Bokurano

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Alternative Titles

Synonyms: Bokura no, Bokurano ~Mou Hitotsu no Bokurano~

Japanese: ぼくらの

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Information

Type: Manga

Volumes: 11

Chapters: 66

Status: Finished

Published: Nov 25, 2003 to Jun 25, 2009

Genres: Drama, Sci-Fi

Themes: Mecha, Psychological, Survival

Demographic: Seinen

Serialization: Ikki

Authors: Kitoh, Mohiro (Story & Art)

Statistics

Score: 8.10¹ (scored by 11,267 users)

¹ indicates a weighted score.

Ranked: #601²

² based on the top manga page. Please note that 'R18+' titles are excluded.

Popularity: #525

Members: 33,650

Favorites: 1,171

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8.10

Ranked #601Popularity #525Members 33,650

MangaIkkiKitoh, Mohiro (Story & Art)

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Volumes: /11

Chapters: /66

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Synopsis

Fifteen middle school students are happily attending a summer camp by the sea, until one of the children leads the group into a cave that will drastically alter the course of their lives forever. Inside are several computers, along with a man named Kokopelli who offers the students a chance to play a game: one where they use a gigantic robot to defeat enemies who attack the Earth. The children agree to sign a contract by touching a shield-like object, and Kokopelli transports them to the cockpit of the Zearth—the mecha they are to pilot.

After an enemy mecha rises from the sea, Kokopelli shows them how to mentally control the Zearth, and defeats it. The children are excited by the prospect of defending the Earth, but not everything is as it seems. The Zearth is in fact powered by life energy, and at the end of every battle, the pilots die. After signing their lives away, the children must now use their time left on Earth to defend it.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Background

Bokurano was published in English as Bokurano: Ours by VIZ Media under the SigIkki imprint from February 16, 2010 to September 16, 2014.

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Related Manga

Alternative version:	Bokurano: Alternative
Adaptation:	Bokura no

More characters
Characters

Ushiro, Jun

Main

Koemushi

Main

Yamura, Daiichi

Main

Moji, Kunihiko

Main

Honda, Chizuru

Main

Nakarai, Mako

Main

Kirie, Yousuke

Main

Machi, Yoko

Main

Ano, Maki

Main

Yoshikawa, Kanji

Main

Reviews

May 18, 2023

hexashadow13

Recommended

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.

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Mar 18, 2024

DOSS300

Mixed Feelings

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 ...

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Feb 18, 2023

MangaIsPolitical

Not Recommended

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 ...

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Poll: Bokurano Chapter 65 Discussion ( 1 2 ) ShootTheBullet - Jun 25, 2009	58 replies	by KitsuFrost »» Jan 13, 2023 3:25 AM
Poll: Bokurano Chapter 12 Discussion AStrangerInside - Jul 7, 2015	1 replies	by hik1komori »» Oct 18, 2022 3:21 PM
Poll: Bokurano Chapter 25 Discussion AStrangerInside - Jul 8, 2015	1 replies	by TotalingForever »» May 30, 2022 10:56 PM
Poll: Bokurano Chapter 19 Discussion Beatnik - Jan 6, 2010	2 replies	by TotalingForever »» May 30, 2022 9:38 PM
Poll: Bokurano Chapter 42 Discussion Cnon - Oct 2, 2015	2 replies	by SpacemanSpiff357 »» Jan 22, 2022 5:14 PM

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