[Categories: Anime Reviews]
Bokurano 4: Strength
I’m enjoying Bokurano more with every passing episode - it’s possibly my favourite show of the season right now. As predicted, Masaru is an interesting central character for this episode, purely because of his unusual outlook on life. We’ve already seen how nonchantly heartless he is, and in this outing we get to see why. The old saying claims that the apple never falls far from the tree - the Kodaka family are a case in point. Masaru really looks up to his ruthless father, whose business practices are a constant cause of dismay for Masaru’s more compassionate brother.
Placing someone with this mindset in the driving seat of the Zearth is a recipe for disaster however, as Masaru trashes buildings and casts aside anything that stands in his way. While I agree that sacrifices must be made in order to defeat each alien, his reasoning leaves little room for the value of individual lives. Interestingly, someone points out that the alien shows more care and restraint when fighting than Masaru does - strange perhaps, but if I had my eye on conquering the planet I’d try to avoid damaging my new home too.
In true Bokurano style the action scenes are very well done even though I’m not a huge fan of the CG rendering - the slow, ungainly and destructive movements of the Zearth look much better in daylight and unlike previous battles, in which the light is too gloomy to make out the details, the Zearth and its adversary are in plain sight of onlookers and the Government itself. It’s an awe-inspiring sight but Bokurano never wastes an opportunity to remind us that these events are still claiming casualties. Fighting in a giant robot isn’t fun, it really isn’t. It’s frightening, challenging and it causes untold amounts of harm and damage in way that we don’t understand until the dust has settled; Masaru learns this the hard way.
The harshest lesson comes at the end, though. If you don’t want a spoiler, stop reading now. Dung Beetle reveals to the kids what we viewers have already suspected: the act of fighting in battle will claim the life of each pilot, even if they win. Waku had no idea of this and Masaru didn’t either, but we can only wonder how knowing this would have guided their judgement in their final hours. Now the children know that being chosen to pilot the Zearth is a death sentence: regardless of whether they succeed or not they will die, which changes everything.
Bokurano has officially revealed itself to be heart-breakingly tragic but even so, I’m desparate to see what happens next - the next pilot has yet to be chosen and we haven’t even learned anything sigificant so far about the aliens either. I suspect the pacing may be a little uneven in future episodes since the number of aliens (fifteen) doesn’t fit too well with the episode count (which is currently projected at only eight but will probably run to 24-26) but even in the ’slower’ episodes I’m confident that it will provide characterisation by the truckload. All in all, it was a fantastic and gripping episode.
EDIT: I’d like to draw attention to a very helpful pic from T.H.A.T. Anime Blog, which shows who is alive and who isn’t at this point in the series. Cheers to Impz for that - you’re now on my blogroll. 
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