This is the fifth volume of the manga series, Bocchi the Rock!. It was released in the Japanese version on November 26, 2022. This volume contains 8 chapters.
Description[]
If it's a gloomy character, let's do the rock!! Debut from an indie label has been decided, and Kessoku Band is about to start producing their first mini-album. Each member is challenging various things, such as Hitori Gotoh struggling with her first arrangement work. Also includes a special edition depicting the past of Nijika Ijichi and Seika! Reiwa's new standard of Kirara that is cute, interesting, and "hot"![1]
Contents[]
| Chapter | Issue | Release date | Pages |
|---|---|---|---|
| One-shot | - | 4 | |
| 51 | 9 | ||
| 52 | |||
| 53 | 8 | ||
| 54 | 10 | ||
| 55 | 8 | ||
| 56 | 9 | ||
| 57 | 10 | ||
| 61 | 37 | ||
Plot[]
One-shot[]
Aiko keep complaining about the Stray Beat office being hot with Miyako asked her to just deal with it. That's when Kessoku Band comes to the office. Midway, Aiko sees a spider on the office closet and freaked out.
Everyone went into a panic mode with Miyako shivering. Aiko tried to pass the job to remove the spider to Kessoku Band, but Nijika cannot handle big bugs and Kita thinks it's unphotogenic. Ryo's mouth foams when it comes for her. That's when Bocchi easily picked it off, talked with the spider a bit and let it out the window, which make everybody likes her. She is later entrusted with removing all bugs in the office, but is wary of her cleanliness.
Chapter 51[]
A rainy day in Stray Beat. Nijika is discussing with Miyako about their song progress where Bocchi is handling the arrangement, and asked for some budget where Miyako refuses. Miyako asked about the assurance Bocchi will get her job done, which all of them (including Aiko) just can guess.
At the same time, at Gotoh's house Michiyo and Futari lamented about Bocchi locked herself in her room and not eating since sometimes ago, putting them on worry. Michiyo barged in the room only to found her already on her mummified state, and Michiyo put all nutrients in her to revive her. Bocchi explains she just unable to arrange the song despite she was full of motivation before. She tried to find inspiration from what her mom is doing and explains what arranging is all about to her.
After once again locked herself, she did a cover for her guitarhero channel and uploaded it, but still cannot find right inspiration for her arrangement that she kept making horrible mistakes. Despaired, that's where Naoki went into the room and sees her, and Naoki started talking about how his band days was. Naoki give her some more advice to proceed, comforting and cheered her up. She end up finished a lot of demo copies.
A day later in STARRY, Bocchi shows the band the finished demos. After struggling to find the right copy to listen (as some just does not sound right), Ryo picked a very suitable one for them and praises her quirky mind, but softly rejected her request for more arrangement. She says that she will be ready for school tomorrow, only to find out that September 1 is on a weekend. Feeling happy, she run out to the raining outside without her umbrella and ended up getting a week of high fever.
Chapter 52[]
Seika informed the band that STARRY will get new 2 part-timers from tomorrow. Since Nijika and Kita was busy, Bocchi and Ryo had to guide the new staffs. The next day, Bocchi wonders about how the new staffs will behave and thinks she will be a good senpai to them. However once she comes to STARRY, the new staffs are already finished cleaning the live house.
Seika introduces the two staffs; Elena Hinata and Nene Ohyama. Nene the most energetic introduces herself as the person who starts a band and want to play guitar. She even talked about Bocchi, who she called Hippie-senpai due to her hippie getup in the school (refer chapter 35) and even saves a picture of her. Elena mentions that she likes watching idols but is now interested in bands, with Ryo being her favorite in Kessoku Band. She reveals herself as Raphael, one of the members of Angel's Cuticle which has been disbanded after a member caused an online controversy. She discovered bands after she found out Kessoku Band participation in Mikakunin Riot. Nene wants to recruit Elena to her band because she got a bass, but Nene rejected.
As Ryo runs away (she pretends she need to go to toilet), Bocchi has to show them the rope of their jobs there, with Seika trying to assist her. Bocchi wanted to show them how to serve drinks, but Elena already suggested that they have character drinks like in cafes. Nene was given task as receptionist, and she already outdid Bocchi from day one. Bocchi felt demotivated as she is already outshined by her kouhais. She tried to struck a conversation with Nene, but as she cant stand Nene's energetic response on other topics, they stick on the band topic. Nene explains she is not particularly interested with any band, and she quitted basketball due to her short stature. Nene was fully interested when she saw Kessoku Band performing in Mikakunin Riot. She respected Bocchi as guitarist that she even asked for tips from her.
The show starts in STARRY, and Nene and Elena is given chance to watch the bands. Elena ended up bringing her hardcore fan habit that she is scolded by Seika. Seika allows them to leave, but Nene refused to leave before Bocchi and Ryo does, because she think its not right to leave before them, much to both annoyance. Next day, the duo cheers on Kessoku Band as they see the band practicing.
Chapter 53[]
Bocchi felt something wrong as nobody seems to talk a lot about them participating in Mikakunin Riot, and was afraid of even the school suing them for false impression. She looks on Sasaki hoping she could help, but Sasaki only grins. Their classmates invited her and Kita to follow them after school and Bocchi just show her surrendered pose.
After school, Bocchi and Kita went to the karaoke center next to a law firm that Bocchi mistaken. There, they are surprised by their classmates as they are holding a thank-you party for their Mikakunin Riot performance. Apparently, aside from the headmaster, everyone is already aware they would not perform in ROCK IN JAPON. The classmates dresses Bocchi and Kita as the party highlight, and made cheers to drinks with Sasaki doing it with Bocchi. Kita picks songs for them to sing in the karaoke, but she is afraid about Bocchi that she ended up picking SIDEROS songs.
At the next door, Yoyoko is doing solo karaoke once again and she tried hard to get noticed as the Bocchi class is putting SIDEROS songs on. Back to Bocchi's class party, Kita sings Kessoku Band songs with Bocchi playing the guitar. As it is getting late, the party cleans up. Sasaki gave both of them trophy for their hard work. They wished the band well. Yoyoko peek on the room to find out Bocchi is in the room, and knowing "Kessoku Band is singing her songs" she muttered alone in her room.
Chapter 54[]
Ryo shows the new demo of their new song, and Kita offered herself to write the lyrics which alarmed Bocchi. But a week later, nothing fruitful comes from Kita. Kita thinks that she do not have any specific deep topic to write about, which attacks Bocchi even more. Nene barged in to show the band the guitar she wanted to buy, which only worries them as it is too cheap. Nijika and the rest drags Nene to a music store to show her the right way to buy a guitar. Bocchi and Ryo tried to keep a distance from her.
They come to Shibuya, where Kita wanted to check out music stores there (but she does not know any, so she had to Google it). Bocchi and Ryo run away immediately. They come to Ishibashi Store there to check out the various selection of guitars available (according to the Internet), and Nene cannot just stand still. As they surveyed each type of guitar, Kita teach Nene a lot about various guitar model (which she Googled it right away). Nene is really interested with all of it (especially those which Bocchi uses), only to face the truth that all the models are off her low budget range. She settled on picks instead. They have a tea break where Nene said she just settled with that cheap guitar instead, but Nijika and Kita will not let her be and will accompany her even to search it online.
Eventually, she managed to get a guitar sold as a junk at 5000 yen to her, thanks to Ryo suggesting her finding it in Hard*Opp. But they went all the way to Tochigi as she could not wait to get her own guitar. Nijika and Kita celebrated Nene's victory with a selfie. Nijika adviced Kita about how the lyric could be for her, and treated Nene to gyoza.
Kita ends up writing the lyrics which is just actually her gyoza diary, but Bocchi, PA-san and Seika thought its a love song which they don't believe Kita has such a life. Bocchi intentionally messed up her guitar to attract Kita back.
Chapter 55[]
The band had a meeting again, discussing their song progress and Bocchi told them about her being haunted by Nene since she followed her a lot lately. The band then practiced all their songs that are ready to be published as a mini album, and got carried away.
Bocchi missed her last train home, so Nijika invited her to stay a night at her house (which is just the third floor above STARRY). Bocchi sees Seika hugging her plushie so Seika is embarassed, but even Bocchi hide her face. Seika immediately cooks for them. Nijika shows Bocchi her room and all stuffs in her rooms which is actually Ryo's aside from her mattress. Nijika shows her family picture too, and told her some story about her and Seika.
Nijika later asked for Bocchi's suggestion for their mini-album cover and shows her some drafts she can use. Bocchi designs some, although Nijika said they are lame. Seika interfered and adds some things into their draft. Later Nijika and Bocchi wants to play video games, where Seika wants to join too. Bocchi managed to one-up Seika in Squidoon, but still no match with Nijika. She later observed how Nijika and Seika enjoy their gaming time (and Ryo joining them online even). They ended up stying all night, where Kita which realizes their eyebags has them told they are practicing music.
Chapter 56[]
Time for Kessoku Band's mini album studio recording. Miyako scheduled two weekends for them to finish recording the album, and also keep in touch with their academic performance (where no one did well aside of Nijika). Nijika then informed about the process to the band with Seika and PA-san gives some advices to them.
The day of recording, they met Miyako and Aiko outside the recording studio. They goes inside and meet Kamimura, the sound engineer in charge. The band has some chill talk with Kamimura, where she commented some thing about the band and explains the processes. The recording begins with each members take individual parts. Nijika messed up a lot on her part, Ryo seems rushed, Bocchi plays in a weird position and even scares Kamimura. Nijika still cannot do well in another try. They only managed to record one song over the weekend.
All the messes in her part made Nijika down in morale, and Seika can detect it when she get back home. Knowing the trouble Nijika faces, Seika called someone.
Chapter 57[]
Nijika keeps practicing her drumming skills to make sure the next weekend goes well, to the point she nearly goes crazy. Seika notices that, and introduces her to someone. Sometime later, the band is back at the recording studio to proceed with their session, and Nijika triumphly returned and did her part. It is revealed that she met Rina, Seika old bandmate who is a drummer. Rina observed her drumming skills and give her some advices in order to help Nijika thorugh her session.
Back to the recording session, Nijika managed to tackle her part well. The rest of the band finishes their part, so Kamimura gives them a break so she could mix one of the songs to show to them. Kamimura later shows them how the song sounds like after mixing, which stuns them on how good it is. As the session is done, each of the members expresses their worries and relieves over their own part in the recording session. Kamimura complimented them that that is a good sign for them as they show improvements throughout the session. The band wants to go for afterparty, but the label do not sponsor them for that.
Back in Nijika's home, she shows the completed album to Seika, and hopes for better chances in the future.
Chapter 61[]
This chapter takes place 8 years prior to the start of the series. It focused on Seika and Nijika's relationship in the past.
Seika was a 21-years old guitarist of a band while Nijika was 9 years old, back then their relationship is pretty strained. Seika often neglects her family because of her prioritizing her band activities, and Nijika, feeling the loss of attention from her, always cried about it. One day, Seika's band got an offer to perform in Rainy Bar in Shimokitazawa where label scouts are known to be there, but when asked about who to invite to see them, she tried to ask Nijika, which ended in a harsh rejection from her. Pissed by that, she decided to leave the house for a while so she would not be annoyed by her family again. Nijika was very frustrated by Seika's act, and only her mother tried to comfort her. At night Nijika complained to her mother about how she has started to hate bands because of how it affected her sister and just wanted an ordinary dream to be a civil servant, and nothing else.
Seika lived in Rina's house for a month without even being in contact with her mother until one day her mother came to visit her at Rina's house and had a talk in a cafe nearby. Her mother mentions how Seika need to be back together with Nijika since it is the only thing that she cared about both of them. Seika is still pretty annoyed with her mother bringing it up, but listened to her anyway. Before her mother leaves, she asked Seika to bring Nijika into her life one day, which she feels reluctant to do.
Just a while after that, their mother died in an accident. Nijika cried badly during the funeral. Seika tried to act nothing about it and continued her band activity as usual, but the loss do affect Seika that who was still away from her home a month after. One day, when her band was supposed to perform, she got a call from her father urging her to go back home. She found out that Nijika's behavior has turned worse because of their mother's death, and that she refused even to go to school anymore. Seika, shocked to see it, tried to comfort her by asking her to prepare for school, but Nijika refused since their mom is gone so she cannot do her hair anymore. At that moment, only then Seika realized that all she had done is running away from the reality of their mother's death, and left Nijika alone to deal with it. Seika reflects on herself and decided to give more attention to Nijika from then.
She dressed Nijika's hair and brought her to see her band live. She later left her with her acquaintance in the live house, who later accompany her seeing Seika and her band on stage. Nijika, initially feeling just curious and reluctant, feels that her world shines again when she saw the band perform, and cheers for them. Seika, glancing from the stage, felt satisfied that Nijika is back to her cheerful self. Seika later vows to Nijika that she would not run away anymore and wanted to support each other. Some days later, Nijika started to go to school again and also started to develop her interest in music. Although she's quite sad that Nijika prefers to be drums than the guitar as it looks cooler. Seeing Nijika has a new dream to live on, Seika has the wish to convey to Rina and her band - to leave her band and start a new live house.
Eight years later, preparation is complete and the live house is ready to operate. Nijika, now a high schooler looked at the sign and asked the meaning of the new live house name. Seika explains how bands will be stars in the sky and how their live house will be the place where it gathers and shines so brightly - a wish to her new live house - STARRY.
Allusions of cover page[]
- Chapter 52 - "lemonade" by Chilli Beans.
- Chapter 53 - "Hikaru Toki" by Hitsujibungaku
- Chapter 54 - "Futsuu" by CRYAMY
- Chapter 55 - "Fukkatsu no Jumon" by sumika
- Chapter 56 - "Meter" by the peggies
Characters[]
List of characters in order of appearance:
- Aiko Sato
- Michiyo Gotoh
- Ryo Yamada
- Nijika Ijichi
- Ikuyo Kita
- Hitori Gotoh
- Futari Gotoh
- Naoki Gotoh
- Seika Ijichi
- Nene Ohyama
- Elena Hinata
- PA-san
- Uemura
- Rina
Gallery[]
Chapter covers[]
Miscellaneous[]
Trivia[]
- The volume cover is the first that does not include Kessoku Band members in it.
- This volume contains the shortest number of chapters, which is 8 chapters.
- Chapter 61 is the first with a title: "Love Flowers Pointing at the Stars" (星に手向けるあいの花 Hoshi ni Tamukeru Ai no Hana).
- The reason for the chapter number jumps between 57 and 61 is that chapter 61 was featured in January 2023 issue of Manga Time Kirara MAX although is meant for supplementary content of this volume. The original cutoff point for volume 5 is on chapter 57 (September 2022 issue) so chapters 58-60 are not included in this volume.
- This chapter also contains 37 pages, the longest ever for the series.
- This is the first serialized chapter that is not presented entirely in a 4-koma style.
References[]
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