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「防御特化と強化.」 (Bougyo Tokka to Kyouka.)
“Defense and Upgrades”
This episode of Bofuri gives us a little more time with May and Yui as they become more adjusted to fighting monsters in the Maple Tree guild. But while the guild stuff is relatively standard isekai fare, it’s the side missions that Maple has to contend with that bring into perspective what made the show interesting to follow.
To elaborate, much of the beginning was the show getting all too cozy with the isekai trappings that it had quickly embraced. The inclusion of guilds and groups of characters outside of Maple made it so that they could focus on scenes comprised of warriors duking it out with monsters.
Much of it is empty action, but it was cute to see how much Kuromu bonded with Syrup throughout the segment. While the Maple and Syrup duo is adorable to see, there’s something about a tough dude and a small turtle fighting together that’s always precious to watch. It was also pretty funny to see how she handled gaining the ability to grow sheep’s wool from herself as Kasumi looked in dismay at her decision to poison the wool around her.
One shining moment in the episode is Maple’s growing list of side quests she has to do with an NPC trying to cure her child of an undisclosed illness. A nice perk about having an anime inspired by video games is how they can toy around with our familiarity with gaming concepts like NPCs. Level E had a hilarious nod to NPCs with one arc’s protagonists being greeted by creepy townspeople that have one canned line they keep using ad nauseam.
It doesn’t share the same biting sense of humor with poking fun at its gaming conventions, but it gets close as Maple scratches her head at how many times finishing one side quest only opens up another one. It’s funny to see how exasperated and disinterested she starts to get as she accepts one quest after another out of guilt for having come so far to help the mother not to continue accepting quests from her.
Although she ends up getting another game-breaking skill by turning into Crimvael and summoning a protective barrier at the cost of a small chunk of health, it might end up causing more problems for her as her guild gains more notoriety. With the guild event coming up, more teams are starting to get more aggressive about the idea of learning about the strengths and weaknesses of the Maple Tree guild from the inside out. I haven’t been the most receptive to the guild activity given how much it resembles other isekai anime, but it should be neat to see how they are able to safeguard against more skilled enemies who are highly antagonistic of the group.
– One-handing and ultimately dual-wielding Mauls/Great Mauls? Damn, May and Yui are already leagues better than the bog-standard Barbarians of Diablo II (who can only dual-wield two-handed swords and other one-handed weapons). Also had a chuckle at Maple, May and Yui basically doing boss runs on the Hydra over and over.
– Nice to see Kuromu getting himself some better gear. (Especially with how he and his last party/PUG got wiped by that one boss.)
– Maple “sequence breaking” that NPC quest chain… XD At least it netted her a pretty neat ability. (“♪ Tenshi no hane hirogete, minna ni shukufuku wo… ♪ [Nyahahahaha!]“ On a tangential note, that reference to Crimvael… Best Interspecies Reviewer!)
– I wonder if members of Payne’s guild are also lurking/reading through that “Watchers of Fortress Maple” chat thread? Even though I’m certain Payne is cautious enough to gather intel on Maple Tree before the big event, I actually wouldn’t mind if Payne’s guild ignores that little chat thread and sets them up for a (hilarious) crack defeat.
Wow Maple can now turn into a super saiyan. SHE HAS BLONDE HAIR!
And Blue Eyes to Boot
I call lies. Maple didn’t play with the sheep— she ate them.
That voracious eater!
Either that, or she just rained poison rain on them.
…and then ate them.
Though it’s not exactly lying. It’s just her concept of “playing”.
You don’t often see an Anime about MMORPG tackling CHAIN side quests. after the second then third quest your exhausted from being glued to a seat and screen. I rather enjoyed this idea being added to Itai no wa Iya nano de Bougyoryoku ni Kyokufuri Shitai to Omoimasu, this adds a level of depth to the series.
It also seems like the MapleTree guild and crew will get a run for their money. There is competition brewing from another guild with their eyes set on the newly formed team.
I was getting huge flashbacks to the egg quest line in MH4U. Basically a bunch of frustrating and difficult protect the egg missions, where being the greatest hunter doesn’t necessarily have a bearing on your chances of success or failure.
And once you complete them all, the surprise at the end was naaasty. Yup, Hate ’em.
Maple is pretty lucky or very broken cause NPC quest I did in WoW would either aggro every, get terrain block or rival faction player would kill the NPC to grief lower lvl players.
Haha ever heard of “handle with care” quest from mhf1? that’s a total nightmare
not much of a spoiler for you guys, but this anime adaptation is a high speed summary that cut, chop, switch content sources like crazy. just like ‘slime rimuru’, the studio hurry to cramp everything from WN and LN to fit into 12 episode format
repeated speedruns of dungeon: check
crazy long chain quests: check
escort quest that is surprisingly easy because player is waay too op: check
long forgotten item in inventory insta-solving quest: check
group buff making for extremely overpowered party: check
this was fun episode… now it seems we will eventually run into something she hates? (Payne= pain?)