English Dub Review: Bofuri: I Don’t Want to Get Hurt, So I’ll Max Out My Defense “Maxing Defense and Tower Conquest;Maxing Defense and Tentacles”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Maxing Defense and Tower Conquest

Maple and Sally continue to work their way up the ten floors of the tower as they attempt to complete the event before anyone else.

Maxing Defense and Tentacles

Level 7 has been released, and it introduces a new feature: players can now tame monsters. The members of Maple Tree explore the new level in search of their ideal companions.

Our Take:

After a surprising delay due to events beyond our control, Bofuri is finally back to give us more gaming adventures of the Maple Tree guild. This week sees not one but two episodes being released to make up for this unfortunate glitch. For us fans of the show, it’s a virtual gift that keeps on giving.

“Maxing Defense and Tower Conquest” continues the seventh event with the different teams attempting to conquer their chosen battle towers. However, the real focus continues to be the unstoppable duo, Maple and Sally, climbing up their tower filled with powerful bosses. They passed the first three floors containing monsters with absurd upgrades, including a skill-stealing book. But we also discovered through the fight with the elemental-changing golem that Maple is weak to terrain damage despite her high defense, further showcasing that Maple isn’t 100% indestructible.

“Maxing Defense and Tower Conquest” is the continuation of the seventh event from the previous chapter, with Maple and Sally attempting to reach the top first. However, the event’s final boss is the only thing standing in the way between them and victory. The boss, a knight, possesses high attack power and ludicrous speed that rivals Sally’s and even the Flash’s. Fortunately, the pair managed to brave through the challenging showdown to earn more skills for them to try out, including Sally’s water manipulation technique.

After this challenging quest to conquer the tower, “Maxing Defense and Tentacles” now has Maple Tree traveling through Level 7, where they can tame certain monsters into their companions. This episode mainly consists of Yui and Mai attempting to tame a pair of bears while Kasumi tackles a newly added quest on Level 4. They eventually succeed, with Yui and Mai getting the bears, Tsukimi and Yukimi, while Kasumi gains her snake companion, Haku, by completing her quest. The concept of monster companions originated in the season one episode, “Defense and Second Event”, where Maple and Sally first met Syrup and Oboro, their turtle and fox companions, after defeating Silverwing. So the fact that it took the show three years to bring this back is nothing shy of a head-scratcher.

During their little quests, the episode also showcases Maple unexpectedly gaining another skill. This time, she gets it from a tentacled monster that she devoured like an all-you-can-eat seafood buffet. So now she gets an ability that allows her to produce her own tentacles. In other words, Maple just singlehandedly annihilated one of the tropes of rule 34 content: being sexually assaulted by tentacled creatures.

Overall, both episodes serve as immensely entertaining comebacks for Bofuri after briefly logging out for a while. “Maxing Defense and Tower Conquest” continues to deliver the endearing chemistry between Maple and Sally while providing a thrilling and well-animated showdown between them and the final boss. It also gave the other teams a brief chance to shine in their battle towers. “Maxing Defense and Tentacles” was also enjoyable regarding the characters’ determination to fight their most challenging battles, mainly Kasumi and the twins, despite the formulaic approach still lingering in the series. Plus, seeing Maple devour a monster never gets old for me. Hopefully, the series will be back to its regular schedule, but we won’t know until next week, so stay tuned.