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

What do I even call this? It's what happens when you take a shoujo slice-of-life protagonist and her best friend, and put them in a shounen battle anime. Is this moe? I can't tell! She has a smile that protects *itself* - how are you supposed to classify this? As 'cute', that's how. Bofuri is cute as all hell, and that's all it really needs honestly. 'Cute Girls do SAO Things' isn't the anime of the season, but damned if it isn't in the top 10 easy. The basic premise is your typical RPGsekai fare - full-dive VR, medieval fantasy constructions, labyrinthine skill trees, etc- and ourprotag, having been dragged into this by her friend while knowing NOTHING about videogames in general, ends up just dumping every single point she has into Vitality (which determines defense and max HP), to make a character that can basically do no damage, but also never get hurt by pretty much anything, accidentally breaking the game and basically giving herself immortality. Frustrated with her inability to hurt much of anything, she tries to bite an enemy... and learns the [Devour] skill, which instakills an enemy and can teach her skills related to it. Thus an absolutely adorable monster is born.

Now people will complain that the underlying game is poorly designed, and that the skills are unbalanced... and yes, these are all true. This game is absolutely BUSTED from a design perspective - if it existed IRL, the playerbase would be gone within a month and it wouldn't even make its starting development budget back. The reason this show still gets a 7 though, is that balancing the MMO in the show's premise would actually inherently take away from the show's -actual- core engagement, which is split between watching Maple's increasingly insane power creep, like a hyperaccelerated shounen series, and just watching her hang out with her friends and be cute. Removing the tension of 'will the protagonist overcome the challenges before her', much like One Punch Man before it, allows us to focus more on the character of Maple and just how damn cute she is, and how sweet her interactions with her friends become. A big highlight in this show over time, is how everyone really is just playing a game, and outside of big PvP events it's totally fine to make friends and hang out with people you were locked in death battles with only hours ago.

Overall, Bofuri is like a mug of hot apple cider with a shot of fireball sitting at the bottom and some whipped cream and nutmeg on top-
Sweet, then warm and comfy, and finishes off with an exciting kick.
If that's your jam, then so is this - cheers!