Thankfully, last week’s “Bocchi’s Gone Missing!” cliffhanger is resolved quickly; she wasn’t anxious about the concert, but embarrassed to be seen in a maid outfit by her bandmates. Thanks to Kita’s cheerfully withering analysis, they’re able to find her in the darkest, moistest place, like where you’d find a slug.
Once the band is together at the festival, Nijika takes the lead and it becomes not just a band wandering around before their next big show, but four friends hanging out and having tons of fun together. It’s Bocchi’s first school event, and the fact she’s with Nijika, Ryou and Kita makes it not just tolerable, but genuinely enjoyable.
Kita eventually realizes Bocchi is stalling so she doesn’t have to work at the maid café, so after several festival detours they head to her class, where she’s posted at the entrance to greet customers. When post-apocalyptic hooligans show up to intimidate her, her lack of reaction and the face she makes immediately cows them; they’re unaware she’s passed out on her feet.
When Bocchi serves her friends in all her maidly glory, they comment how how great she looks in frilly stuff, while Ryou, always the enterprising young woman, conceptualizes ways they can cash in on her cuteness by dressing her up various ways so their videos will get more views.
But while she looks the tops, her maid “deliciousness spell” is more like a curse that actually makes the omurice less appetizing. Kita shows Bocchi how it’s done, blending her usual patented Kit-aura with a borrowed maid outfit. Bocchi’s classmates notice, and before long all of Kessoku Band is working at the cafe (Ryou eventually adopting Boy Style, much to Kita’s glee).
Bocchi takes a break, but that allows her to enter her 3D CGI mind palace where a crude model of her slams into hundreds of cubes. She’s worried that the “reception gap” between her and her bandmaids will carry over to their concert.
Before heading to STARRY to practice, the band heads to the gym where they’ll be playing just to get a sense of the place (Nijika and Ryou having never been there). The size of the place gets them all fired up. At practice, Nijika and Ryou have the kind of mini-spat old friends have over the value of MCing.
Bocchi also notices…something about Kita that concerns her. My guess is Kita has been going full speed ahead in preparation for this concert and is exhausted. I worried that the next day she’d be ill. By the same measure, Kita tells Bocchi she’ll do fine because she’s so…but then she trails off without finishing her sentence. I wonder what she was going to say?
After drinking in the autumnal twilight, the girls part ways. I love the little snapshots of their individual home lives we get. The next morning, Bocchi is present and accounted for, and as a welcome change of pace, is not having any kind of meltdown or panic attack.
On the contrary, she actually dives into a positive daydream in which a big producer at the school discovers and signs them on the spot, culminating in subway column posters and a vision of Mister Guitar driving a Kessoku Band-themed semi truck across America.
Once Bocchi has returned to the real world, the hype and anticipation reaches its peak, as Kessoku Band waits in the darkness for their turn on stage. Bocchi is clear-eyed and determined, and even if her heartbeat is so loud Ryou mistakes it for the other band’s drumming, that’s to be expected considering the magnitude of their undertaking. Nijika brings everyone’s hands together for a final confidence and togetherness-boosting cheer.
Just like that, Kessoku Band is on stage, no surprise mishaps or setbacks. Everyone is healthy, wants to be there, and is ready to go. At first Bocchi feels a little lonely when the only cheers she hears are those from Kita’s fans. But then she hears her family, who will be watching her perform for the first time. Her fans from her street concert are there, as is a sauced Kikuri, being kept in line by Seika.
Family, friends, classmates, mentor, and a whole lot of strangers who are about to find out who she is and what she’s made of … one couldn’t ask for a better setup for a show that should prove to be the culmination of all the ups and downs and all those days, weeks and months alone in her dark cramped closet practicing away. It’s all about to pay off, I hope in the best way. No bombing up there—You all got this!