Hyperfocus #1: Bocchi the Rock! and how language affects our response to foreign pop

Of course J-pop is more than anisong, and K-pop is more than whatever's being hyped these days, but we have a long way to go if we're to truly appreciate songs from beyond what the West pushes on us.

I did say Nicksy Once Monthly will post monthly most of the time, right? Here’s one of the extra bits. This is the first of hopefully a long-running series called Hyperfocus, where I talk about a song or album I’m particularly obsessed about—and then write about it, and then some. The very first installment happens to be about one song off one of the most popular anime series of 2022. Oh, and there are spoilers ahead.

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If you know someone who’s into anime, you probably heard them enthuse about Bocchi the Rock!, which dropped late last year and quietly became one of 2022’s biggest hits. It’s not as cunning as Spy × Family, nor as convoluted as the latest season of Attack on Titan, nor as endearing as My Dress-Up Darling. It’s a slice-of-life comedy—meaning, it’s ordinary and surreal at the same time—centered on Goto, a high-schooler with ambitions of becoming a big-time rock star, but whose intense social anxiety gets in the way.

The series hits the notes you’d expect it to hit. There’s the weird musician type; there’s the overenthusiastic type; there’s the senpai who seems to have it together despite being seemingly up to no good most of the time. The animators seem to get a kick out of experimenting with how to show Goto’s breakdowns. The source material, importantly, has a lot of affection for the Japanese indie scene: the leads are named after members of Asian Kung-Fu Generation, for example.

Also, the music is good. Of course, it has to be good. That’s a lot of heavy lifting on the anime, considering the manga, well, doesn’t sing. But over Christmas the show released a full album of tracks from band-within-the-show Kessoku Band, and it’s a pretty accessible listen. You don’t have to have seen the show to like it, although you may need to watch some episodes to understand why the lyrics can be so dark.

Okay, so Goto’s social anxiety means she just keeps to herself (making her an online guitar-playing superstar-of-sorts in the process) and is intensely apprehensive of school-wide events, such as the sports festival. (She does have a point, though.) So, when she was tasked with writing the band’s songs—a task she embraces, because she’s kept to herself for so long she knows her way with the written word—she delivers something like “Guitar, Loneliness and Blue Planet”:

突然降る夕立
A sudden evening shower falls
あぁ傘もないや嫌
And yeah, it figures, I don’t have an umbrella
空のご機嫌なんか知らない
Who cares how the sky’s feeling, anyway?
季節の変わり目の服は
When it’s time for the seasons to change
何着りゃいいんだろ
What are you supposed to wear? Who knows?
春と秋　どこいっちゃったんだよ
Spring and fall… yeah, where’d they go?

But then there’s “If I Could Be A Constellation”. This song, I’ve been playing over and over—a lovely slice of pop-rock that should not be out of place in your typical pop-rock playlist. It also moves the plot forward, even if it doesn’t make sense that Goto would write those lyrics that way. Kessoku Band perform this in the season finale, at the cultural festival in the school where Goto and vocalist Kita both study. It captures perfectly not just Goto’s growth throughout the series, but Kita’s, too:

Sorry, no subs, but in a nutshell: Kita initially pretended to know how to play the guitar, in a bid to join the band and get close to Ryo, the blue-haired slightly-askew character. Here, as Goto fears she’s ruined the band’s set because her string broke, preventing her from doing her guitar solo, Kita buys her some time by pulling off a guitar solo of her own.

And the lyrics are pretty much about friends finding each other. Or star-crossed lovers, take your pick:

君と集まって星座になれたら
I want to become a constellation with you
空見上げて　指を差されるような
The kind that puts out many-colored lights
つないだ線　解かないで
I won’t let these lines that link us come undone
僕がどんなに眩しくても
No matter how brightly you shine

No wonder I’ve been playing it a lot. It’s romantic, but not obviously so. And, again, a song that wouldn’t be out of place in your typical pop-rock playlist. I’ve been adding a bit more Japanese stuff on my rotation over the past few years and I’ve come to the same conclusion. So why am I not playing more?

Unfortunately most people’s impression of Japanese pop still comes from anime theme songs, or anisong. Valid, in a way, although these songs—opening theme songs in particular—sound the way they do because they’re tasked with welcoming you to the show and setting the vibe in a minute or so. Thus, you get the impactful “Gurenge” from Kimetsu no Yaiba, or the cutesy “Renai Circulation” from Bakemonogatari, or the whimsical¹ “Rhapsody of Blue Sky“ from the legitimately excellent Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid². Even the classics knew this: “Cha-La Head Cha-La” from Dragon Ball Z, “Just Communication” from Gundam Wing, the fabulous “Hohoemi no Bakudan” from YuYu Hakusho. (Yes, I have not watched a lot of anime: I’m sure you’d have better examples.)

Arguably—and my friend Miro, expert in many things Japanese, would point this out too—the stuff from Spy × Family are outliers in that their themes are performed by more established artists: Official Hige Dandism’s “Mixed Nuts” and Gen Hoshino’s “Comedy”, in particular, were likely commissioned for their themes of finding family in the unlikeliest places.

It also doesn’t help that Japanese pop is, in 2023, still a pretty closed room. While acts and agencies are finally realizing that the Internet exists and they have a much bigger room to cater for, the mindset that the domestic market is enough for success hasn’t gone away. There are exceptions, of course—Utada Hikaru, Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, and more recently, Yoasobi—but for the most part anisong’s had the bigger burden of representing the complexities of J-pop to the world. No wonder K-pop got ahead of them.

Speaking of the devil, only in the past couple of years did it become really acceptable for English-speaking folk—especially the cooler-than-thou ones—to unabashedly love K-pop, and even then it’s only limited to the usual suspects like BTS, Blackpink and (if you don’t want to look too pop) Red Velvet, or the “acceptable” newcomers like NewJeans. Certainly here in the Philippines there’s still the impression that K-pop is “trash” music that only people with “less refined” tastes listen to. It betrays the fact that, underneath the pop delights that do break through (case in point: Momoland’s “Bboom Bboom”) there’s a tradition of chilly songwriting (see Heize’s “You, Clouds, Rain”), cool hip-hop (see Penomeco’s “Shy”) and lush sounds (see anything Baek Yerin has done), whether it be from major labels or independent ones. But then, since it’s mostly sung in a non-English language, the dinky pop stereotype persists³.

Perhaps it is the, err, the colonial nature of most pop music these days—predominantly English, predominantly of the same few styles at any given time—that means we’re quick to dismiss songs of any other language as just this or that. I mean, we still think of French music as Serge Gainsbourg’s raspy voice and speak-sing delivery—and it’s the country that gave us Daft Punk and Phoenix! It’s likely you don’t think much of music from Africa or the Middle East, too, whether due to lack of time or initiative. (I am, of course, guilty of this.) You probably heard that song that goes ting-ting-tang-tang-ting⁴ on your corner of TikTok and similarly dismissed it as dinky.

Heck, even here in the Philippines, there is a clear gulf. With a few exceptions, a significant segment of the population still think of songs performed in the local languages as less worthy of their time. The advent of streaming services means the impact of pop stations here playing the same small set of Filipino hits—love songs of varying tempos but the same vibe—has been dulled somewhat, but the mindset that songs in English are much better still persists. You have local artists trying their best to avoid writing in the local languages for fear of alienating their more “discerning” audience. And—again, with a few exceptions, like SB19—when local producers and artists take inspiration from popular music elsewhere, like the booming P-pop⁵ movement, some listeners just call it a throwaway copycat.

At this point, though, most of what I just wrote is going to be moot. Most traditional gatekeepers are falling away, replaced by Spotify playlists, rabid fans and peer pressure—meaning, somehow, a broader range of music from more places around the world get a look-in. That, in turn, is being reflected in festival line-ups and musical guests on television shows—although I will concede it’s also partly down to how much more aggressive labels and agencies have been in shopping themselves to Western audiences⁶. We're even seeing some degree of taking inspiration from different musical styles around the world, although that inevitably leads to accusations of cultural appropriation—which people tend to easily throw out anyway because, somehow, culture should stay static and rooted in the past. But that's another installment.

And yet, old mindsets die hard. It’s difficult, after all, to scrub off the thinking that liking certain genres automatically makes you cooler, and liking certain genres automatically makes you, um, uncool-er. But then, aren’t we all missing out? For better or worse, we have access to much more music than we ever did before. We also have fans assiduously posting translated lyrics and generally proselytizing on their favorites’ behalf. At worst, you can always fire up Google Translate.

Yes, I know we don’t all have time to dive deep, and I know we don’t all have the strength to explore something new these days, but, you know, take a dip, see where it leads you? (“Nowhere” is fine. It happens.) Let’s start easy. The Kessoku Band album is, again, filled with stuff that would fit your typical playlist. It even has a cover of an AKFG song, just to double down on the homage. Musically, it’s really not weird, and Ikumi Hasegawa (who voices Kita) does a good job at delivering the sentiment without being too forward about it.

And then, do me a favor: listen to this track, the ending theme to My Dress-Up Darling, performed by actress and cosplayer Akase Akari. The top comment on the music video is supposedly about a guy who plays this when his homies aren’t around. Me, well, I don’t have homies to hide from, so I’ll own it: this is a pleasant little song, and we all need something pleasant to break through our typical.

1. I don’t know why the Japanese are so good at making these grand, whimsical, fairy tale-like songs. Another example: Noriyuki Makihara’s “Life Goes On~like nonstop music~”.

2. I can’t stress enough how good Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid is. It’s shameless in its references to the more, uh, notorious sides of Japanese culture, but it’s also very sincere in its exploration of relationships and connections. (It’s also why, I think, My Dress-Up Darling was well-received when it aired last year.) Also, it arguably has the best seiyuu ensemble I’ve ever come across.

3. It’s not that K-pop doesn’t have cutesy pop. I’m listening to Apink’s “Mr. Chu” as I write this footnote, for example. It’s just that, when there’s a lot of the same-sounding things, and it’s all you hear, it gets annoying. It was grating when the flower boy concept was everywhere; it is grating when everyone tries out the hard-edged girl crush concept.

4. The original version of Hoàng Thuỳ Linh’s “See Tình” makes for a cool summer hit. It’s as sublime as—yes, I will shoehorn it here—Stellar’s “Sting”.

5. I have one misgiving about the “P-pop” term: it doesn’t slide well when you say it. I get why some acts are trying to move away from the “OPM” tag—it’s arguably dated, but you can also argue it’s classic—but can’t we just go for “Pinoy pop” instead? Even “Filopop”? And I hate the term “Filo”.

6. I remember watching K-pop’s early attempts to break into the United States. The Wonder Girls performed on So You Think You Can Dance, a show that has always been more adventurous in their musical guests to begin with. Now, though, it isn’t surprising anymore to see K-pop groups perform on American television. And you have Blackpink headlining Coachella this year. Yes, BTS definitely paved the way… with some help from their rabid fans and the crumbling of traditional media business models. And Psy. I see you, hyung.