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.

One of the more enjoyable things about the Bofuri series is that it’s NOT ‘we’re trapped in a game’, there are no real consequences, and everyone is free to do whatever. This is important, because it undercuts dramatic character development and potential angsty trauma. In addition to Maple, we’ve also been following the twins Mai and Yui, who are trying to do with Strength what Maple does with Defense. They’ve been pretty good at it, but are starting to hit a bit of a wall. This calls for deep thought. Should they try to experiment with non-strength things? Should they finally break free of the twin thing and actually take different skills, each one becoming their own person? Should they… grow up? Or should they, perhaps, find a way to use eight giant hammers at the same time? The answer is yes, they should octo-wield. This is a dumb game, they don’t seem to have any real life issues associated with it, and octo-wielding is hella cool.

Frederica is on the cover, but barely gets any page time, alas. The bulk of this book is taken up by a new event, which can best be described as “kill as many monsters as you possibly can”. There’s no PvP element to it, so folks are free to team up, and we see a few fun pairings. My favorite is Maple, Mii, and Velvet, aka Two Chuunis and a Dojikko. There’s also plenty of Maple and Sally, as we get to see them tackle a rarely used dungeon that basically thrown the monsters from all the previous floors at once. And eventually everyone has to team up to take down the giant final boss and his orb of power. the orb is far trickier than the boss, as the boss can be flattened by the Hammer Sisters, while the orb is made of sterner stuff. Amidst all this, is there time for… a different game?

The other highlight of the book is seeing Risa try, once again, to get over her fear of horror. It’s clear that the game is going to throw “6th level monsters” at them in the future, and Sally hates that she’ll always be useless when that happens (though she does OK in one fight by simply wrapping a blindfold around her head and firing off magic randomly, which I can’t wait to see animated). Her solution is to buy a really scary horror VR game and play it with Kaede, who has no issues with horror and is always down for a new game. Needless to say, it goes pretty much exactly as you’d expect. Risa being terrified of ghosts is just funny, especially with Kaede’s blase attitude towards them. We also once again get a tiny bit of “Risa REALLY likes Kaede” here, but blink and you’ll miss it. At least, unlike other authors, we don’t get a constant stream of “I’m straight, though”.

This should give Bofuri fans a good time, even though there’s no plot or character development. There won’t be, really. And that’s fine.

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.

Good news! This is a far stronger volume of Bofuri than the previous two were, and I think I can see why: the last book I really enjoyed was also pretty much just Maple and Sally, with the others barely appearing. I definitely enjoy the rest of the guild, there’s nothing wrong with them. But something about the main duo of the series causes the author to up their game. Now, don’t get me wrong, there’s no major character development for Maple here or anything, she’s pretty much the same. (Sally… well, I’ll get to Sally.) But it’s simply fun and relaxing watching these two besties steamroll through the dungeons on earlier floors that they missed just to be able to see a really great view, or have a picnic, or learn about new ludicrous techniques. Well, only Maple gets that last one, as she manages to turn dark angel (scary) and also make her weird Atrocity ball do a Katamari Damacy (scarier).

Everyone’s still on the 7th level, and there’s no sign we’re seeing the 8th right away. So Maple and Sally decide to go sightseeing, going back to the earlier levels and taking in things they didn’t get to the last time around. They also meet new characters while they’re at it, because you can’t JUST have Maple and Sally and no one else, alas. Appropriately, of the two pairs they meet, one feels very Maple (Velvet, a brawler pretending to be an ojou, and Hinata, her introverted backup) and the other feels very Sally (Wilbert, an insanely powerful archer, and Lily, his maid backup… except when Lily is the powerful warrior and Wilbert is the butler backup). These two pairs make Sally worried, as she knows that they’ll be doing PvP before long, and she is concerned that she and Maple don’t have the synergy of the other two pairs… despite the entire book being evidence to the contrary.

The first anime had finished when this was being written, and I’m not sure if the author noticed the Maple/Sally yuri fans and decided to play it up a bit, or if this was always the case. Regardless, there’s a lot more yuri subtext than usual here, almost all of it on Risa/Sally’s end. Risa is a gamer girl who has struggled with the fact that her best friend has never really been able to keep up with her in any of them. Now they have this game, which plays to Kaede’s eccentric strengths, and it’s like heaven. She notes that she wants to keep playing with Maple like this forever (romantic, but hopefully not a death flag – I can’t see Bofuri ever getting dark), but she also wants to FIGHT Maple directly, even as she knows that Maple really isn’t into that sort of gameplay. It’s a combination of competitive tension and romantic tension, and it makes me wonder if the final book in the series will be Maple and Sally duking it out.

That said, pretty sure Maple will win. It’s her series. This was a terrific volume, though, and next time the rest of the cast should be back as well.

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?