“BOFURI: I Don’t Want to Get Hurt, so I’ll Max Out My Defense”, or BOFURI for short, is a new VRMMO series that just finished airing. This anime is getting quite decent opinions from most of the avid anime watchers in the community. There are also some naysayers who hate this new series calling it generic. Today, I’ll be giving you an honest review of this series.
BOFURI is a wholesome action/fantasy anime with a sweet blend of light comedy. This anime manages to give us a complete and well-built story in just the span of 12 episodes. One of the main reasons why I loved watching this series was its casual setting. This anime has a very wholesome and light-hearted vibe to it which makes it quite enjoyable. These days, almost every VRMMO anime is made to look too realistic and intense. This trope had started to feel very annoying, and I’m glad that this anime portrayed gaming for what it truly is. The writer of this series is an MMO gamer himself, so he knew what he was doing. We get to see all the characters just having fun in this wonderfully built world.
Usually, it is a negative point when an anime has an overly simplified story, but a simplistic story somehow works in favor for Bofuri. The storyline and the light-hearted setting of this show blends together perfectly. We see the story through the eyes of a very cute and upbeat girl who makes almost everything seem fun. Despite having a generic storyline, there is not a single dull moment in this anime.
Bofuri does an excellent job on keeping the viewer guessing. It is not predictable or repetitive. We see Maple go on a new adventure in every episode, and it is quite enjoyable. The adventures are never repetitive as we always see a new kind of monster posing a new kind of threat. There are also PVP fights in this anime which are just as entertaining. Usually, VRMMO anime have a very repetitive story that can feel quite annoying, but that is not the case with BOFURI.
One of the downsides in BOFURI was character development. The characters are not rememberable at all as they don’t have any real personalities. It feels like they are just associated with a single trait that sticks with them throughout the entire story. However, it does not affect the series very much as the anime is supposed to have a very casual and light-hearted setting. That being said, I would have still loved to see some character development regarding the main characters.
BOFURI also had poor character designs. The designs of the characters looked dull and kind of generic. It makes all the characters pretty unrememberable. This gives us the most cliché fantasy-world character designs which we have already seen countless times. An example of a show which does the character design bit perfectly despite being a fantasy anime would be Re: ZERO.
The animation in this anime is quite decent, but at the same time, quite boring and dull. It may look good to someone who is new to watching anime, but for avid anime watchers, it will look very dull. This show has the same animation as any other fantasy show.
Overall, this show is quite amazing! The flaws in this anime are not really that major and can easily be ignored. This anime is one of the better VRMMO series out there as it shows us what VRMMO games are really like. The games are supposed to be fun and exciting, not intense and life-threatening. BOFURI is very light-hearted and casual so it can easily be enjoyed by anyone over the weekend. Most of the characters may be a little forgettable, but it is a great introductory series to someone new to anime.
