Title: BOFURI: I Don’t Want to Get Hurt, so I’ll Max Out My Defense Vol. 8
Author: Jirou Oimoto (Art), Yuumikan (Story), Koin (Character Design)
Publisher: Yen Press
Language: English
Format: Paperback
Pages: 164
Genre: Fantasy, Comedy
Publication Date: November 26, 2024
The Story
The fourth event is over and it’s time to head to the fourth stratum! Here, they noticed a pronounced Japanese theme, with ten gates that you need to clear to open up more of the stratum and reveal its true form! The gates require a lot of farming, collecting rare items, defeating bosses, gathering, and everything else one would come to expect from an MMORPG.
I wouldn’t say that there is much “story” in this volume as it mainly involves Maple Tree advancing through the gates and tackling each one as they see fit. However, the game devs are keen on Maple, so they tried to make it impossible for her even to access the stratum; however, their plans were thwarted thanks to Sally!
Once the stratum is explored, the fifth event begins! This time, the event has a snow theme and you rank up points by beating certain enemies. Some enemies are worth more than others and the rarer enemies had a small chance to drop rare items! Some friendly competition ends up occurring and we’re left with Sally deciding to do some catching up!
Characters
The only true character development that I was able to see dealt with Mii. Mii has a run-in with Maple she discovers something about her that Mii doesn’t want anyone else to know! Despite not judging her for what she discovers, Maple agrees to keep things a secret. They do end up going on a quest together later, too, which further cements the bonds between them. They certainly have gotten a lot closer since their epic duel!
Final Thoughts
Hmm… how to put this… the volume was eventful and uneventful at the same time. What I mean by that is the volume focused on opening up the fourth stratum, exploring it, and then tackling the challenges of opening up the ten gates within it. However, I say that it was uneventful because that’s all there was to it. There wasn’t much in the way of true depth outside of just moving from one quest to another and getting the other guild members involved every now and then.
Kasumi did get a nice little arc on her own where she had to confront a Katana and undergo quite the challenge. The results of that ended up giving her a power-up but also a kiss/curse effect. The curse; however, was pretty hilarious but despite getting some time to shine, Kasumi was just Kasumi and didn’t truly receive any character development. Her trial was fun to read, though, as the fight was pretty cool. I just wish there was a little more of it.
I think what made this feel uneventful was the overall pacing of the volume. We resolved all ten gates AND started the fifth event all within 164 pages. The boss fights to some of the gates that were completely glossed over. I think not spending time and giving these fights/quests meaning made this feel like a book that just wanted to get from one point to the next as quickly as possible and it hurt it just a bit. Nothing took the time to marinate or give the reader enough of a chance to fully invest in something before the story moved on to the next point.
With that being said, this made this feel like a rather generic edition of Bofuri. Hopefully, things will slow down and breathe next time around. Not to say this was a bad volume as it was good… just rushed.
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This item was provided for review by Yen Press
