(just for the record, this is a slight alteration of my anime review)

NOTICE: I will be making many references to Narutaru. Can’t help making a joke about it and for all intents and purposes, this is a double review for both series. Damn things are practically the same anyway. Also, this is one of those weird retrospective texts that focuses more on what happens around a series that in it. If you don’t like it, it ain’t my fault.

PROLOGUE
Bokurano, aka Narutaru mk2.
Ok, the guy who makes these things clearly goes for impressions through shock value around children abuse. Where Narutaru was “Let’s have kids being tortured and miserable, with Pokemon flavor”, Bokurano is “Let’s have kids being tortured and miserable, with huge robots flavor”. In both cases, the critters or the robots don’t really play a role in the actual points the titles want to show. They are there for flavor, just like milk is to tea. Down to it, the only focus to both series is “Torture kids, torture them more, and them kill them miserably.” Sounds disgusting and vile, doesn’t it? Well, that’s what makes it so damn special. It’s like Ausvich in a way. You don’t care about the area, as much about the inhuman acts that took place there during the era where being blonde and blue-eyed was totally GAR.

VALUE SECTION
Anyway, where Narutaru lacked an overall objective in its story and was mostly random arcs about kids in happy-go-lucky situations going from bad to worse, Bokurano actually tries to have one.
Saving the world with a huge robot!
…Pretty lame-sounding, doesn’t it? What are we to like this premise, twelve year olds?
(EVA 01 stares angrily towards me)
Errr… What I meant is that it basically uses a childish concept as means of shock effect. And it works too. Imagine the Care Bears dancing happily around a tree and then suddenly the tree sprouts teeth, eats them, goes “munch, munch” and then spits out their bloody sculls.
…Yeah, nice way to kill your childhood innocence.

Bokurano is similar. Just like its older brother used cute little critters, this one uses big robots. You think it’s going to be childish but then turns Happy Tree Friends … without the humorous irony.
Does it work? Erm, yes, it works as shock value for sure. It really is GASP material the first time you watch it. The thing is, shock value is a one-time special ability. Just like any super attack in any shounen series, it only works once on each individual. The second time you try to use it, the opponent has a way to counter it, block it, negate it, or in the case of the viewer “It’s not as shocking anymore!” Therefore, it needs to have other elements to keep the viewer still interested in replying the whole mess.
…And this is where it all falls down.

Narutaru was bad in this regard as the complete lack of general direction as a story meant that you have no reason for you to want to relive the whole mess. What is there to watch? Bokurano kinda fixed that problem by adding the objective of world salvation. Ok, now you can watch again the process of how they try to do it.
…And it still fails.
Thus, Value is very low. (3)

STORY AND CHARACTER SECTION
You see, it’s not really about saving the world. It’s about kids in miserable situations. It’s like “Wow, I will be dead soon; how will I spend my last hours alive?” So you can pretty much screw the whole battle for the salvation of Earth. Although losing the battle automatically means that Earth will blow up, it’s not really the point at all. The robot battles are as I said flashy extras that serve very little to the actual plot. They do provide mystery as in many cases the cast tries to figure out what the hell is going on here, and in some other cases it does affect the story as the damage from the battles affects the lives of the rest of the world. All that unfortunately happens too rarely and in very convenient moments to actually feel natural in-story. For example, if someone is killed by a bad robot, he will be relative to the kid piloting the robot at the moment.

Practically, the story could easily be remade as individual arcs around the last moments of children with terminal diseases. You can take out the robots and the salvation of Earth and it would make almost no difference. What I mean is that although there are 14 kids that are supposed to be the main cast, the story always focuses on one or two at the most at any given time, leaving all the rest as background decoration, until their time to fight and/or die comes along. Now, I am not an ass to demand 14 characters being exposed at the very same time. But I do demand for all of them to be equally important to the story. They could for example do a Bacanno! type of non-linear story, where we see the same events happening all the time but through different perspective, each time from a different kid. We could have 1 battle with a bad robot in the whole series and each kid gets to fight it at the same time. That would make it concrete. But no, what we got was a singing contest. The kids were taking turns, waiting like drones for an invisible force to choose their turn and then all of a sudden they would be thrown in a dreadful situation where they are supposed to resolve it before fighting for the last time in their lives.

It works as shock value but at the same time it has no overall binding with the freaking setting of the story. Not to forget to mention all that political mambo-jumbo they threw in that serve as nothing else but detracting from the main themes of the series. Why have them if they make the story even sloppier than it already is? That translates to bad storytelling. It was bad in Narutaru; it tried to be better here but in fact it ain’t.

I must also point out that the anime version pulled the adaptation decay turd on us and changed the ending to be happy in a way. Well, duh, I prefer the sad and grim manga version far better.
Thus, Story and Characters are bad for not feeling natural to the viewer because of the lack in uniformity. (5)

And I know that a series is not supposed to be realistic, but come on, the story is supposed to be about contemporary Japan of today, normal kids of today, having normal lives of today. Excuse me for expecting some realism. Not in reactions to normal problems; it does a good job in its slice-of-life drama. I mean on a level of constant uniformity where they are main characters all the time and not for a few episodes when the scriptwriter decides out of the blue to throw in a “The robot calls you to be the next pilot” ass-pulling trope to turn their role from Kid12 to Main Hero.

Hm, what did I leave out? Ah, yes, Art.

ART SECTION
I won’t stick here much, sue me. The visuals on the robots are generally good. The character figures look simplistic and unappealing but that is not really a minus. If they were trendy shounen leads, they would be complete sh*t in the context of the story; so at least they save face where they lose it in character motivation. So good job there for a change. Cinematics for atmosphere built-up? Sure, they are ok. Ok, I must admit they did a very good job here, despite not WOWing me in any way. 8 for Art.

And for the final entry we have Enjoyment. Boy, so hard to excuse this part.

ENJOYMENT SECTION
I sure liked the controversial aspect of the series. It’s not really about kids piloting transforming robots and happy-go-lucky protect the planet from evil aliens. It is also thought-provoking in a way, as it does make you think and feel strange about the situations the kids are thrown in.

And now the nasty part. This series is based too much on shock value. It leaves you with a vivid impression because of the horrible things that happen in it. Yet at the same time, it has very little to back it up. The second time you try to watch it, you clearly see it ain’t so dramatic and the actual plot is peanuts. Also, the focus on character exposition is pretty amateur’s work, as most feel like stunts for most of the story until magically thrown to the position of Main Hero for the sake of… well, dying. Character exposition moments before dying? Talk about Newbie Errors 101. Too many characters, too little time invested on each, too many things befalling each one at once, making it unnatural.

I know most anime fans don’t care about that and as long as it shocked them it is considered a success. I on the other hand look at the bigger picture. Does it do it better than other stories with similar elements? Just think about the most famous titles that kinda remind you of Bokurano (and it ain’t Narutaru).
Alien Nine? Hm, maybe.
Elfen Lied? Far less characters and thus far more focus on each one of them.
Neon Genesis? Sorry, dwarfed big time.
Battle Royale? Ok, now it is invisible.
My, look at that, now it ain’t so special after all. It may rank on the better made but it still feels bad next to the titles it has similarities with. For all it maters, I admit it’s better than Narutaru.
…Oh well, let’s give it the base and call it for the day; I feel generous today.

p.s. Here are some overall rating for Narutaru next to Bokurano. Just a last moment bonus and such…
Art: Narutaru:6, Bokurano:8
Story: Narutaru:4, Bokurano:5
Characters: Narutaru:5, Bokurano:5
Value: Narutaru:3, Bokurano:3
Enjoyment: Narutaru:4, Bokurano:5
Average: Narutaru:4.5/10, Bokurano:5.5/10