Bokura no – 12

A light case this time, and it’s also the first episode of Bokura no to incorporate humour in its storytelling, it worked well, but I don’t think Bokura no needs it. It’s good enough without the humour, unlike other anime, as it distracts a bit from the things that are really important. The creators make use of the current case to develop the storyline a bit more, and they make sure to do it thoroughly, since she gets two episodes for this. The biggest revelation probably came near the end of the episode: there indeed is a war between planets going on, and similar machines like Zearth are fighting each other. Zearth is just a bit stronger than the others. This does ask a huge number of questions: – Where did the technology come from? – How many planets are fighting each other? – Is Zearth actually destroying the planets of the robots it destroys? – Is every planet against Zearth, or are they destroying each other as well? Also, I must congratulate this anime for coming up with the most original alien civilization I’ve seen in a long while: one that’s actually on about the same technical levels as the earth, with a few subtle differences. There really is some kind of party that’s been handing out robots to different planets, and Kokopeli and Koemushi work for them. What purpose do they have? In any case, I’m glad to see that the creators keep eliminating the least-interesting characters. Let’s take a look at the ones who still are alive: Kanji Yosuki Jun Takami Aiko Yoko Kana Takana Seki Where Kana and Yoko will remain alive. At least, I assume this. The amount of development that Jun is getting suggests that his character is special somehow. Is this because he, in fact, is the child that’ll live, or are the creators building up for his story that needs more development than the others? In any case, I’m looking forward to the stories of these children, and I’m especially curious to when we’ll see Aiko (due to the fact that she often gets emotional), Yosuki (I’d love to see his case), Jun (after this episode, I’ve become really curious about him, see a bunch of paragraphs below), and Takana (what will she do when she finds out she can’t protect the children anymore, and what kind of effect will this have on the children?). Maki’s case this time was cute, but it was rather overshadowed by the developments we saw about Jun and the story. Still, it’s by no means bad. Her problem is that she barely misses the birth of her new brother, and her story is about how she can support her mother, and accept her rather strange father who constantly watches anime and buys mecha-figurines. I wonder how much the next episode will focus on her story, since she’s not dead yet, and she’ll probably die until the end of the next episode. Obviously, a lot of development will be spent on the plot, but it’ll be interesting if the creators bring another twist to Maki’s mother. There’s also this matter that somehow Zearth’s name has been leaked out. It’s interesting to see how far Zearth’s influence goes, and it’s obvious that companies would try to exploit it somehow. The fact remains, though, that Zearth was not publicly known. I assume some guy in the military accidentally let it slip, but what if the information that Zearth is piloted by children becomes known to the public? And holy god, Jun. I really want to know more about him. He doesn’t go to school, he slacks off all day and he lets Kana do all the housework, and in this episode he even went as far as kicking her in everyone’s presence. Now I see how special it was for him to come out in episode three, since he never comes out anyway. Still, I love Kana’s bed. I do wonder how she put that together, since it obviously can’t be Jun’s work, and you don’t see such a thing in the stores. It’s interesting to see such a shift of focus when compared to the first eight episodes, by the way. While these episodes were dark, the current ones are light. If there is a pattern, we should see another change of focus after episode sixteen, where I’ll assume that the story will be providing some more darker elements. The thing I liked about Maki’s case was, by the way, that it shows that we’re dealing with normal children here. To compare, Narutaru only had one normal child, with the rest of the cast being composed of outcasts. Narutaru had an excuse to make these characters outcasts, and thus providing some dark story-elements. Bokurano’s kids are not all outcasts, they’re just random children on a summer-camp, which means that you can’t just go and give each of them a twisted background. That’s why I really like the subtle ones we’ve been seeing for the past few episodes. Was this the same in the manga? PS. Another reason why I liked this episode so much: for some reason, it’s giving me a huge amount of inspiration to write about. This is the perfect example of an entry that I really enjoyed writing. 🙂 PSS. (See, I keep adding things ^^;) After thinking a bit more about this episode, I realize that my opinion of Bokura no is similar to that of The Third. It isn’t really as emotional as other series, but somehow I’m drawn to it way more than with other series. Now THAT is a sign of a good show! For The Third, it was Honoka who created this effect, but I can’t put my finger yet on what it so intriguing about Bokura no, though. ]]>