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It's not very often that I write reviews here. I only have one other review, and that was for an absolute dogshit movie. So the fact that you're reading this should say a lot about how I feel about this anime (which is very strongly). Keep in mind, it's currently 4:22 AM on a school night, so I'm just word-vomiting my candid feelings, which may or may not be coherently written.

So with that said, sorry, Cyberpunk Edgrunners. Sorry, Chainsaw Man. Sorry, Mob Psycho. Bocchi The Rock sweeps the spot for anime of the year.

If I were to describe this anime in one word, ... it would be passion. Everything, from the writing to the music, from the animation to the voice acting. You can feel that the people who worked on this project genuinely cared about what they wanted to show - and it shows goddamnit. I can imagine the writers and director sitting in a room, laughing in a meeting while they talk about the script with the occasional, "Okay, hear me out on this one." And trust me, I bet you every single one of those "hear me out" suggestions made it in because holy shit does this show throw the most random bullshit in your face. If you've watched the show, you know exactly what I'm talking about. One scene could go from normal, hand-drawn 2D animation to 1995 PS1 hagrid graphics, and then a stop-motion of the characters you've just seen on the screen seconds before. CloverWorks has always been known for great and consistent animation, but who knew that they were also capable of the most insane animation styles? They don't have to do this, and it eats into the budget - but they do it anyway. Why? Because the people who made the show know it's funny as hell.

Now let's talk about comedy. If you thought Kaguya-Sama set the ceiling for inciting audible laughter, just wait until you piss yourself at the stuff this show throws at you. I can't tell you how many times I've had to pause and rewatch multiple scenes in an episode just to be able to experience every joke. I'm extremely disappointed that I wasn't able to watch this as it was airing weekly because this is exactly the type of thing I needed to brighten my mood while working on college applications. Nevertheless, there is a limit to how much positive dopamine I could take in one sitting. I'll be honest, having three of the four main characters have a high-pitched Tohru voice isn't necessarily ideal for my eardrums. But the truth is still inevitable. Nijika "Dorito Girl" Ichiji is God, and she is real. No one can fucking tell me otherwise.

But the elephant in the room, of course, is our favourite pink-haired musician: Bocchi. Let's get this straight - social anxiety IS a real thing. Yeah, I know, shocker. But what differentiates Bocchi from someone like Komi is the way she approaches her phobia, and the challenges she has to face to overcome the said phobia. With Komi, she has social anxiety because she has no fucking life, and Tadano has to break his back carrying her ass to make friends. With Bocchi, she has social anxiety because she also has no life, but that doesn't stop her from being an absolute badass on the guitar. I absolutely love when characters have this dichotomy, in which the audience gets to see them overcome their shortcomings and finally bear the fruits of their labour. Now although this may not work 100% of the time *cough zenitsu*, Bocchi as a character works because her experiences are also our experiences. If you watched this show, I will bet my left nut that you have related to one aspect of her social anxiety before, regardless of if you're extroverted or introverted. And it doesn't have to be anything significant like performing in front of an audience. It can be something as small as walking into an unfamiliar restaurant, or greeting strangers - and when it hits you, it hits you hard. In addition to how out-of-this-world the animation and writing are, there are moments in this show where you can genuinely feel the same anxiety as Bocchi. (Spoiler alert) In Episode 8, where Bocchi and Friends perform their first gig, that was the first time I actually felt stress for the characters. As stupid as that may sound, you have to consider that I'm also a musician, so please bear with my personal bias. At the start of the performance, you could tell that something was off. Dorito-girl starts playing slightly off-beat, and Classic Red-Haired Tsun- wait holy fuck she's not a tsundere? Ok, Red-Haired Not-Tsundere Girl's voice starts to shake. There was this one line where Bocchi mentions how during the performance, they were doing mistakes they never did during practice - a classic example of stress. Either the author used to be a musician, or she did a great job researching because this scene knew how to amplify this feeling to the next level - because my god was I uncomfortable during that scene (in a good way).

Before I finish this review, I'll quickly mention the final school performance (Spoiler Alert 2). Remember how I mentioned the Episode 8 performance a couple of sentences ago? Yeah, the school performance makes that one look like a doggy's beat-up chew toy. A fucking broken string. During a live performance. In front of your school. And you have social anxiety because you're Bocchi. Remember that dichotomy I mentioned earlier? In the famous words of Terence Fletcher from Whiplash, "[Bocchi] got up on stage, and played the best motherfucking solo the world had ever seen." This performance has single-handedly changed the colour palette of my liked Spotify songs - all I see on the album covers now is a pink-haired girl rocking it out in the background.

Bocchi The Rock is a show that will resonate with everyone. It's memorable, enjoyable, hilarious, and exudes pure joy. Rarely do I see so much love and care to be put into a show like this, and it's a testament to all anime directors that something as small as a four-panel manga can turn into one of the greatest slice-of-life rock animes - no, one of the greatest animes of this generation. I’ll be eagerly waiting for the day that the second season of this gem gets announced.

I give Bocchi the Rock! a 10/10.

Never have I been more intrigued by a story's premise, only to be let down harder than Rick Astley. What initially had the potential to be a great piece of entertainment ultimately flopped under its own weight, which came at the cost of my time and attention.
This movie runs for 120 minutes including credits. This movie did not feel like 120 minutes, rather it felt like binging through a weak 12-episode slice of life. It consistently had downtime in which I felt that the plot was moving fucking nowhere, which is pretty ironic considering how the whole movie is about kids trying to find their ... way back home.
A quick explanation of the plot: a group of friends gets stuck in an apartment building that happens to teleport in the middle of the ocean and they work together to survive and find their way back home.
Now that may sound interesting at first until you realize... that's it?
Well not really, there's more to the story. But honestly, I wish that was it, because the "more", is absolutely fucking bullshit.
The movie does not give a rat's ass about the things it throws at the viewer. It goes from one plot point to the other, see-sawing between elements. I wouldn't be surprised if someone with bipolar wrote the script for this movie because not a single aspect of the movie was explained or developed further. You're left with a blank face at the end of the credits with one question in your mind: "What the fuck just happened?"
And to make matters worse, the characters are absolute dogshit. The director literally took cookie-cutter personalities and copy-pasted them into the script. I don't know how much more basic you can get with how they're written, their backstories, and their interactions.
From the very first minute to the last, it oozes mediocrity. Animation-wise, there's nothing noteworthy here. A big-budget anime film by Netflix is bound to look at least good, but the only thing that could save a story this boring was beautiful animation, which it also fails to deliver in that regard.
Drifting Home is an experience that only the bottom 5% of viewers will find fulfillment in. As a movie watcher, you expect your time and patience to be rewarded with a journey worthwhile, or a sense that something about you changed compared to before you sat down on the couch. However, I can say with confidence that I have gained nothing by watching this movie, except for the feeling that I probably could've finished a better Studio Ghibli movie instead.