Awesome Art: What makes the anime stand out is the varying art styles such as its use of claymation and 3D modeling among other examples.
Awesome Ego: Kikuri Hiroi is a party girl who loves to make a mess of things and will regularly flip off her own fans and insult them to their faces, yet her band consistently sells out their shows. Then we’re shown in episode 10 that she absolutely has the talent to back up her attitude.
Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Many things that happen in the series, but the standout even among those is perhaps the two stereotypical post-apocalypse thugs that burst into the maid cafe in Episode 11 and threaten everyone, who are suddenly defeated by Bocchi's awkwardness. While a lot of the show's random events are questionably canon, the duo appears again in the crowd during Episode 12.
Officially she is an anxious Shrinking Violet who even states herself that she has a "communication disorder". However, while in Japan the term "communication disorder" can be used to refer to more serious cases of anxiety, it can also be used for someone who simply has No Social Skills. Given just how extreme her anxiety gets, it's still easy for fans to interpret her as having a social anxiety disorder that potentially requires psychiatric intervention.
Some other fans speculate that Hitori's extreme, almost debilitating anxiety, many daydreams and fits of disassociation may be indicative of a much more serious affliction, such as psychosis or schizophrenia.
Ryo rarely shows much emotion, tends to exhibit rather odd behavior, has no desire to make any friends aside from Nijika, and has encyclopedic knowledge about her interests. This results in many fans interpreting her as being somewhere on the autism spectrum, or at least being neurodivergent in some way.
"Dorito" for Nijika for the chip-shaped Idiot Hair she sports.
"Roy" for Ryo, as a deliberate misspelling of her name.
Bocchi "The Rock" Johnson for Bocchi, thanks to people making the connection to Dwayne Johnson, who also has the nickname "The Rock".
"Drunk-chan" for Kikuri Hiroi, due to being The Alcoholic.
Fandom Rivalry: With Chainsaw Man of all things. This small rivalry mostly comes from both shows competing for the most popular anime of Fall 2022, as well from comparisions between Bocchi's creative direction in contrast with Chainsaw Man's more down-to-earth direction (which was a point of contention for fans of the manga).
Fountain of Memes: Bocchi's reactions are a very popular source of reaction gifs.
There is also overlap with the K-On! fandom, as they are both Manga Time Kirara series themed around music. It's not uncommon to see fanart of Hitori and Yui together, and it also helps that Kirara Fantasia had an event where the two series crossed over.
If crossover fanart has anything to say about it, it also has a relationship with Laid-Back Camp due to both leads being similar in appearance (but completely opposite in personality—Nadeshiko is a Genki Girl) and also involving a particular group that all of the characters share a common ground with (camping and music, though the latter is an actual band rather than a school club). Coincidentally, both manga also run in Manga Time Kirara.
There's also a lot of fanart with both Hitori and Kobeni or Suletta, two other anxious characters whose anime aired in Fall 2022. Occasionally,Serufu is also included.
It shares many fans with Spy X Family, another comedy anime/manga that aired at the same season and similarly features hilariously over-the-top characters.
Despite a minor rivalry due to both competing for the most popular anime of Fall 2022 and their vastly different tones, this series shares many fans with Chainsaw Man. Some pointed out the similarities (at least by appearance) of Kita and Makima, or Nijika and Denji. Come part 2 of Chainsaw Man, and Bocchi and Asa also gaining crossover arts for similar cases of social anxiety.
It has even shared fans of Minato Aqua from hololive, considering both her and Hitori are both similar personality and appearance wise. It's also helped that Aqua herself has noticed the similarities and has even streamed the first season.
Those knowledgeable about guitars will notice that the ones portrayed in the series match real-world models; for example, the bass that Kita blew all her money on is an Ibanez BTB866SC, a model noted to go for upwards of 150,000 Yen, which converts to around $1000-$1100 USD.
The guitar Hitori got from her dad is a Gibson Les Paul Custom Black Beauty, a $6899 USD guitar, although it's implied to be a vintage one which would have been far less expensive when her dad got it. Her second is a Yamaha PAC611VFM custom job, which generally would have cost around $700-800 USD.
The vast majority of the manga's chapters open with an illustration of the girls posing in a way that makes these illustrations look like band photos or album covers. All of these are, in fact, directly based on real Japanese band photos/album covers, with one fan translation of the manga even including the original photo underneath Kessoku Band's version, to show how accurately they match.
LGBT Fanbase: With its cast of loveable and appealing female characters, sapphic viewers really took to this series. It also helps that one of the main characters is explicitly gay, and several others including Bocchi herself are implied to be sapphic too.
Mexicans Love Speedy Gonzales: Many real-life introverts love Hitori's comically exaggerated behavior for not only being hilarious, but also being strangely relatable.
Moe: Hitori, full stop. Not only does she look adorable (to the point her friends think so in-universe), but her kindness, shyness, exaggerated reactions, overactive imagination, and willingness to help others whilst trying to get over her anxiety make her very cute and endearing.
While thankfully played for laughs, Hitori's glitched screaming is a bit horrifying. The fact that it was all the actor's unedited scream makes it worse.
In Episode 12, as the crowd claps and cheers following Hitori's slide solo, the sound slowly fades out, until all that can be heard is very heavy and stilted breathing. It really hammers home just how absolutely terrified the poor girl was.
While Bocchi is canonically bustier than her bandmates, she's not exaggeratedly so and the manga mainly uses her surprisingly large chest size as the punchline for gags. Fan artists usually dispense with that and give Hitori huge boobs and an insanely curvy, attractive figure even when she's wearing her usual unflattering tracksuit.
Related to the Fan Nickname above, some fan artists have taken to drawing Bocchi as secretlybuff underneath her tracksuit. One anthology◊ manga even depicts her having abs.
While PA-san's design isn't particularly fanservicey in canon, fanart tends to give her a more voluptuous body and put her in more revealing outfits. Just look. In addition, she's commonly given a lot more piercings that she has in canon, and sometimes tattoos too.
Ship Mates: Hitori/Kita shippers and Ryo/Nijika shippers get along just fine, as do Hitori/Nijika and Ryo/Kita shippers; some will even take the extra steps and ship them all together.
Signature Scene: Bocchi's so-called Glitch Scream◊, spurred on by the merest suggestion of opening an Instagram account, quickly became set in stone as perhaps the series's most iconic and hilarious gag.
Tainted by the Preview: Trailers for episode 11 of the anime set the Japanese fanbase alight, as it showed the character design for Hitori's maid costume as much more modest than it was in the manga, seemingly completely removed Ryou's costume, and added a bunch of Kita whining about her flat chest that wasn't present in the manga. This led to many fans accusing the anime's staff of messing with Aki Hamaji's original character designs for no other reason than Author Appeal. When the episode actually aired, their complaints turned out to be mostly unfounded as Ryou got to wear her maid outfit, Kita's dialogue wasn't actually present in the episode, and Hitori's trademark Hidden Buxom reveal still happened, albeit in a different way.
The Woobie: Hitori herself. She's shy to the ninth degree, extremely anxious, and has poor self esteem. The girl really needs a hug.
Serufu is also included.
