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

If you think SAO is awful, mediocre or overrated, you should think the exact same about this, or else you might just be a hypocrite. This anime is SAO meets TNY meets Moe Trash, with even more insane plot armor / contrivances than SAO could ever hope to have. Also, spoilers. Bofuri has absolutely nothing going for it beyond the ever present CGDCT, which wouldn't be a problem or worthy of such a negative rating if not for the game aspect which has lead to an insane amount of the aforementioned plot convenience, awful characters and a litany of other issues. Bofuri's lack of a (complex) storyis not too great an issue, what is however an issue is how every single challenge is raised and defeated in a single episode, in particularly contrived manners, usually bordering on, if not shooting straight past the Deus Ex Machina label. Every single challenge the protagonist(s) encounter is immediately resolved by some quirky (RE: Stupid / unreasonable) action from the protagonist. Actions that'd never work in any decently written series, let alone a real game, or are so convenient we'd call it a miracle.

For example, being unable to do damage to the monster due to low stats, so instead eating the monsters in a game, power of friendship, obtaining / using insanely broken skills that'd have been immediately patched out the ass, let alone ever reached deployment (Like a fucking Mecha and Kaijuu skill, on the same character, in a fantasy game? Really?), etc. As someone who's played games, and made them, one of the most irritating things to me is the game balance in this anime, rather, the complete lack of it. No such game would ever exist. Let alone a high profile VRMMO, with a collection of devs. The game this series is set in is just an absolute mess.

Honestly, I don't think explaining it could do justice, I'd just recommend watching each (or a given) episode, because this does happen literally every episode, with two core questions in mind. One, what is the challenge of this episode the characters will face? Two, how is it being resolved? From there you branch off and ask yourself other things such as "Is this resolution reasonable / realistic?", "Would this work in real life?", "Would this happen in real life?", "Do such challenges happen in other anime and how are they resolved?". The answer will be negative 100% of them time. Absolutely nothing in this anime earned, not the skills, not the victories, nothing. And while yes, that is sometimes the joke, there is a line and that joke cannot be used as an excuse for every single challenge that appears to be immediately dismissed and resolved, regardless of the magnitude of it. And since it is used as such, and never with an acceptable / believable justification, you know that the protagonists are never, ever going to lose a fight or encounter any genuine challenge. And that is a problem. Everything is handed to them.

The characters are paper thin, even for anime, even for CGDCT. Not a single person ever deviates beyond the rigid outline set for them, none of them do anything unique, there's no conflict, no surprises, no distinguishing features. They're just archetypes, not characters. Maple is the quirky cute Mary Sue protagonist who never runs into a problem that cannot be immediately Deus Ex Machina'd out of. Sally is cool, smart supportive best friend. Yui & Mai are extremely lazy carbon copy mirror images of each other that have effectively no character beyond "cute" and "strong" which is probably meant to be an interesting contrast / gap moe. Kuromu is the token male character protagonist who is a helpful manly big brother, but constantly kept at arms length to avoid angering certain fanbases. Kanade is a clever androgynous character who isn't very physical, that's it. Kasumi is the cool older sister type. And Iz is the helpful big sister. None of them have any depth beyond that, and I think those descriptions are enough to predict every action they take through-out the series. The characters are hollow archetypes with insanely predictable behaviours.

The voice acting and music are both very average, nothing worth complaining about or particularly praising. The only thing that I'd particularly note on is the sound effects when announcing a skill. Other than that, it was entirely forgettable, no high impact / memorable music, no exceptional voice acting, especially not from the main, main cast. The best VAs are probably Kuromu's VA and Mii's, both of whom have a backseat 95% of the story.

Art is another average not worth mentioning too much. It's very colorful which is nice, but has a somewhat boring and cliche style that you'll find in a dozen given anime each season. The character designs are a mixed bag. On many occasions they are insanely overdone, even for anime. On some occasions, they're pretty interesting. Yui and Mai are a fantastic example of lazy and overdone, especially once they get their armor. I don't even know where to begin with them, the obvious color dichtomy with the somewhat distasteful color streaks, the ridiculous armor design, the comically sized hammers. Mii, Iz, Kuromu (Original), on the otherhand are fairly good. Kuromu 2.0 however is justy plain edgy. As are the monster and mecha skills, which are insanely ridiculous and out of place.
Animation is something I never really talk about unless it's exception or exceptionally bad (looking at you 7 Deadly Sins), so I've essentially ignored here, since it's neither worth complaining about or praising.

I get that I'm criticizing the joke this show was going for, but it's because I don't think it did a very good job. If you want to or are capable of turning your brain off and watching something flashy, this is a good enough watch. If you pay any modicum of attention and take the show seriously however, the irritations will pile up real fast. Bofuri succeeds in appealing to a specific niche, but more broadly as an anime and as a story, it's pretty astounding failure.