A large-scale guild war is approaching, and Maple Tree’s in an predicament — they want to compete and win, but they only have 6 members, so if they really want to succeed, they’ll need a few more members.
Enter extreme twin builders Mai and Yui!
With their desire to put all their points into strength, the only thing this has led the twins to find out is their lacking HP and poor movement skills leave guilds to tell them no. If Maple Tree was one of these normal guilds they would’ve also done the same thing — the problem is Maple finds these two first, and she wants them to bring their one-hit strength to the party. And that’s all she wrote on that!
Now the two begin their guild initiation by seeing what Sally does first in battle. They then see what Maple does in battle…and their reaction is about what you should expect when they see a supposed tank doing like 5 different broken things, which also includes transforming into an actual monster.
…Is this a bad time to reveal Maple gets another broken skill later on this volume???
Volume 5 of Bofuri brings us to guild war event preparation, and it does so in fun fashion. Watch as the two newbies Mai and Yui get a primer into Maple’s bizarre skill set, then see them become absolutely terrified when she takes the two towards a sanctum in her monster form. As mentioned in prior volumes, the cutesy vibe makes this series really silly in the best way possible, so it’s pretty funny how characters continue being flummoxed at what Maple does, and their various facial expressions sell it so well. The drawback is the use of so much black tone that it makes certain designs (see when Maple transforms into a monster) look so dark that it’s hard to tell what’s happening, and the action does feel less enjoyable than the goofy parts of the series.
But Bofuri is all about being ridiculous in the most unique way possible. So Maple naturally gaining a Machine God power through unrelated events makes perfect sense. So does seeing characters not nearly as broken as Maple but also gaining skills due to their own ways of playing (see how Iz improves as she scours a level). It all combines into a volume where turning the page brings me to so many hilarious situations involving the crew that even when they’re being spied on turns into something funny. It’s what happens when you attempt to gain information only not realizing that said opponent gives you fake information to throw off what you learn (See Sally facing off against a member of the Order of the Holy Sword).
So all of this build-up to big guild war, but that’s gonna happen in the next volume! Looking forward to seeing how it goes in manga form, with well, hopefully words that don’t cut off inside a bubble due to the page size. The only real demerit to yet another fun volume of Maple and co. being weird and broken!
