by Matt Marcus, Staff Writer

The familiar barrage of guitar notes of “Ready to Rock”, BAND-MAID’s opening song for Rock Is a Lady’s Modesty, hyped up an expectant crowd. On stage, however, was not the band; present instead was RockLady’s Director, Shinya Watada, Otoha Kurogane’s voice actor, Miyuri Shimabukuro, and Producer Hidetake Nishigaya. The topic at hand: the staff’s favorite scenes and a peek behind the curtain on production.

The Saturday morning panel was the group’s second during this year’s Otakon, the first being held the day before in one of the larger conference rooms of the Walter E. Washington Convention Center. Having only the chance to visit the conference on Saturday, I was curious whether interest in the series was strong enough to carry a second session. I was pleasantly surprised; despite the smaller room, the attendees, roughly 120 in total, were as loud and raucous as a Fuji Rock crowd (or at least my imagination of such). I was pretty impressed by the number of fans who showed up to hear more about a niche title that aired on a small streaming platform.

The panel was MC’d by Nishigaya-san, with Watada-san and Shimabukuro-san as the guests of honor. Both shared two clips each that were their personal favorites and discussed why. Watada-san highlighted two post-jam ending scenes; Otoha’s first colorful outburst and immediate switch back to lady-like speech from the end of episode 1, and the battle of the bands scene with our full group panting, sweating, in front of a stunned crowd. Both moments were stressful to direct, and he was relieved that they managed to hit with the intended impact.

Shimabukuro-san’s choices were both spirited character moments. First was lead character/guitarist Lilisa and Otoha’s first exchange of vulgarities in episode 3. The second was Lilisa’s defense of the rock greenhorn Tina in episode 8. She would mention that her biggest challenge was keeping her speech intelligible during the not-infrequent torrents of screamed insults.

After the favorite scenes section, the panel moved on to Q&A. Shimabukuro-san mentioned taking drum lessons to get into the role, but given her novice status she did not end up drenched in sweat like her character. The staff were asked about their favorite Western rock bands (Watada: Bon Jovi; Nishigaya: Green Day).

The most interesting revelations came towards the end. Nishigaya-san touted one last surprise: a prerecorded segment with BAND-MAID, who provided both music and motion-capture for the musical performance scenes. Of their anecdotes, my favorite was from drummer Akane Hirose, who said that Otoha’s freestyle drumming in episode 1 was an unrehearsed jam that was requested at the end of a recording session. 

All in all, it was a fun panel. The only mildly disappointing part was that Akira Sekine, the seiyuu for Lilisa, was not there to trade stories with Shimabukuro-san, which could’ve brought out some more lively banter. Also, there was no season 2 tease or even a shoutout to the upcoming localization of the manga coming next month. Still, I was pleased to see that the show garnered enough love for there to be two panels dedicated to it.

After the panel I left the hall and grabbed myself a chili-smothered half-smoke at the Ben’s Chili Bowl stall located at the north end of the convention center’s skybridge that spans across L Street. Given the central location, I had a great vantage point to watch the throngs of anime fans passing by, many in cosplay. While I didn’t see anyone dressed up as Otoha or Lilisa, there was still plenty of RockLady-like rebellion put on display. Perhaps the next time I make it to a convention I will see more proper ladies saying “Gokigenyou~” with middle fingers up.

Rock Is A Lady’s Modesty is available for streaming on HIDIVE, and volume 1 of the manga will be coming out in English via Yen Press on September 23rd.

Matt Marcus is a cohost of various projects on the Pitch Drop Podcast Network, as well as the writer for the blog Oh My God, They Were Bandmates analyzing How Do We Relationship in greater depth.