Bokurano is something that probably initially misled a lot of people. Nowadays it has a pretty infamous reputation, but if you were to see or read it when it first came out, or nowadays if you somehow go into it knowing nothing about it, it might seem like a pretty innocent and generic premise: a bunch of kids get signed into a contract where they have to pilot a giant robot and save the earth from aliens. It seems like something that has been done a thousand times before, but if you are perceptive you might notice that there is something...off about it all.

And then you keep reading and realize just what it is that you've stumbled into.

The twist comes with the knowledge that the robot will kill the pilot after a battle is over to fuel itself. Meaning that all of the children who entered the contract effectively exchanged their lives for the sake of saving the world. And there is nothing anyone anywhere can do to change that fact, these children are dead no matter what they do.

Before each battle, we get a bit of insight into every single child and find out who they are, what they're struggling with, and what motivates them.

It is in these stories that Bokurano shows just how bleak and dark it is. The stories vary in their exact tone, but they all carry an inherent despair and sentimentality because the child is eventually going to die. Some of the stories are REALLY dark, with one in particular that I think most people will definitely remember. What's most interesting is that some of these stories seem to have points of their own, usually to espouse some very unusual and cynical messages that you really don't see that often, such as a discussion about the whole "one death is a tragedy, one million is a statistic" concept that ends nothing like you'd expect it to.

Even though this manga is so oppressive, and seems to border on being dark for darkness' own sake at times, it is incredibly gripping and powerful. All of the children's stories are heartbreaking in their own way and none of them are bad. The side characters like the army guys and Koyemshi are also pretty memorable in their own right. The ending to this series is also brilliantly done.

Kitoh's art is actually kind of strange. Normally I dislike the kind of stylistic decisions Kitoh makes; his characters have pretty generic, simplified facial features common to a lot of manga, and his characters are mostly pretty skinny and have very subdued facial expressions. But he obviously knows a thing or two about drawing, his scene composition, perspective, grasp of form, etc, are all clearly displayed in the manga and help elevate the storytelling of the manga. His design sense is also quite unique; his robots look nothing like what you'd see in most mech shows, many of them are very bizarre and abstract and don't really resemble anything in particular. The end result meaning that even though Kitoh is not necessarily one of my favorite artists in the industry, I do like his style all the same and I feel that it is more than adequate to telling this story.

At the end of the day, Bokurano is probably a manga that many will find is just trying way too hard to be edgy. But if you are like me you will probably find that the execution of the heavy content is more than satisfactory and makes the story more powerful most of the time. If you want something that will give you intense feels and is unlike anything you have seen in the robot genre, this is for you. It is a pretty different work altogether from Evangelion despite some superficial similarities, so you wouldn't necessarily dislike it if you're not an Evangelion fan.