(L) Bokurano

[iczelion74]

Originally Posted by Dragosmore

I completely disagree. The ending left way too many open plot holes open. I was much more impressed with episode 23 than 24.

It didnt leave any plot holes open because this story was only focused on our earth, it was never its intention to explain "the masters" that run the program. And everything on our earth wa wrapped up nicely. Maybe future manga chapters will discuss those behind Zearth and the "natural selection" process.

[Guido]

The-Triad did it! They promised and delivered. At long last, the final two episodes, but I won't see the two of them in just one day.

I have come this far with the fansub releases, and I'm planning to last this thrill for as long as possible.

Episode 23 finished, and, indeed, tied all loose knots regarding to our Earth.

Spoiler:

I could have well harbor some little pity for Koemushii at the end, but he completely lost any sense of mercy from me.

I know he was originally a kid from another Earth who got tricked and dragged in the whole robot-for-battle-of-planet's-survival game. I can as well overlook that he was merciless and bully once the excitement of the game went to the top of his head.

But, I cannot forgive him for attempting to force the contract to Kana by means of fear and threat. Conclusion: His power euphoria got out the worst of him.

I was getting goosebumps on my legs when Machi silently tiptoed all the way to the side of Koemushii, as she readied the hidden gun, that Jun gave to her as part of the plan.
I jumped out when I heard the gunshot, and sighed relief that she managed to gun down that bastard brother of his unharmed.

I wished that Machi would not have died at the site of the wreckage. I would have opted that she had been teleported at Jun and Kana's hometown, and that her body would have lied somewhere at the forest or the river.

But I guess Machi did not want Kana to see her dead, so as to prevent from giving Kana another painful memory.

From here on what happens next....

Spoiler:

Did Machi's victory counted as one for our Earth, even she belonged to another Earth?

I guess how things were running in our Earth and how far they got the previous guide could not simply pulled out the switch and made last entry adjustments. Henceforth, it now all was settled by the hands of Machi, the Ushiro siblings, and Seki.

And if I understood Jun's conversation with Seki, the outcome for the last episode follows:
1. Jun chooses to become the pilot for the last battle.
2. Seki-san would be the next recruiter to gather new 15 pilots at the next Earth.
3. From the preview, Kana won't be aboard Zearth for the last battle.

But, what happens to our Earth?
Didn't Koemushii disclosed at episode 21 that the life force of the surviving Earths is drained as food for the masterminds?

Even if Koemushii was killed for good and those four managed to hack into the system in order to choose by themselves the pilots, our Earth would be still at the grasp of the masterminds.

[Diedrupo]

Well, i'm happy the show was at least subbed to completion. Though I did not like some of the later story arcs, the show ended on a decent note and the first half was pretty good. I still am in love with Bokurano's premise and hope with a completely subbed anime more people will watch it, and perhaps even read the manga afterwards.

[White Manju Bun]

For what Machi did in 23, that was awesome. Right there she became my fav character. I liked the ending, thought it fit well. I really enjoyed Bokurano and very glad Triad stuck with it and finished it

[Aquillion]

I thought the way they showed the scientists and the government was unfair before. That last government guy in eps 23+24, though, takes the cake for cartoonish supervillainy...

Spoiler:

...that... that's his big plan? That's what all this conspiracy was leading up to? Blowing up both robots so he can get the urban renewal contract for the city they destroyed? Really?

And then, just in case the authors were worried that we might have any doubt that they completely lost the thread of what they were trying to say, they have Jun's adoptive father give a lecture on how hard life is, and how sometimes you have to compromise, make sacrifices, and so on... unless, I guess, you're a scientist or government leader, in which case you're evil for wanting to fight your own way and the only thing you're really thinking about during the big fights is the urban renewal contracts anyway.

Seriously, step back and look at it. That's the kind of villain I'd expect in a parody show. There wasn't anything left of the city... from all that talk of WMDs, they presumably blew it up using atomic bombs. That's some urban renewal contract, there. Must be a busy guy to have his fingers in that many pies.

How... how does he even expect to keep his job after blowing up an entire city? There's not even going to be a bit of an investigation over the use of WMDs to flatten one of your own cities? And the Japanese government just sort of hushed the last few battles up, so all the TV stations were showing the weather rather than the fact that Japan just nuked one of its own cities--how powerful is this government, anyway?

I think that they should have built this villain up a bit more. I mean, if you're going to go insane, you might as well go the whole nine yards. They could have had him contacting Zearth during its battles somehow and taunting the pilots: "Hear me, Zeath pilots! I will destroy you once and for all with this attack! And when I have done that... *dramatic zoom* ...the URBAN RENEWAL CONTRACTS will be all mine!"

[41nano]

I enjoyed this show overall, although i didn't liked how they showed all powerful people being that corrupted but when you live in Japan and see that corruption everyday, it's understandable to want to denounce it.

Seems like the manga has yet to end ? I wonder how the story is depicted in it, probably a better and stronger story, I'll probably read that manga sooner or later.

Anyway i have one question:
In episode 18, Komoda plays a piano songs for her family (the girl whose father is a politician). That song is not on the OST, so i was wondering if it was a famous piano piece maybe ?
I would like very much to know more about that song if anybody knows, thanks.

[Dragosmore]

Originally Posted by 41nano

I enjoyed this show overall, although i didn't liked how they showed all powerful people being that corrupted but when you live in Japan and see that corruption everyday, it's understandable to want to denounce it.

Seems like the manga has yet to end ? I wonder how the story is depicted in it, probably a better and stronger story, I'll probably read that manga sooner or later.

Anyway i have one question:
In episode 18, Komoda plays a piano songs for her family (the girl whose father is a politician). That song is not on the OST, so i was wondering if it was a famous piano piece maybe ?
I would like very much to know more about that song if anybody knows, thanks.

Beethoven's Requiem I believe

[41nano]

Originally Posted by Dragosmore

Beethoven's Requiem I believe

I tried to search for a Beethowen Requiem but it seems that there is no Requiem by BEETHOVEN

[Dragosmore]

Sorry, I meant Mozart's

[Matrim]

Originally Posted by Aquillion

I thought the way they showed the scientists and the government was unfair before. That last government guy in eps 23+24, though, takes the cake for cartoonish supervillainy...

Spoiler:

...that... that's his big plan? That's what all this conspiracy was leading up to? Blowing up both robots so he can get the urban renewal contract for the city they destroyed? Really?

And then, just in case the authors were worried that we might have any doubt that they completely lost the thread of what they were trying to say, they have Jun's adoptive father give a lecture on how hard life is, and how sometimes you have to compromise, make sacrifices, and so on... unless, I guess, you're a scientist or government leader, in which case you're evil for wanting to fight your own way and the only thing you're really thinking about during the big fights is the urban renewal contracts anyway.

Seriously, step back and look at it. That's the kind of villain I'd expect in a parody show. There wasn't anything left of the city... from all that talk of WMDs, they presumably blew it up using atomic bombs. That's some urban renewal contract, there. Must be a busy guy to have his fingers in that many pies.

How... how does he even expect to keep his job after blowing up an entire city? There's not even going to be a bit of an investigation over the use of WMDs to flatten one of your own cities? And the Japanese government just sort of hushed the last few battles up, so all the TV stations were showing the weather rather than the fact that Japan just nuked one of its own cities--how powerful is this government, anyway?

I think that they should have built this villain up a bit more. I mean, if you're going to go insane, you might as well go the whole nine yards. They could have had him contacting Zearth during its battles somehow and taunting the pilots: "Hear me, Zeath pilots! I will destroy you once and for all with this attack! And when I have done that... *dramatic zoom* ...the URBAN RENEWAL CONTRACTS will be all mine!"

Well said, this urban revival contracts "plot" was beyond stupid. If they wanted to portray people in power as corrupted there was a myriad of much better ways to achieve that. And in the long run it made no difference whatsoever. Comе to think of it, senator (or whatever his title was) Komoda and Tanaka died for nothing as the political climate hardly had any bearing on major plot developments, the kids won their battles and that was that, the Masterminds or the pruning of paralel earths were almost ignored in the end of the show which makes me wonder why were they introduced in the first place. I guess I will see how things are in the manga.

[Guido]

Final Thoughts. Finally, my trek for this anime has ended, as of today I have concluded Bokurano.

Certainly, when I started watching the first episode picked a slow pace, but the storyline started to get interesting from episode two and onwards.

I really appreciate how they designed and drew the characters. I was just a little fed up watching anime featuring characters with shining colors and cool features. Bokurano went for a realistic aim.

But still I'm as well felt that major plotholes were left unresolved like the greedy bureaucrat's urban contract revival projects and others as such.

The plotline referring to the masterminds is out of consequence, because as Kanji said they were out of their league and could not be stopped. In fact, the main storyline never intended to have the children fight against the masterminds. It simply told the story of the 15 fifteen who rode Zearth to protect their Earth.

Spoiler:

At the end, Kana was the sole survivor who fulfill Jun's promise and live on to tell the tale, and the very first people who listened to that tale were Daichiis' siblings.

The fact that Daichii's siblings reappeared made me to sob merrily, because it well meant that he left a precious memory within his siblings to live and carry on.

I bet as well that the other children left something in the Earth to be remembered and living on. For example, with Kana living on Jun protected her, and thus his memory lives within her.

I read as well that the director of the anime was very displeased with the content featured in the manga, and thus made drastic changes to the direction and the way the anime was handled.
In fact, he requested to the manga-ka that if it was possible to save the children. The manga-ka agreed but only on the condition that their salvation would never include a DEUS EX-Machina or any other sort of magical solutions.

At the end, someway or another the director fullfill the manga-ka's wishes, and thus the children were not revived, and I praise him for that decision because had they been resurrected then it would had cheapened the values of their sacrifices as well to the characters.

Spoiler:

The most poignant example was, of course, Jun who did not want to go to another Earth to start the gathering, and thus begetting a new and endless cycle.

He wanted to finish the fight in their Earth once and for all in order to be able to die so he could return to his mother (Tanaka).

Overall, the last episode actually felt as the ending of an ordinary episode and not a closure. But analyzing the broad picture it is befitting because this one out of many thousands tales from different Earths out there.

I guess that if there's any theme or moral is it that the moment we are borned our struggle starts to cling to life as much as possible and not to be left behind.

Anyways, I give thanks to The-Triad for their fansubs and give special thanks to GONZO for delivering storyline and treating the audience with a humble but immersive ending.

This has been the fifth title I have finished for the spring season.

[tsurumaru]

I strongly recommend that if you enjoyed the Anime you should check out the source material for the show; the Manga by Mohiro Kitoh. Its currently ongoing and is unlicensed, it is being scanslated by mangascreener.

[Aquillion]

Originally Posted by Guido

I guess that if there's any theme or moral is it that the moment we are borned our struggle starts to cling to life as much as possible and not to be left behind.

I think that there were really two separate things the show was aiming at (probably as a result of the anime's director struggling against the manga, although I've never read the manga so I can't be sure--and I don't know which message is whose.)

This sort of comes down to my problem with the Masterminds, too. I do feel that this show had many good episodes and had a great deal of potential. One line could have had the potential to serve as the show's lynchpin, if they'd put it together better and focused on saying one clear thing:

Spoiler:

Kanji, when he has his vision of the Masterminds, says something along the lines of how they are too far above us, too grand and perfect. I said in another post that the writers almost wanted to portray the Masterminds as God... and, actually, if they had gone all out and done that, I think the show would have worked. Not, literally, God in a religious sense, but as something completely beyond our comprehension and out of our control... the children are doomed in the same way as if they'd contracted cancer, or been struck by lightning, or killed by an earthquake. The Masterminds are the God from the book of Job, inexplicable and terrible; Zearth is the Leviathan, vast beyond human comprehension.

If you look at it from this perspective, the show makes a lot more sense. It isn't about people fighting or about urban renewal contracts or about what happens afterwards; it's about 15 children facing death, about how each of them reacts to it. The real message is that, while the universe is harsh and unfair and death is inescapable, you can still face it in your own way; each child found their own meaning in their life or death (friends, family, country, duty, and so on)... or failed to do so.

The show's biggest failings, as I see them, came down to these:

First, it spent too much time focusing on people who weren't the children. The military and the government and all that had no real place in the story. It feels almost like the authors had a completely unrelated message they wanted to graft in, and it didn't fit. We don't really care who gets the Urban Renewal Contract; the story of the government Hushing It Up might have made an interesting TV drama, but didn't really have anything to do with the main plot.

Second, Dung Beetle. He was entirely and completely a mistake, and he should have been cut entirely. He never fit the tone of the series, and having him there undercut the basic message. Yes, the big scene in episode 23 was great, but it left literally the entire the rest of the show hanging bizarrely; one or the other needed to be cut. By acting as their proxy, he put a face on the Masterminds, made them less inexplicable and more comically evil. This is very bad. As long as the Masterminds remained distant and inexplicable, there wasn't any need to address them; but having their impish servant constantly darting around undercut the majesty Kanji described for them. If you're going to put your children in the biblical role of Job, you cannot then have a stand-in for God constantly darting around making fun of them. Paradoxically, for the show's message to work, the children's death and the reason they were forced to fight had to be without intrinsic meaning or reason (since the point was that they each found their own meaning.)

Having Dung Beetle there meant that it ended up feeling like they died because an evil bad imp killed them. That is unsatisfactory, to put it mildly. If, say, Daichii (to name one of the episodes they did well) died because an evil bad imp killed him... well, it sort of changes the message of his story, and not for the better.

This leads to the third problem. The show tried to describe reasons for what the Masterminds were doing, and tried to give a justification for why the children were being forced to fight and die. Why was this there? There was no way any explaination would satisfy (in this case, even if we accept the premise that this pruning is necessary, it is monstrous that anyone would do it in such a random and haphazard fashion), and, in any case, we shouldn't be thinking about that. The focus should be on how the children confront their deaths; focusing on why they're dying, putting in evil villains and convoluted explanations and all of that... it ends up detracting from the central story.

If they wanted to bring in scientists and government officials and people like that, I think they should've aimed at leading to the main message that those adults were, in the end, just as helpless and scared as the children in the face of the "terrible majesty" of the universe; in the end, everyone has to face the death, and everyone has to do it on their own. That would have been a much more mature way of dealing with it... as it was, it felt like the show went out of its way to show the children and a few friendly adults as human (even the ones who break down and can't take it), whereas the government officials are shown as being inexplicably evil and corrupt. Showing the adults as human, frightened, and overwhelmed by the situation themselves would have been much more powerful. There were some hints of this with Kanji's mother, but not very much. It should have been the central point of the scientist / government arc, if they were going to include it at all.

Despite what I said before, I do think that this show succeeded more often than it failed. The individual stories of the children and their deaths were generally pretty well done. Death is unfair. It can happen to anyone at any time for no reason, and no matter what we do or how we change, it is going to claim us eventually. Each of the children's deaths had their own concrete take on this.

I think that they tried a bit too hard to make Jun's into a "link everything together and wrap it up" death, though. I also think that the last episode should have ended immediately at Jun's death. The shot of him destroying Zearth was a rough, far-too-late effort to tie up the loose ends... the problem was that they should never have been focusing on those ends in the first place; the focus should always have stayed on the children and how they died, not on questions of the backstory (the battles after that and so on.) And, after that, it seemed almost cheating and fan-servicey to focus on a "happily ever after" where Kana tells the noble story of the children's fights.

It wasn't a story about noble fights. It was a story, basically, about 15 terminally ill patients and how each of them dealt with it; if the authors had focused on that instead of on Dung Beetle and Urban Renewal Contracts and Zearth Programs and alternate-universe weeding, the show would have been the better for it.

[Diedrupo]

Aquillion, I think you should read the manga, if only because a lot of the differences that made the anime so flawed are not in the manga, for instance:

Spoiler:

- No Masterminds subplot
- Tanaka is not Ushiro's mom
- Tanaka and Komoda's father do not die (as of yet)
- Jun and Machi are the kids not in the contract (NOT a typo, take that how you want)
- Although Machi is not in the contract, she is not related to Dungbeetle or from another world. She's not in the contract simply because the contract was full by the time she signed it.
- No additional anime-only battle rules that made no sense (such as Kirie's first battle where the enemy opponent killed itself. If that happened in the manga, both universes would have been destroyed)
- Dungbeetle is still annoying, but without all the other stupid stuff that was added in the anime, his role makes a lot more sense
- Lastly, some of the arcs are WAY more epic. Kanji and Aiko's arcs in particular left you going "how the HELL are they going to resolve this?" as they were both put into positions that were seemingly unwinnable.

BTW with all of the speculation of how the anime director was going to make some of the kids live, anyone else find it ironic that the manga is potentially going to see more kids survive than the anime?

[strategos]

I started to watch this anime. Am @ episode 9, and its awesome. Thank You Triad Fansub for the subs of this great series ^_^. So are the manga and anime different? After the anime is gone... should I read the manga?

[serenade_beta]

Originally Posted by strategos

I started to watch this anime. Am @ episode 9, and its awesome. Thank You Triad Fansub for the subs of this great series ^_^. So are the manga and anime different? After the anime is gone... should I read the manga?

Yes, the manga and anime is different. A few chapters ago, I would say the manga and anime were very different, but there have been certain new developments in the manga that are similar to the anime's...

If you have time, I recommend the manga.

[KholdStare]

So yes, simple. From the perspective of someone who has never read the manga, this show was a masterpiece, 10/10. People always said the ones that you like best are the ones that leaves you speechless. This is one example. I can't begin to explain why I like this series, but I enjoyed it more than most other things I've watched.

One thing I do know about the manga is the difference in endings. I'll say I prefer the anime ending, because throughout the series I was hoping for that ending, because well, I thought it was be the least depressing one.

Yes, I did enjoy episode 23 more than episode 24, but nothing is perfect. It was enough to conclude the story, unlike Mahoromatic's ending, which was the worst thing that could've happened. The fact that I could love a mecha series is amazing enough in itself. The only real flaw was the battle scenes themselves. Except for the last, there was never any fear that our Earth would lose.

I love it, and I will never watch it ever again.

[strategos]

Has the manga ended?

[serenade_beta]

Originally Posted by strategos

Has the manga ended?

Nope, not yet.

[kauldron26]

wow, this is one of those shows that i know i will never ever ever watch again.