I found this show by browsing through related anime of my favorite shows, and I'm so glad that I did.
Bokurano follows the events of a group of children who have inadvertently been thrown into a large scale event, thinking it was just a small game. From there, they have to fight to secure the safety of everything they know. About now, I imagine some of you are yawning. Something like this is seen in so many different shows, and the concern I had was it was going to be another show just like that. I was surprised to find that wasn't the case.
Bokurano had no problems with kicking off immediately. I thought there were going to be a few primer episodes, but if I recall correctly, you're being introduced to the main plot point in the first episode. This can either succeed or fail, in Bokurano's case, it didn't really do either, it's just how it was. Another interesting thing Bokurano did well was not introducing the children alltogether. For reasons I won't get into, their back story is introduced individually throughout the show, and I thought this was fantastic. Everyone had their time in the light, and it's hard to pin down just who the main character really is. After finishing it, you could argue who it was, but the point is I don't feel like it matters so much. With that said, I really enjoyed how the characters were developed, if not for just a short while.
Another interesting thing was the fight scenes were slow paced, and ended abruptly. Half the episode wasn't spent sequencing robots hitting each other. A couple of them were fast paced based on the pilot's ability, but generally, you could feel the weight of each machine. This is another thing that could have bothered me if the show hadn't been able to pull it off so well. I was actually more interested in the story than I was watching a couple hunks of metal hit each other. That isn't to say it didn't have its great moments, in fact, it kind of presented a nice build up to the last fight, which was really good.
This show is relatively older, so it doesn't look as 'clean' as some of the newer shows. I guess people care about that, but even with that aside, the overall design of the show was really great. Some of the mechs had awesome designs, and I really enjoyed each of the environments presented. I couldn't say this show was visually lacking at all.
The only complaint I might have is I would have liked there to be a couple more episodes that really emphasized on the gravity of the overall situation. As with any show, there's a point where you realize things aren't so black and white, and something larger is presented to you. Bokurano had a nice set up, but unfortunately didn't have a lot of time to go deeper into what was going on behind the scenes. I wouldn't say it's a huge downside, considering it was mostly just focusing on the story of the characters, but even so, I was really interested in the large picture. But I suppose that's what the manga is for, right?
Lastly, the music. The music playing throughout the show was really good, but the main theme is amazing. Few anime out there have a really good opening song, and I'm overjoyed whenever I find a good one.
In the end, this show is still kind of "just another robot show" in a small way. I feel like some things could have been explored, but overall I'm happy with how it played out. It wasn't really a leader in terms of doing things differently, but even so, I really enjoyed every moment of it. If you haven't tuned in, you need to. It's a humble reminder that sometimes things don't need to be revolutionary, and sometimes something so simple can turn out really great.
