Review of BOFURI: I Don't Want to Get Hurt, so I'll Max Out My Defense.

Maple is a Mary Sue. And if you thought that would mean a negative review of this series, think again, as this is one of those exceptions. See, Maple is a Mary Sue, but her being one is completely intentional, not to mention completely the fault of the devs of the game she plays. After all, they're the ones who created a game with the loopholes that allowed Maple to become the Mary Sue she is within the game. This in turn results in some crazy stuff going down within the game that wouldn't happen in any other game, and simply because the devs attempted to haveas many realistic elements they went overboard.

Oh, and they made the mistake of allowing players to be able to stack their stats in one slot, something you won't see in any other games. No, seriously, Maple exists because they didn't think things through, like big time.

To which, while it is true that Maple is intentionally a Mary Sue, that in itself is going to be a turn off for some viewers. It's a good idea to think of the series as a slice-of-life series even though it's not currently marked that way genre wise, as the conflict within the series is more reflective of a slice-of-life type story, with the gamers going through their daily lives, except in game.

There's also a lack of character development because of that, as a lot of the characters fatal flaws are hidden by the fact they're in game and their lives offline aren't at all talked about, because in effect, like with all gamers, that conflict of life offline is left behind. This in turn actually makes it quite realistic to how it is when one games, albiet for some this can be grating not having some of the more common conflict elements one would see in a series with the Video Game theme, such as cheating and hacking, poor sportsman ship.

And it's not needed, at least not at this point, although, in this regard another thing about this series is how it can get repetitive with it being all about the crazy stuff Maple gets up to. Which isn't a bad thing, it's just not necessarily something everyone is going to be interested in.

In other words - true, the series does have some issues one would normally see in those not so great series, but a lot of it is intentional. It's definitely humor driven. Instead of making the series badly written and badly done, it instead means it's a series that isn't everyone's cup of tea.

That said, and this may become an issue in future seasons, is Maple's friend. Her quriks honestly are getting less attention than Maple's are and she feels more like a side kick, whereas the other characters other than Maple seem more developed. And some of her skills become irrelevant later on, or so it seems.