English Dub Review: BOFURI: I Don’t Want to get Hurt, so I’ll Max Out My Defense “Defense and Fourth Event”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

After receiving another overpowered ability Maple shows the Maple Leaf guild a small taste of it. Then Maple and her guild, Maple Leaf start grinding levels and collecting materials for the next event. However, while chilling on the beach Sally notices that they’re being spied on and as it turns out one of the members of the Holy Order of the Sword, Frederica was spying on them. Sally requests a duel with the condition of the loser forking out information about the guilds, and Sally wins with information about another rival guild, the Flame Emperors.

The fourth event is a guild battle and with Maple Leaf being a small group they split into two groups. Maple being on the defense with the rest of the guild, and Sally with Kasumi and Kuromu attacking other guilds. After getting one orb, Sally stealthily starts stealing other guild orbs as Kasumi heads back to base. Sally comes across high ranking players and manages to take more orbs and duel Dred before he disappears. The episode ends with the entire guild defending the orbs they’ve gotten.

Our Take:

Maple being overpowered with new abilities is nothing new at this point. The camera reflects how the guild is divided upon seeing her new skill with Sally, Kasumi, and Kuromu on one side and Iz, Kanade, Mai, and Yui on the other side. It’s obvious to the trio that Maple’s skill set is not normal and becomes more inhuman with each mode they get to see. While the others are in awe or grateful that she’s on their side. Thankfully there are cool downs on those modes otherwise Maple would actually break the game.

When the guild event starts, the audience gets to see the other guilds with Sally casually just stealing their orbs and creating guild wars like it isn’t her business. The audience gets to see how the other high-level guilds attack and defend their orbs. The animation for those scenes is pretty good with spells and skills clashing on the screen. Also, Sally’s tactic of using fake skills to deceive their rivals is a good plan, and it should bring an advantage to the guild battles later especially against the Holy Order of the Sword.

Personally seeing Mii, the strong and serious leader of the Flame Emperors cry because the stolen orb was unexpected seeing as how she was portrayed as a charismatic leader so far. Then again the series digs into their cuteness factor a lot with Maple so the audience could expect the treatment to fall onto other small characters. The audience gets more of Payne, leader of the Holy Order of the Sword and how he works as a serious leader that takes in all the variables in a situation. Even though Payne’s face is never being shown, it leaves the audience a bit in suspense on his appearance like he’s the final boss that reveals his face in the last episode.

At the end of the day, the series is a decent show to watch if you’re into games and cute over powered characters.