There’s been a renewed rise in girl band anime. I’d argue that the trend started with BOCCHI THE ROCK! becoming a surprise hit in Fall 2022, with BanG Dream‘s second anime series and Girls Band Cry following suit. The anime adaptation of Rock Is a Lady’s Modesty appears to be the newest addition to the group. Frankly, it kind of has big shoes to fill, considering the strong reception all the aforementioned anime has gotten, but it’s at least off to a solid start.
Rock Is a Lady’s Modesty follows Lilisa Suzunomiya (Akira Sekine/Kanami), a popular transfer student at the prestigious Oshin Girls’ Academy. Lilisa got into the school after her mother marries a real estate tycoon. Even though she can’t stand the school’s conservative and elite culture, she maintains the facade of a prim and proper girl so that she can become a Noble Maiden, the highest honor a student at Oshin can receive. Among the steps she took for her facade is giving up her love for rock music and the guitar, which she learned from her biological father. One day however, Lilisa bumps into another popular girl, Otoha Kurogane (Miyuri Shimabukuro/Akane), and stumbles upon a guitar pick the other girl accidentally drops. While returning the guitar pick, Lilisa discovers that Otoha privately practices the drums in the school’s music room. Otoha deduces that Lilisa plays the guitar and she invites the transfer student to play to some rock music with her, thereby kicking off a lifelong friendship(?) between the two.
I like Lilisa well enough. While it’s not explicitly clear why she wants to be a Noble Maiden, her feeling trapped in the school and pressured to keep up appearances is relatable enough. A particularly smart bit of writing and direction in the episode is how it doesn’t immediately reveal Lilisa’s passion for rock music. It instead gradually hints at it until Otoha figures it out. It’s a good case of “show, don’t tell” and it lines up nicely with how Lilisa tries to bury her hobby, which makes her suddenly picking it up again at the end all the more cathartic.
Otoha meanwhile is a more peculiar character. For much of the episode, she acts prim and proper like Lilisa but towards the end, it becomes apparent that she is actually very loud and rude, going as far as to insult Lilisa’s guitar skills. While there’s the risk that Otoha’s toxicity makes her too unpleasant, I must admit that for now, the twist that she’s also keeping up appearances like Lilisa is very funny. Lilisa also narrates that she ultimately considers Otoha her lifelong partner so there’s potential to see how these two could possibly come to call each other friends. It’s also worth noting that there is some yuri subtext between the two girls, most notably a BDSM-coded scene used to convey how Lilisa feels Otoha is overshadowing her during their music session. Rock Is a Lady’s Modesty isn’t marketed as a yuri anime so the subtext could very well just be that, subtext, but part of me would like to see the show lean into it, given the start of the characters’ relationship and the setting of the story.
Something that you’ll likely notice during the premiere is the CGI used when the girls play their instruments. In addition to their voice actresses, the main characters are portrayed by members of the Japanese rock band Band-Maid. All the music-related animation is in fact performed by Band-Maid via motion capture. Given how difficult it is to animate someone playing an instrument, using motion capture by an actual musician is a really smart solution. There is still some of that wonkiness you often find in TV anime CGI but the tradeoff is the ability to use complex animations and camerawork that’s a lot easier to pull off in 3D than in 2D and those go well with the rock music and the fierce competition between Lilisa and Otoha. I am going to need to a good story to continue watching (and to be fair, I’m liking the story so far) but getting more of these motion capture scenes certainly helps.
Watch Rock Is a Lady’s Modesty on HIDIVE
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