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
