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It should be fairly easy to gauge your potential enjoyment of Bofuri based on your reaction towards it's synopsis. If you were reading about the MC becoming the most overpowered player in the game and thought to yourself:"Hell yeah, I want to see a cute show about a shield loli wrecking everyones shit up!", then I can recommend this one without much hesitation. Maple is very cute, beloved by all and definitely ends up dominating everyone and everything in every way possible and with strength to spare.

Now if that last part has you worried, you'll want to stay away. If you were hoping for a ... setting with a cute MC who learns about game mechanics, plans strategies, trains hard to overcome all obstacles and gets rewarded for her passion, well then this show isn't for you. Simply put: She doesn't learn, she doesn't plan, she doesn't train. Maple just plays the game like any new player would, yet for no explicable reason her rewards are always more plentiful and several magnitudes more powerful than anyone else's.

Giving your MC high class rewards for mundane activities would be bad writing in any setting. It's even worse in the context of a game, as you'd expect other more skilled and determined players to copy what's working for her and quickly getting ahead. This never happens. The Anime says people are doing exactly that, but we never see it, and they clearly aren't successful with it. This is something annoying Bofuri does throughout it's run. It tries to wave any potential plot holes around Maple away with cheap explanations, which end up insulting the viewers intelligens more than they actually close said holes. And that's if they get addressed at all.
She constantly stumbles into greatness for seemingly no reason and I really cannot stress enough how tedious this becomes. Our cute shield heroine really doesn't do anything out of the ordinary, ever. She says so herself on multiple occasions and the people around her always react incredulous, as if it's clear that you couldn't possibly get to were she's at by playing normally... well yeah, exactly, so why is she?

Sadly the show bends over backwards at every turn to make Maple as successful as possible. In the first PvP event were players need to kill each other to gain enough points, for example. Despite seeing that Maple isn't taking damage and her shield killing anyone who comes too close, people are still just mindlessly throwing themselves at her. Defeating her clearly looks impossible, very dangerous and wouldn't give any more points than eliminating anyone else. Instead of fighting the impossible tank with zero mobility and an instant kill shield, any player would just ignore her and look for easier targets. They are trying to win themself, not making her look good.
But unfortunately this is the Maple show! She needs to get kills to earn the reward so let's all just fling ourselves at her! Realistic characters don't matter.
Maple needs to be stronger!
Maple needs to look awesome!
It's all about Maple!
IT'S ALL ABOUT MAPLE!!!

And this is another big problem I have with Bofuri. Up until now I only focused on the MC. Unfortunately that's exactly what the Anime does, too. Basically all other characters might as well be empty NPC's. They look and act like it. The vast majority of enemies are shown as nameless, faceless mooks who are running around in the most unimaginative gear I have ever seen in a fantasy setting, let alone a game. They obviously just exist as cannon fodder to illustrate how devastatingly strong Maple is or to cheer her on from the sidelines.
The only thing we learn about the few named enemy players is their relative power. That's it. No character arcs, no backstories, no motivations, no nothing! They exist as a more concrete longterm obstacle for Maple to overcome, but could just as easily be generic ingame bosses.
Lastly her friends/guild members. Even they only exist for the glory of Maple. The only thing they ever do without her direct involvement is confined to super short clip montages. Their main reason to exist is so that we can have a guild for Maple and to show just how much stronger she is and how much they need her. She in turn doesn't really need them for much of anything. Maple is more powerful than the rest of her guild combined, has more utility, more defense and any gear they could help her obtain she can clearly find on her own and faster. On atleast one occasion two of her teammates even end up holding her back and Maple still comes out on top without much effort.

The sole exception to this is her friend Sally and even she gets pushed into irrelevance fast. One could be forgiven for believing her to be a vital part of the team, after all she takes up the important role of chief strategist.
Then Maple unleashes her ultimate transformation, becoming an unstoppable monster berserking unopposed through hordes of top players and killing several of them with single attacks, proving she never needed any of that strategy nonsense to begin with, or her teammates for that matter.

Glory to Maple!...

Outside of this there isn't much to Bofuri. In terms of production quality it's ok. Art, animation and choreography are good at the start and fizzle out into mediocrity the longer the show progresses. Fairly standard for the average TV anime. Some fights towards the end are poor, some have a bit of sakuga, but it's nothing extraordinary for better or for worse. Sound design and music are ok, save for the montage song which got overused towards the end as were the clip montages themselves. The dialogue is the only aspect of Bofuri I'd call consistently bad. Painfully generic at the very least. The story doesn't go beyond the synopsis and I doubt anyone would expect something deep from this show anyway. I certainly didn't and I was ok with that, but the execution of the core concept was awfully poor.

Overall I leave Bofuri feeling frustrated. I wanted to see a cute shield loli beating the odds, but there is a limit to any good thing and this Anime has shot over that tenfold. The first few episodes when Maple hadn't yet ascended into quasi-godhood were decently entertaining. After she starts randomly becoming the very best in every aspect however, the show quickly drops proportionally to how much stronger she gets. By the end Maple indisputably belongs on this games equivalent of Mount Olympus. Bofuri at that point belongs in the trash bin.

4- /10

Sooooo, this was kinda dumb... so why did I enjoy it so much?!

Parallel Paradise centers around Tada Youta who get's isekaied into a fantasy world solely populated by girls were his mission is to defeat the local Demon King equivalent and bang just about everyone he comes across. If this sounds familiar to you, congrats, get yourself a treat!
Yes, the premis is about as bog-standard as it get's with these stories. It's in its execution were Parallel Paradise becomes more than the initial sum of its parts would lead you to believe... a little bit more at least.

First things first: This Manga contains a ... lot of sex! Gratuitous amounts of sex!! Entire chapters comprised of nothing but sex!!! This has two major consequences. The first one is of course that people who don't like smut in their Manga really don't need to bother with this one. You guys won't find much enjoyment here.
But even the rest of us still have to content with considerably slow pacing thanks to this. The whole thing can feel like trudging through molasses at times.
At first this was a major annoyance for me. I got somewhat frustrated when, in the middle of a quest, Youta had to fuck yet another girl for a dozen or so pages, when the story could have easily done with just two or three.

Befor long however, I started seeing the appeal. Not the intended one mind you. While it's pretty hardcore for an ecchi manga, it never crosses into hard R territory and as such isn't really suited to get your rocks off. The sheer gratuitousness however becomes quite comedic after a while. I'm not sure what's so funny about scores of girls becomming top-down fountains at the mere touch of a man, but it got me laughing every time and soon this became one of the most enjoyable aspects of the Manga.

Our Protagonist is the other part that elevates Parallel Paradise above it's mediocre premise. Far from being overly whimpy or a perfect goody toe shoes, yet not a villain either, Youta manages to strike a good balance between obnoxiously good or evil, making him quite relatable. While at first naturally perplexed by the situation he finds himself in, he soon starts to act like you'd expect a decent portion of 18year old guys would if beautiful girls started going crazy over them by the truckload; He gets cocky and dickish. He toys with the girls and properly pushes the line to see with how much he can get away with.
This usually only lasts for a few moments though and if one of his partners voices anger with that attitude he recognizes the line he overstepped and apologizes. He also tries to pull his weight whenever he can and when tragedy strikes he gets visibly upset and takes the initiative to find a solution. Overall a good guy, but not boringly perfect.

The remaining elements of this Manga are decent but nothing special. The art is good enough and consistetly so. The girls do fall into some established norms, but have enough unique characteristics to not feel flat. And while this is ultimately a huge wishfullfillment story, Youta has enough flaws and troubles for that aspect to not become annoying.

Last thing worth mentioning are the numerous mysteries set up until this point. So many infact that I became worried about how much the author really thought them through and wether or not they could have satisfiying conclusions. However seeing that Okamoto Lynn is an established Mangaka with multiple acclaimed stories under his belt I have faith that all of them will be neatly resolved and am eager to find out were they and the story at large lead.


7/10