother)
First appearance
Manga	Volume 1, chapter 1
Anime	"Lonely Rolling Bocchi"
Seiyū
Japanese VA	Saku Mizuno

“Disparate personalities coming together is its own kind of music”

―Ryo Yamada's character information

Ryo Yamada (山(やま)田(だ) リョウ, Yamada Ryō) is one of the main characters in the manga and anime series Bocchi the Rock!. She is a second-year student at Shimokitazawa High School and is the bassist, backup vocalist, and composer for Kessoku Band.

She works a part-time job at the live house STARRY with Nijika Ijichi. She has an androgynous appearance and a mysterious atmosphere, often expressionless. She often fascinates women, including Ikuyo Kita, who falls in love at first sight.

Character information

A cool and solitary second-year high school student. She is the bassist of Kessoku Band and Nijika's best friend. Her hobbies are out of the ordinary, and she rejoices when called a weirdo. She lives with a wealthy family but never has any money because she spends it all on instruments. She occasionally eats weeds to get rid of her hunger.

Appearance

Ryo has short blue hair with two black square hair clips on the right side of her bangs and yellow eyes, with a mole on her left cheek.

Ryo's uniform consists of a collared white shirt worn with a black ribbon, a dark blue pleated skirt, black leggings, maroon or brown loafers, and a matching long sleeved sweater. This outfit is similar to most Japanese high school uniforms (seifuku).

Personality

Despite her expressionless exterior, Ryo is an eccentric girl with a mischievous sense of humor, coming across as a person who likes to mess with others. She's fairly tactless and is happy to be called a weirdo. She is quiet and has few friends, but unlike Bocchi, prefers to spend time alone. She has a tendency to make up excuses to get out of social activities, but Nijika sees through them every time. Despite her reserved nature, Ryo enjoys showing off her bass playing skills whenever possible.

Ryo has encyclopedic knowledge about her interests and becomes very talkative about them when given the opportunity. Ryo is shown to be an inconsistent student and temporarily forgets her musical knowledge when she studies for upcoming exams. She also has very strong opinions on how bands should present themselves, and encourages Bocchi to write genuine lyrics for Kessoku Band's material.

Although her parents run a hospital and are very wealthy, she spends most of her pocket money on musical instruments. This has led her to borrow money from others up to the point where she even eats weeds when she can't afford food on her own. The reason she took interest in rock was to get her constantly doting parents to think she went down the wrong path and leave her alone.

Ryo is a huge fan of SICK HACK, seen expressing excitement toward Kikuri Hiroi's drunken antics on stage. That said, she does have her limits with Kikuri's drunken nature at times. Most of the time, the two enjoy shared tendencies of dropping into Nijika and Seika's home to eat meals together, wanting bass to fit them, and borrowing money from Bocchi.

When it comes to her relationship with her bandmates, Ryo always relate and resonate with Bocchi for being introverts, being amused by Ikuyo's extroversion and idolisation of her, and finally being lax whenever Nijika chewed her out for leeching money off Bocchi and Ikuyo.

It is shown in some chapters that Ryo is not good with interviews and always answers in a laconic manner or letting others to answer in her stead.

Plot

History

Taking interest in rock bands at the age of ten, she was originally in a band before quitting due to creative differences with other members, and the band itself broke up later. She later joined Nijika in forming Kessoku Band as a bassist, and a certain girl also joined them as a vocalist-guitarist before abruptly quitting.

Volume 1

Ryo was in STARRY when Nijika brought a girl in her tracksuit with a guitar, who would be the new guitarist for the band. Seeing the girl was in a state of panic after a terrible practice session, she and Nijika initiated some conversation to comfort her. She later gave the girl she just met - Hitori Gotoh, a nickname "Bocchi," as a play of the word "hitoribocchi" (lonely). She also describes "Kessoku Band" as a perfect name for their band.

In their next meeting, Ryo revealed many facts about herself - that she doesn't have any friends outside the band, and that her favorite music is supposedly something from Saudi Arabia charts and techno music (implied to be a lie). Nijika also informed Bocchi that Ryo is terrible at financial management due to her excessive spending on instruments - which she takes as a compliment.

After Kita rejoined the band, Ryo bought her six string bass (which she purchased by mistake), and lent her a guitar to use. As Ryo had spent the last of her money on the bass, she was forced to eat weeds for the rest of the week.

After looking over Bocchi's lyrics at a café, she told Bocchi about her experiences with her previous band, and how individuality and staying true to oneself is more important than trying to appeal to others. Upon leaving the café, she asked Bocchi to cover the bill, as she didn't have any money. The next day, when Bocchi gave her the lyrics of the band's first proper song, Ryo praises her and felt that it will resonate to some people. Leading to their newfound friendship.

Ryo later skipped several days of work and school on account of her writer's block, but after a visit from her bandmates, found the inspiration she needed, and returned the next day.

Name origin

• The name Ryo is written in katakana (リョウ), which has no special meaning.
  • When written in kanji, her first name can have a variety of different meanings including: "cool" (涼, ryō) and "clear" (亮, ryō). In mainland China and Taiwan, It is written as "涼" (cool).
• Ryo's surname Yamada means "mountain, pile" (山, yama) and "rice field" (田, ta/da).

Trivia

• Her surname is derived from Takahiro Yamada.
  • Her birthday, September 18 (9/18) is a reverse reading of his birthday, August 19 (8/19).
• Her bass is a Fender Mexican Standard Precision Bass in an Olympic White finish with a rosewood fingerboard. The bass makes its first manga appearance in Volume 3.
• In the manga, she played a variant of the Yamaha BB bass in the same colors as her Precision Bass (originally in Shell Pink) with a mint green Fender-style pickguard up until the latter part of Volume 3, though the exact model is unknown.
• In the Bocchi the Rock! Official Guidebook: COMPLEX, it is shown that she uses an MXR M80 Bass D.I.+ as part of her gear.
• She claims to like techno kayo songs and songs from the hit charts of Saudi Arabia. Nijika believes the latter to be a lie.
• Her favorite manga is Jujutsu Kaisen; the kanji is different to avoid copyright problems.
• Her hobbies, aside from playing bass and spending all her money on musical instruments, include listening to music in her free time and thrifting for clothes.
• In episode 4, Ryo is seen looking at a poster featuring herself in a band named The Hamukitasu (ざ・はむきたす, Za Hamukitasu). This may have been her previous group before joining Kessoku Band.
• In the early chapters of the manga, Ryo's face is drawn with a girlish look. However, past volume 1 her face looks more androgynous and remains this way in subsequent volumes.
• Throughout the manga, it is shown that Ryo is popular with many fans for the same reason Ikuyo admire her for as shown where during a merchandise planning, she gets a high sale probability like Ikuyo.
• As the story progresses, Bocchi and Ryo became closer as friends since their introversions began to clash with Nijika's growing bossiness at them and Ikuyo's outgoing personality that causes the extroverts to scold the two introverts from ruining the mood.