Bokurano
Bokurano: Ours

Edit

What would you like to edit?

SynopsisBackgroundAlternative TitlesPictureChapters/VolumesPublishing DatesRelationsTypeExternal Links  

tl;dr: An incredibly well written series of stories of characters struggling with finding meaning in death, though one with unfortunately bad art.

A quick glance at this manga may make it seem like a pretty typical mech story where a group of teens are chosen as mech pilots to defend the Earth against an alien invasion. However, it doesn’t take all that deep of a look for it to be clear that the mech aspect is just there to provide structure for the character stories. While the battles are obviously important to the plot in terms of them happening, they aren’t that important to what the ... manga is trying to convey. At times they matter so little that the manga even skips on showing the battles themselves. Rather, what’s important about the battles is that only the pilot selected randomly from the group may take control of the mech, Zearth, and use it to fight off the invading mech, but the price of using the Zearth’s power is the life of the pilot. However, if the pilot loses the battle or doesn’t manage to defeat it within 48 hours, the entirety of Earth and everyone living on it will die. Thus, either way, the pilot is dead.

Furthermore, though the battles occur randomly without any prior indication, who the next pilot will be is indicated immediately after the end of the previous battle. Thus, the core of this manga is each of the main character’s struggles in how to use what little time they have left. The manga is episodic with each arc focusing on a single character. There is a progression to the world in that at first the pilots are operating secretly, while still living their normal lives, but as the battles go on their identity is revealed to the military and then to a degree to the media and rest of the world, thus making it impossible to live their normal lives. This combined with the fact that each of the main characters is incredibly different results in there being a lot of variety to each arc. The core theme remains using death to show the value of life though how each of the characters question what’s worth living for, dying for, and killing for. This is a theme that has a tremendous amount that can be done with it and this manga manages to explore it with a very wide breadth. The depth of each arc as a result is somewhat lacking but holistically it feels like the writing manages to convey everything that it wanted to convey while hitting really strong emotional beats and delivering some major gut punches.

This very much isn’t the type of manga where anyone gets a happy ending, nor does everyone’s ending even reach the level of bittersweet. Still, all in all while wrapped in melancholy, it does manage to give everyone an ending that’s reasonably satisfying. Near the end of the manga it does a follow up on the stories of all the characters that passed away, which while not perfect definitely helped in providing some level of closure. The exception to that, the horrible terrible exception to that, is with Chizuru’s. A lot of characters had complicated circumstances, but only one character’s story felt like it had a true out and out villain, and for all intents and purposes he gets off scot free. And furthermore, despite villain being absolutely vile, the manga ultimately reads like it’s trying to portray him as an inspiringly good person who has a point actually, which is so utterly ridiculous that it actually made me angry.

The biggest weakness of this manga is the art. It’s overall too simplistic and not very good. The mechs while not great are fine and the action is decent enough considering it’s not important. However, the art is terrible at showing human expressions which results in emotions not being conveyed properly which I think significantly detracts from the work. This was especially bad during portions heavily focused on characters just talking, such as a long stretch of Kirie’s arc, as it’s basically just lots of text with the art contributing absolutely nothing. Furthermore, while having eye pleasing art wouldn’t really fit the manga, the art it does have completely lacks characters. It doesn’t really build atmosphere or establish tone at all.

Bokurano is a series that has stuck with me for quite some time now. Not because of the subject matter it was tackling but rather because it's yet another example of the "Ergo Proxy" phenomenon that happens a lot in anime and manga. Where a certain story does so much right, but at the same time does so much wrong. It has great ideas and features some great artwork, but unfortunately doesn't capitalize on any of these qualities.


Plot:
To start, what initially drew me to read Bokurano, as I believe would be the case for many others, would definitely be because of its depressing yet ... intriguing premise, reminiscent of another mecha series that shall not be named in this review.

"The story begins when a group of 15 children inadvertently sign a contract to save their world by piloting a giant mecha named, “Zearth”, and battle other more menacing forces. The children are excited by the prospect of defending their world, but not everything is as it seems. The twist is that Zearth, in actuality, is powered by life energy, meaning at the end of every battle, the pilot in command dies. So now after signing their lives away, the children must use their time left on Earth not only to defend it, but also to rethink how they wish to spend their last moments alive."

Now the idea behind this premise sounds really good on paper, but as always execution can make all that difference. To its credit, instead of being a standard all actionfest, Bokurano chooses to place emphasis on the more psychological and existential aspects of its premise. But to do this, the narrative structure that binds Bokurano, is that it is divided into short narrative arcs (ranging from 4 to 6 chapters each) that focuses on one single character and their philosophical perspective on their situation. With all of them coming from completely different lifestyles, searching for different answers, but still starting from the same existential question. However despite starting off strong, with the first half or so gradually raising its thematic questions while also seamlessly advancing the mystery and worldbuilding of the series. This structure can also lead to the more noticeable flaws in the storytelling. Such as at times, egregiously slow pacing and the whole thing feeling “on the rails” in the process. And although the chapters usually feel relatively natural, it can also come across as unnecessary padding required for the chapter to hammer home its point. But in the process of doing so, some of the character arcs and moments don’t hit with quite the same force it could have had. Especially as the later chapters become more and more convoluted.

For example, there will be chapters that would generally feature the characters in certain situations that are clearly meant for us, the readers to sympathize and relate to them. Such as seeing them have a flashback of their wasted dreams, monologuing about what would happen once they're gone, getting in touch with their loved ones, and things of that nature. Which are all good and are obviously there to gives us pieces of information about the characters and the state of their world; however, that doesn’t excuse the existence of a large chunk of material that is basically information we already know and it’s just pointless to have it repeated verbatim. What’s worse is that sometimes, the situation they are in would even come across as completely nonsensical. Like they’re was even one chapter where a thief stole the family car of one of our main characters and even broke into the house, but for some reason, the story was framing that said main character as the one in the wrong, like what? That's like that chocolate bar nonsense from Erased all over again lol.


Characters:
But speaking of character stories. The characters of Bokurano are the very core of the series, and where some people argue that Bokurano stands out in, and what makes it worth sticking to the end. Each of these characters is given focus in their respective arcs, with moments of introspection sandwiched between their battles with these titanic foes. All of them don’t feel like a hollow rehash of one another, as they all have their own set of distinct flaws, with the main crux of their arcs being about overcoming their insecurities or psychological trauma in the face of their dire circumstances.

However, that doesn't mean all of them are the same in terms of memorability. As the series has its fair share of duds and strong characters. Just to give a brief rundown, without spoiling anything. Characters like Yoko Machi, Jun Ushiro, Chizuru Honda, and Dung Beetle are obvious standouts imo, as they left more of an impact on the series. Given that they had the most amount of screen time. And comparatively, aside from Dung Beetle, the series takes it time to meaningfully explore these characters' relationships with their families, friends, and even fellow pilots. Grounding them and giving a sense of who they really are and how they internalize their situation. While the remaining other cast members can be a bit hit or miss. With their lasting impression being up to the reader. Except for Kodaka and Isao, fuck them lol.

But anyways, with that being said, this unfortunately leads to another one of my main gripes with this series, and this concerns a majority of the characters. Which is the overwhelming amount of unnecessary dialogue where it felt like the author loved the sound of his own voice too much. Like be prepared to hear a lot of “self-development is masturbation” or “we organisms live in a society” or some other pseudointellectual type bullshit like that lol. Now obviously, there has to be an underlying theme or message about human nature or personal identity or something, but much like all other great works of fiction, it needs to be conveyed in a more intelligent and subtle manner instead of being like a hammer to the face.

Symbolism, and other narrative elements that writers utilize in a visual medium such as anime or manga, though used appropriately in Bokurano, still doesn’t mean it avoids the pitfalls that many other stories suffer from. Meaning that a lot of scenes are filled with line after line of monotonous and inarticulate information that could have been communicated in a better and more efficient way through clever dialogue, discovery, or any other basic facet of storytelling.


Art:
Now in terms of presentation, the art by Kithou Mohiro is more grounded and somewhat minimalistic. With character designs maintaining a sense of identity between the cast but not at all making one more remarkable looking than the other. There is no strange looking hairstyles and characters don't have large eyes as they would have in other anime or manga. Which works in its favor, as for a series that's trying to tell a story about regular people in extraordinary circumstances, there needs to be a sense of normality in their world. Speaking of which, in contrast, the mecha designs by Mohiro are definitely eye-catching. As the mechanical art assists in enveloping these menacing foes with an aura of unpredictability that adds to the heat of battle with our protagonists. The amount of variety in their design also helps in negating any feeling of them being repetitive or uninspired.

The result of this combination of the more earthly art and the occasional religious or Freudian motif here and there, gives Bokurano the kind of depressing and ethereal atmosphere that well reflects the nature of its story, and what most titles in the “dark sci-fi” mecha anime world would normally have. Thus giving the world of Bokurano a feeling of dread and suspense, as its almost like at any moment the world could end, but at the same time giving it a sense of the day to day lives of these characters before their fatal demise. Overall, the art I don’t really see any fault in it. Even when I was a bit checked out at some parts, the artwork definitely helped in keeping me engaged throughout.


Conclusion:
On the whole, after reading this series twice, and making a review of it back then (where I completely shat on it lol), I can honestly say I would recommend it. Even with its flaws of flat and clunky monologues, at times surface level exploration of its themes, and being almost pretentious and patronizing at some points, I was still pleasantly entertained by this story. It's not a masterpiece by any means, it's not perfect at all, and I didn’t really take home some profound message that a lot of “deep” media supposedly have. No, the fun I had with this story was the intrigue of reading between the lines and trying to psycho analyze these characters. You know, see what makes them tick, and even though not all of them were that great, the ones that were, was enough to make it a good, memorable, and dramatic story about human weakness, death, desire, and sympathy for others.

STORY: 4

A short good start and very quickly you realize you will never get any in-depth explanation about some cosmic-scale tragedy. You can feel that the mangaka has pitched the beginning of the story to the editor without having a solid vision on how to pursue or conclude. Characters are bland despite the focus being on their different personalities and all along there's a feeling of bored sadness instead of empathy towards kids that never react realistically to any situation.

ART: 5

Most of the art is similar-looking inexpressive faces and a lot of the action conveniently takes place in an empty void save for 14 or ... 15 chairs.

POLITICAL POTENTIAL: 4

A bit of reflection about responsibility and empathy. At least it's a manga that is not centered on one or two exceptional heroes, but the execution is too poor to make something interesting out of this.

FEMINISM: 3

There's naked kids having sex and the girl is tiny but with a very round ass, thanks. A girl is manipulated, rapped and blackmailed and does not find any private or institutional support. Worse, her sister is dating her persecutor and seems to know what he did! Last, another character beats his younger sister regularly without any worry and the sister just bears with it because she understands her brother's pain like she's freaking 40 years old.

CONCLUSION: 4

Bokurano is dull and boring despite potential. This is especially easy to say knowing that there is actually a good manga about kids whose private lives are intertwined in a cosmic tragedy with aliens, it's called 'Dead Dead Demon's Dededededestruction' and I recommend this one instead.