BOFURI: I Don’t Want to Get Hurt, so I’ll Max Out My Defense (Episode 12) – Defense and Bonds
Payne appears to have Maple in his sights and is seconds away from taking her and Maple Tree out of the competition. Surely, Maple can’t be defeated… can she?
BOFURI: I Don’t Want to Get Hurt, so I’ll Max Out My Defense (Episode 12) – Defense and Bonds
What happened?
Maple managed to survive Payne’s massive attack thanks to Stout Guardian, but that left her with just one HP and she hasn’t landed a hit on him yet. The rest of Maple Tree attempt to come to her aid, but are either pinned back or taken out completely. Iz and Kanade both pay the ultimate price, but their demise is not in vain. Maple reveals her Machine God skill and hits Payne with everything she has. Amazingly, however, he survives as he too has Stout Guardian. Then, as he powers up for another attack, Maple reveals her trump card – Atrocity. With only one HP and facing off against the demon form of Maple, Payne didn’t really stand a chance. Maple then wipes out the rest of the Order of the Holy Sword.
After two days of the tournament, Maple Tree sits in sixth place, but they are still a small guild and Maple has also revealed her secret weapons. Sally suggests that they move to the next phase of her plan. If they can’t collect enough points to stop other guilds from overtaking them, they are just going to have to kill everyone and take their orbs out of the game. That’s right! Maple Tree goes on the offensive and launches a massive attack on everyone else in the tournament.
What was your favourite element?
So, the fight between Payne and Maple was excellent. I loved that he had also acquired Stout Guardian as it shows that Maple isn’t the only overpowered player. If anything, you could argue that Payne is more of an oddity as I doubt he will have stacked his stats the way Maple did. That said, the best part of this episode was seeing everyone’s faces when Maple revealed Atrocity and not just to the Order of the Holy Sword. When Maple Tree went into a full-on player killer mode it was insane and seeing Sally and Kanade using their abilities to turn Atrocity Maple into multiple Atrocity Maples was outstanding. To think that they basically ended the tournament two days early because of the massive killings left only six guilds left in the game and all in the top ten for points.
What have you learnt?
If Bofuri has taught us anything, it’s that you can get away with pretty much anything if you make it fun. I don’t think this series would have worked as well had Maple been a serious player. The fact that she continued to stumble upon some of the most insane skills while she was doing fairly mundane things was hilarious and at no point did you think she was spoiling the game. You could argue that her exploits in the game made it that much more successful, and seeing the developers discussing just that was a nice touch. Maple is now the poster character for the game and a player that all players are determined to beat. It was hilarious when they checked in with her to see what she was doing and found her in Machine God form encased in wool as May and Yui used her as a beach ball!
Hold up, I’m not done. After the end of this episode, which was a great way to finish what is quite possibly my anime of the year already, we got to see the title card for Bofuri once more. Then the shield split in two… There wasn’t anything in the captions, but this is quite clearly an indication that a second season has been planned. This is obviously great news and I can’t wait for more. As Sally said in the celebratory party which Maple had invited the Fire Emperors and the Order of the Holy Sword, who knows what skills she’ll stumble onto in the future!
Other posts in the series
- Anime
- Season One
- Episode 1 – Defense and First Battle
- Episode 2 – Defense and Friends
- Episode 3 – Defense and Reaching Second Level
- Episode 4 – Defense and Second Event
- Episode 5 – Defense and Spoils of War
- Episode 6 – Defense and Reinforcements
- Episode 7 – Defense and Upgrades
- Episode 8 – Defense and Third Event
- Episode 9 – Defense and Fourth Event
- Episode 10 – Defense and Attack
- Episode 11 – Defense and Mighty Foe
- Episode 12 – Defense and Bonds
- Season Two
- Episode 13 – Maxing Defense and Christmas
- Episode 14 – Maxing Defense, Level 5, and Level 6
- Episode 15 – Maxing Defense and the Seventh Event
- Episode 16 – Maxing Defense and Tower Conquest
- Episode 17 – Maxing Defense and Tentacles
- Episode 18 – Maxing Defense and Tame Monsters
- Episode 19 – Maxing Defense and Hunting for Crystals
- Episode 20 – Maxing Defense and the Eighth Event
- Episode 21 – Maxing Defense and Setting Up a Base
- Episode 22 – Maxing Defense and New Teams
- Episode 23 – Maxing Defense and New Parties
- Episode 24 – Maxing Defense and the Big Final Battle
- Bonus Posts
- Season One
- Manga
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I loved how Payne was cool with it all – he’s met his match, and that was fine. (Rather than being a jerk.) I also loved when the GM’s looked in to see what Maple was doing, and she was just derping around having fun. The battle scenes were cool and all, but the show was always at it’s best when it was just derping around.
Agreed. It didn’t have any of the toxic competitiveness which was a nice change to what you’d probably expect. It was funny to see that Maple had invited them all to the guild to celebrate and that they came. I can’t wait to see what shenanigans Maple gets up to next season.
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