Itai no wa Iya nanode Bougyoryoku ni Kyokufuri Shitai to Omoimasu.

After an enthusiastic invitation from her friend, Kaede Honjou reluctantly agrees to try New World Online: a very popular VRMMO played by thousands of people across Japan. Naming her in-game character Maple, she sets out on her journey. As a complete novice to such games, she allocates all of her stat points into vitality, desiring to not get hurt. With not a single point in any other stat, Maple has extraordinarily high defense, but she can't move quickly or hit hard.

This does not end badly for her, however. Due to her high defense, Maple acquires overpowered skills such as Total Defense, Poison Immunity, and Devour. These skills, along with the incredibly powerful items she obtains, allow her to obliterate most enemies in a single hit. After only a few days of playing the game, Maple claims third place in a server-wide event, gaining a reputation as a player who is both unkillable and absurdly powerful.

Despite her overpowered character, Kaede has much to learn. As she progresses through the game, she meets new friends and acquaintances, helping her complete new levels and events. Through all of her adventures, she may even pick up some other crazy skills that exceed all expectations.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Maple Main

Hondo, Kaede Japanese

Sally Main

Noguchi, Ruriko Japanese

Syrup Supporting

Shimabukuro, Miyuri Japanese

Kanade Supporting

Arai, Satomi Japanese

Kasumi Supporting

Hayami, Saori Japanese

Mii Supporting

Satou, Rina Japanese

Iz Supporting

Satou, Satomi Japanese

Yui Supporting

Suwa, Nanaka Japanese

May Supporting

Kakuma, Ai Japanese

Kuromu Supporting

Sugiyama, Noriaki Japanese

Cook, Justin Producer

Kaneko, Hayato Producer

Tokumura, Kenichi Producer

Umeda, Kazusa Producer

Reviews

Mar 25, 2020

ExemplarCayman

Recommended

Finally, a VRMMO series written by an author that actually played MMOs before. Even more shockingly, it’s written by an author that can actually write.

You see, because the author actually played MMOs before, he understands that in reality all of them suck major balls, so instead of portraying his fictional game as “realistic,” he portrays it as fun. In a sense, the game is portrayed the way an unspoiled newcomer sees MMOs: as a new world of adventure and endless possibility, one you explore with genuine curiosity and sense of wonder. Not a repetitive grind-fest, fantasy accountant simulator regarding stats and gear, and disappointing technological ... limitations.
Not that this fictional game being fun actually matters. Because this series isn’t a VRMMO. It is an anime show about people playing VRMMO (a concerningly high number of people seems to be unable to comprehend the distinction). And because the author can write, this ends up being a fun anime show. What it does right:

The VRMMO premise done right. I’ll repeat it again, this is a show about people playing a VRMMO - exploring a fictional world, socializing with their friends, making new friends, having fun. There is an online community of people talking about the game they play - sharing news, bitching about the OP things, bitching about the developers nerfing the OP things, etc. There are, of course, the developers, monitoring the state of the game, rolling out new content and thinking hard about what else to nerf. No one is trapped in an MMO. There are no contrived idiotic stakes like “if you die here, you die in real life.” Instead, there are real stakes in that the characters’ behaviour in the game affects their relationships with other people. There is real meaningful progress of meeting people and building friendships.

The MMO fanservice done right. There is a certain famous VRMMO series with a reputation of catering to the core MMO audience. That show spends half an episode explaining the idea that different classes can party up together to be more effective in combat, and does that with a comically pompous attitude of revealing some grand 4D chess strategy. That series is low-IQ garbage. In contrast, the MMO fanservice in Bofuri is clever, subtle, doesn’t waste your time, and happens when it makes sense in context. There are things like using combat moves for mobility (like a vertically-propelling attack for double-jumping), accidentally stumbling on hidden content by doing random stupid shit, wasting hours just fishing, sequence-breaking a quest line, and, the core foundation of the story, breaking the game by combining various mechanics in a way that was not forseen by the devs.

Narrative depth. As mentioned above, this is a story about people socializing, and the way this happens is organic and believable. Sally is the protagonist Maple's close friend who went to a great length of getting her into this MMO in the first place, which is why it makes sense how much effort she pours into keeping Maple entertained. Hell, the show could’ve been a good romance story if it wanted to, this is how well the aspect of their “dating” is executed. Meanwhile, Maple herself is a cheerful outgoing extrovert who effortlessly makes new friends, so she ends up with a guild. Sally isn’t an extrovert, so she isn’t friends with their guild. She tolerates them because they’re Maple’s friends. The guild members all have their own circumstances which boil down to that being in the Maple’s guild is just a good time in one way or another. Chrome is the most notable case - he is the generic audience surrogate dude who would be perfectly fine just reading about Maple (who’s a mascot of the game for all intents) on the forum, but somehow ended up as her companion, so now he’s self-conscious about being worthy of the main character position, especially considering he plays the same class as Maple but isn’t as good at it. Even the aforementioned forum messages look like real conversations that could be held by real people.
I could easily write paragraphs upon paragraphs breaking down such stuff - simply because there IS stuff to break down. There is depth. Best of all, it’s subtle and unobtrusive, the audience isn’t being beaten over the head with who thinks what about whom, it’s just there between the lines, not taking away the screen-time from the show’s main substance, but present to be seen by anyone who has the eyes and the brain to see it. Maybe not everyone does, which is why this aspect of the show goes underappreciated.

High production values. The series is supposedly a comedy/SoL, and yet its action scenes blow 90% of action anime out of the water with the level of their choreography, animation and hype. I, for once, particularly enjoyed the scene where a caster doing a long-ass chant was actually a thing happening in real time, with interference from their opponents and covering fire from their allies. The art, the music, the character design, etc. are all on point.

It’s fun. This is what MMOs are supposed to be about. Finishing your day, logging in, getting away from the real life problems for a moment, and having fun. Bofuri manages to capture that sense of having fun.

9/10 for “what every VRMMO series should aspire to be.”

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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Mar 25, 2020

LaLeLuLiLo

Mixed Feelings

I don’t like talking about other anime when doing a review, since I just want to focus on just the show. However it is obvious that a superficial comparison can be made on this show and a previously aired title “Rise of The Shield Hero”. Since I remembered when Shield Hero was airing a few seasons ago, I made an off hand comment that the Protagonist was basically an example of a min-max build(even though it was against his will). Lo and behold that this season introduces another min-max build but this time is properly acknowledged, and also happens to be another defense build with ... a shield! It’s a funny coincidence more than anything, and where most of the comparison ends.

BOFURI as it is called due to it’s absurdly long title is a rather delightful show to watch. Yes, the fact that it’s another virtual reality Isekai may be a bit eye rolling, but it does help that the show doesn’t take itself too seriously. It has a very light tone to the point that it can be considered slice-of-life, since it very much is. It basically looks into the life of a teenage girl as she has fun with her friends in the virtual space. The only thing making her stand-out from the crowd is that she naively Min-maxed a defense build that in turn led to her getting favorable results. Essentially she found a way to break the game and make herself drastically overpowered in a short amount of time. It amounts to very little aside from making boss fights and pvp tournaments very easy for her because in the end, it’s just a game.

That’s really the crux of it all that makes it stand, the show acknowledges that everything is just a game and nothing more. The characters all get along and there’s rarely(if any) deep seated rivalries or drama because it would be petty because it is just a game. All the NPCS are obviously scripted and quests that can be easily circumvented or easily accomplished. And while the main protagonist may be an overpowered tank, she does get nerfed from time to time. Although she usually bounces back from it with some other new thing the story hands out to her. Yes, things really do come very conveniently to our main protagonist, Maple. So much so that combined with her happy-go-lucky attitude she comes off as a Mary sue with her only fault being clumsy. Of course this power fantasy is only in the game, because out of it she’s just a clumsy girl and nothing more.

If it isn’t telling from the last paragraph, a lot of the characters in this show don’t have a lot of depth to them. Which is all fine for the most part, since their simplicity is part of their charm. It’s that casual carelessness and easy to understand personalities that makes them easy to attach to. such as Maple’s best friend Sally who is very supportive of her and who purposely created her own min-max build that compliments her friends. Even the “antagonistic” characters such as the leaders of the flame emperors who comes off as a very serious try hard person. Only for it to reveal that it;s more of a front for her to impress her friends and is also really a bit of a crybaby. Although it’s not uncommon that some of the characters can be forgettable even in Maple’s own group.

While the production value for the show is as decent as it comes these days. The soundtrack is worth taking note of. Not because there is something remarkable about it, but it does end up having a place within the show. Mostly when it comes during the fight sequences and the montages in the show. Especially the montages which the show has many more than it should have. It has a very distinct musical and vocal track that gets played again and again for each montage. It’s a decent song, but it would be nice to have something different. The same goes for the fight sequence song as well.

This is a show that isn’t planning to aim high and I guess i can respect that. All it wants to be is a carefree enjoyable show, and it succeeded in doing so.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Jul 9, 2021

literaturenerd

Not Recommended

“Scrub Lord: How I Learned to Stop Trying to Git Gud and Embrace the Cheese”. That is what they should have named this anime. Bofuri is an anime that is set up just like any other Isekai. A boring protagonist becomes obsessed with some shitty RPG that works through some incredibly advanced virtual reality. We know that soon she will get stuck in the RPG world and be told that she’ll die in the real world if she dies in the game. We’ve seen this 10 million times before. But WAIT! She doesn’t actually get stuck in the game! In fact, there are absolutely no ... stakes at all! This anime was recommended by a friend as one of the most pointless anime ever made. After watching it, I have to agree.

This anime is literally just watching a Let’s Play in which a no talent, filthy scrub uses OP spells to cheese her way through a poorly balanced game with an unearned reputation for difficulty! Would you like to spend 6 hours watching a Twitch stream of a ditzy girl abusing Dark Souls 3’s questionable balance system? That is what this show is! The ditzy girl chooses pyromancer, pours everything into faith and intelligence, and just roflstomps every boss in the game with OP spells like Crystal Soul Spear, Grand Chaos Fire Orb, and Black Fire Orb. Doesn't that sound like something that warrants a 12 episode anime adaptation with a budget?

Despite Bofuri's simple and admittedly kind of stupid premise, anime can have a simple premise and still work. One Punch is about a normal guy who becomes the world's strongest superhero, but he's so OP that every fight is a bore to him and all his fellow superheroes are rendered completely worthless. When I first watched Bofuri, I thought it was going to be an isekai version of One Punch Man with the whole joke being how OP Kaede is. However, this really isn't a comedy series. Bofuri is a "cute girls doing cute things" anime that on rare occasion has a comedic moment. So now that we realize it's not a comedy, we have to ask ourselves why this was made and who was it made for? My immediate guess is that Bofuri was made for thirsty male gamers who want to imagine having a hardcore gamer girlfriend. However, it doesn't actually feature any fanservice whatsoever. The main girls are drawn very flat and aren't ever sexualized. There is no romance in the series. It doesn't cater to any weird fetishes or anything like that. So maybe this is actually meant to be a relaxing anime for gamer girls? Nope! Bofuri is classified as a seinen, which means it is in fact intended for older men. As someone in the seinen demographic, I honestly can't imagine why people think this anime is good.

I think my favorite running gag in the series is Maple killing difficult bosses by poisoning them from a distance and getting praised for it by hardcore gamers. If you want to troll gamer forums, go tell a bunch of Souls fans that you were clever enough to poison False King Allant, the last boss of Demon Souls to death and fish for compliments. They will get MAD because the way Kaede plays is always the exact opposite of how a respectable gamer is supposed to tackle these types of games.

So if Bofuri isn't a comedy or a fanservice show or an action show, it must have great character development right? Kaede must start out with some character flaw she has to overcome or she has to learn how to make friends and get along with others right? Well...no. Bofuri is a show about level grinding montages, moe garbage where nothing happens, and then tournaments that Maple/Kaede wins by being OP. There are no real character journeys in Bofuri. There is no overarching plot. When I said this series was just a bad "Let's Play" I wasn't exaggerating. Bofuri is a monumental waste of time. Sword Art Online gets a lot of shit, and we can all see it's a flawed adaptation of an imperfect light novel. However, it wanted to create a protagonist that would inspire lonely young men. It wanted to create a wholesome romance and when the author was called out for writing shitty female characters, he actually took feedback and tried hard to get better! SAO was a pioneering LN that hundreds of others ripped off and even today is still beloved in Japan. Bofuri is none of those things. It wasn't a daring series. It never tried in any category. It's like the anime equivalent of a shovel ware game that gets thrown on to Steam in order to trick a few suckers into buying it. Bofuri makes SAO look like The Godfather. The only reason I didn't give it a lower rating is due to the animation from Silver Fox, which is honestly pretty decent. This series looks far better than it deserves.

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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