Headscratchers / Hitoribocchi no OO Seikatsu

The premise

• So the premise is that Bocchi is a loner who prefers to only have a few friends. It never gets explained what would be wrong with that in and of itself, though. Sure, Bocchi's fear of other people is something she should get help for, but forcing someone who prefers to be alone to make friends with everybody is nothing short of punishment.
  • Does she prefer being alone? Most people who have extreme social anxiety love their friends as much as extroverts do. I think any cure for social anxiety is likely to involve some kind of gritting your teeth and putting yourself out there. While I accept the premise is a little extreme I think we can suspend our disbelief due to Rule of Drama

The promise

• Okay, while I do understand Kai's motivations for cutting her ties with Bocchi, that being weaning Bocchi from being overly dependent on her, communicating with her through text messages was out of the question? Wouldn't she want to know of any progress that Bocchi was making with her goal?
  • Episode 7 seems to suggest it was a poorly thought out ultimatum on Kai's behalf and that she didn't factor in chance meetings and the like.
    • In other works, a case of Didn't Think This Through.
• If Kai is actually good at making friends, couldn't she just have introduced her friends to Bocchi? Or even better, couldn't she have led by example and show Bocchi how to forge friendships? The alternative, of course, is that Kai was not good at making friends herself, which makes her ultimatum even weirder.
• Does Kai really expect Bocchi to befriend everyone in her class? I can think of a few problems like that, such as:
  • It's rather difficult for even extroverts to befriend upwards of 15-20 people(28 in Bocchi's case)
  • It's somewhat vague as to what counts as "friendship," apart from mutual agreement and maybe First-Name Basis.
  • Kai doesn't know what kind of people there are in Bocchi's class, or whether any of them have difficult personalities that would make befriending them impossible.
  • I don't know if Kai is capable of such a thing herself, nor whether she believes that it's even possible to manage such a feat (let alone for someone like Bocchi).

Did Kako lie?

• In episode 11, Kako claims that the school was going to shuffle classes next semester which sets the episode's plot into motion. But then Mayo later states that there was actually no class shuffling. Why would Kako lie like that? Was it to be a b#ch for little to no reason?
  • I think Kako was under the impression the classes shuffled based on how other schools operated; she was probably unaware their school didn't operate as such and didn't bother to check. So not necessarily being a bitch, she's just being blunt as usual, albeit uninformed in this case.
  • Somewhat related to this, I wonder if Kai considered the possibility. If Bocchi befriended several members of her class but got shuffled into a class full of strangers, she'd be back to square one when it comes to the promise.