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

Bofuri is a VMMO about a new player called Maple. Maple doesn't want to feel pain so she decides to max out her defense as stated in the title. I really enjoyed this series, and even though it falls into the OP MC genre, I was at the edge of my seat and worried for the characters multiple times. It isn't by far the most realistic of its genre, but it incorporates game elements like level grinding, stumbling into bosses by mistake, chat rooms, NPC quests, and world events which give it enough variation and realism that is needed for an anime series which ismeant for enjoyment at the end of the day.

The pacing is fine for a slice of life story and they do speed up scenes of normal gameplay like level grinding and meaningless play between the characters, but I still felt like the animation itself, while neatly done, was a little slow and watched the whole series at a 1.5x speed, and this is the first time I've done this. The action scenes' animation even rivals animation done for action animes

Some people might argue that the series is too low IQ, which it is, and combined with the OP genre, might be too boring. It isn't. It is very enjoyable and has the right balance of cute, friendly, OP, and conflict that you don't feel like it became too repetitive. Bofuri doesn't overuse fan service and it isn't thrust outright into the viewer's face which makes it all the better for me.

The characters themselves are too friendly, but that can be disregarded as a minor problem. Our main character, although OP, is not entirely invincible or the first ranked in player strength or guild level. Her best friend, Sally, is much smarter, freakishly strong, but still has her weaknesses as shown in the series. There are generic guild memebers, but they don't get pushed too far into the background. No character is perfect which makes this series even nicer to watch.

Finally, the music is really nice and the VAs do a good job representing the characters.