Forum - View topic

REVIEW: Bocchi the Rock! Anime Series Blu-ray Disc Review

I cannot fathom why Crunchyroll chose not to dub this into English. Seriously, this is one of their biggest hits in years.

FireChick wrote:

I cannot fathom why Crunchyroll chose not to dub this into English. Seriously, this is one of their biggest hits in years.

Honestly I can only assume they weren't able to per the original license because this absolutely is the type of show they would normally jump at the chance to dub, or they had to release the show on blu-ray within a certain window for whatever reason (which seems unlikely). I can maybe understand not originally choosing it for a simuldub since some of that to an extent is just based on predictions of how successful a show could be... but you would think they'd go and do a backlog dub once the viewership proved it would be a good investment.

And whether or not they'd be able to dub the songs wouldn't have much sway in whether or not they'd dub the show, as they've dubbed plenty of shows under both circumstances.

I would've loved to hear someone attempt to dub this show, but even as someone who loves dubs and was disappointed when Zombie Land Saga Revenge didn't have dubbed songs, something about this show doesn't lend itself super easily to localization and so I kind of get why they may not have dubbed it.

It is also entirely possible that they will retroactively add a dub if a second season is ever announced (see: Kaguya-sama). Which I don't remember if it was, but I think we can be sure it'll happen.

The Japanese release for Bocchi didn't have much in the way of video extras. There were commentary tracks, but those rarely ever come over here for various reasons.
https://bocchi.rocks/bddvd/vol1.html

The Japanese release also had music videos, the "Road to Guitar Hero" videos featuring Bocchi's VA learning guitar, and the special studio live in vol 6. (Not sure where you're getting the commentary tracks from since the official website you linked doesn't mention them.) It's not a barebones release the same way the American one is at all. None of those extras would've required much effort to include, with only Road to Guitar Hero needing a non-pre-existing translation.

I cannot fathom why Crunchyroll chose not to dub this into English.

FireChick wrote:

I cannot fathom why Crunchyroll chose not to dub this into English.

I haven't seen the show yet, but I would hazard a guess that it has to do with whether or not to dub the music. While I prefer dubs, subbing isn't a deal-breaker for me. But I'm assuming that the songs in Bocchi are typical of the rock and pop songs of most opening and end credits, whose subs show me that even rock songs written in and for Japanese audiences aren't going to translate well at all. Most of even the hardest-hitting songs are indirect and otherwise oblique when they aren't down-right passive aggressive while American audiences demand the directness of a first-person point-of-view. Localizing most of these songs for dubbing wouldn't work because they don't cross the cultural gap. So I'm thinking that SonyCrunchFun decided, probably logically in this case, that dubbing the dialogue while keeping the songs subbed was too much of a shift for general audiences and decided to keep it subbed.