By Yuumikan and KOIN. Released in Japan as “Itai no wa Iya nano de Bōgyoryoku ni Kyokufuri Shitai to Omoimasu” by Kadokawa Books. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Andrew Cunningham.

Bad news, folks: I think Bofuri may be starting to bore me. This is a combination of several factors, really. The anime decided to speedrun its second season, and as such this volume consists of stuff that I already watched for the first time in a few volumes. This volume is also almost entirely a “kill monsters” book, which means there’s very little for me to talk about and glom on to, and of course no character development. Hell, the nature of this book makes some characters worse – Mii appears throughout, but she’s always surrounded by people from other guilds, so she’s always in super serious mode. But super serious is not why I want to read Mii. Add all this up and we’re left with a volume that I found majorly underwhelming, not helped by a pile of pointless short stories from various retail giveaways added at the end. Honestly, the most interesting character now might be Iz, who’s become the star of Kaboom!.

The second part of this event has started, and Maple Tree rapidly set up a base (complete with ludicrous deathtraps) and go to find some monsters and dungeons to clear out. As the event goes on, though, they get split up, and each seems to hook up with members of the other two guilds we know, Mi’s group and Payne’s group. This leads to some different dynamics as the groups are forced to work together, though honestly, everyone in the groups is nice, so it’s not that much of a struggle. Eventually they decide to just do this level as a massive 16-person superunit, and, as the mods note, that’s terrible news – for the monsters. Still, the difficulty level gets higher and higher as the event goes on, with even Maple starting to have trouble killing these guys off. can Maple Tree all survive to the end and get their medals?

I mean, yes. This is not a “struggling underdog” sort of series, this is Maple. The most interesting part of her journey here might be the signal everyone sets up in case they’re separated, which turns out to be Maple literally blowing herself up over and over to create the equivalent of a flare. As I said before, Iz has become more and more relaxed and willing to “go crazy” with each book, and here we see her basically applying “when all you have is a hammer” only with bombs. Which work nicely. She also helps the twins essentially play lethal croquet, which was also amusing. If I recall, fans of the books complained the anime changed a part of this book which separated the twins briefly. Which might have been true, except neither twin did anything while separated. I think the author thinks of them as one character, too.

So the event is over, and we presumably start a new arc next time. I’m hoping that it will grab my attention more. Perhaps Maple and Sally on a date… erm, exploring together?