Bokura no started with a promising premise and a fantastic OP, but went downhill so egregiously that I am walking away considering it one of the most incompetently directed stories I have ever encountered. The plot holes are endless, the majority of the cast are highly unlikable, entire episodes are wasted covering boring, ultimately meaningless subplots, and almost nothing that happens makes sense. I will quickly cover each of these major issues.
Almost nothing that happens makes sense: This is my major issue with the show. The premise (essentially, without spoiling too much) is that 15 kids are chosen to pilot a giant robot in order
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to protect the Earth from opposing robots in one-on-one battles. You would think, as the world discovers what is going on, that every available resource would go towards this situation. Instead what happens is that two young members of the Japan Self-Defense Forces watch over the kids, and one private research institute has a few researchers working on discovering what they can about the giant robots. That's it.
There's no global vying for the futuristic technology that has suddenly appeared on Earth. There is no global emergency to address the fact that the humanity could be wiped out at any moment. The government does nothing more than evacuate the cities where the robots appear, despite having weeks if not months to plan a proper response. The most any one character does to take the situation seriously is attempt to put out an interview on TV addressing the truth that kids are piloting this robot to protect the Earth, but they immediately give up on trying to get the word out when that one interview is prevented from airing.
Considering that these 15 kids need to be kept alive and healthy to pilot the robot, the bare minimum that makes sense would be to give them the utmost protection possible, and ideally you would have them trained to pilot the robot as best they can, or better yet swapped out for adults that are more competent. Instead, the kids are often found wandering alone at night in the streets. In one scene, a couple of them are almost kidnapped, saved only when one of the aforementioned SDF soldiers happens to show up.
There is also no acknowledgement that these kids need to be kept mentally stable. If the pilot is too afraid to fight or tries to run away, the Earth and humanity are done for, and yet they are given no guidance or therapy at all. The entire world - at least the many members of the Japanese government and SDF who are fully aware of what is at stake - seem to be entirely content leaving these kids to their own devices with no intervention, while they engage in giant robot battles that level entire cities with alien technology, barely managing to save humanity from annihilation each time.
It just makes no sense.
Entire episodes are wasted: Viewers are forced to slog through multiple episodes of government conspiracy and yakuza backstory that all culminate in plot points that fade away into obscurity minutes later. I can recall a bunch of scenes with old men I can barely remember talking about the financial underworld and taking power for themselves and so on. None of this ever matters. The situation in the final episode is exactly the same as the situation in the first episode: a bunch of kids are left to fend for themselves in battles for the fate of the Earth.
Unlikable cast: One of the cast members that gets the most development is a solitary, abusive kid who regularly physically assaults his little sister, who is around 10 years old. He does this for no reason, and his eventual "redemption" is half-assed. Some of the other kids are just terrible people with no redeeming qualities. Most of the kids who are actually decent people get barely any development before they disappear from the story, leaving them as one-dimensional characters. Half of the side characters that appear are forgettable politicians who are somehow irredeemable assholes while still having essentially zero effect on the main plot. Even the more heroic side characters end up being little more than useless throughout the entire story.
Endless plot holes: Bokura no presents the viewer with various mysteries and clues, but most of these end up being meaningless. For example, an important character's appearance changes in seemingly meaningful ways, but this ends up completely unexplained. Hints are made towards who the mastermind villains are, but they are never brought up again. A character from an alternate Earth has a digital interface port embedded in their neck, which not only just happens to be compatible with our Earth computers, but nobody ever noticed it despite the fact that the character has relatively thin shoulder-length hair. Incomprehensible alien technology is hacked and recreated by contemporary technology, despite producing physically impossible effects. The list goes on.
It's a pity that the potential of the early episodes was squandered so heavily. The atmosphere of despair and desperation was highly potent as the premise was introduced and some of the early character arcs were covered, but I ended up finding it difficult to care about anything that happened as I began to notice the unnatural response by the world at large to the ongoing situation, and as characters and plots were introduced which were laughably inane compared to the scale of the main plot they were set against.
Dec 24, 2024
Bokura no started with a promising premise and a fantastic OP, but went downhill so egregiously that I am walking away considering it one of the most incompetently directed stories I have ever encountered. The plot holes are endless, the majority of the cast are highly unlikable, entire episodes are wasted covering boring, ultimately meaningless subplots, and almost nothing that happens makes sense. I will quickly cover each of these major issues.
Almost nothing that happens makes sense: This is my major issue with the show. The premise (essentially, without spoiling too much) is that 15 kids are chosen to pilot a giant robot in order ... |
