Bokurano is a manga about kids that will die trying to save the 10 billion people on the earth. This concept is nothing new, and is quite often quoted in the dialogue. It does pose some interesting questions on the darker side of the human condition.

My God

Bokurano is essentially nauseating. The author is blatantly abusive to his characters, as is evident by his previous work Shadow Star. It features; incestuous close-calls(between a daughter whoring herself out for cash and her unwitting “lover” who may or may not be her father), genocide, rape, child pornography and child prostitution, violence, hate, boredom, lust, fear, and cowardice all in the first 19 chapters. It’s an encyclopedia in how to hurt. All of these awful events happen to these little kids, and their actions decide the fates of billions of lives.

Bokurano is about these 14 kids that get tricked into operating a giant mecha, and they must fight for the continuation of earth. Right off the bat none of the characters are likeable, all of the children have their own very adult problems. From the elder brother who routinely beats his sister which “helps him sleep”, to the child who fell in love with her teacher, let him videotape them having sex, then got blackmailed by the teacher into a prostitution ring. It begs the question, “If I hate all these characters, why should I read this manga?”. Well if you’re a masochist, you’ll be fapfapfapping all the way to the bank, but beneath all the human drama there lies a warm nougat-y philosophical center.

Most of Bokurano is divided into two sections;The Human Drama and The Subjective Drama. The Human Drama takes place off of the battlefield. The characters that can’t get past the insecurities bestowed on them by society are the characters that break down in the cockpit of the “Zearth”. Love, Lust, Hate, and Fear are all parts of what make us human. Many times we wonder what defines a human. Is it a soul? Is it blood? Is it the ability to question what we’re told, and decide what we think about anything? No one can answer for sure, but Bokurano poses the thought that humans are defined by their ability to take other lives and use them to support their own. Are we defined by our ability to define weaker beings lives?

Spoilers ahead beware!

One of the great twists to the Bokurano manga is that these kids aren’t fighting weird evil aliens, or nazi motherfuckers. They are fighting themselves, but in parallel universes. If our heroes don’t win every battle their universe is annihilated out of existence and the epic war continues. Its hard to imagine the universe we exist in not being there anymore. If the humanity we know ceases to be does all existence cease to be? So the kids trudge on in hopes of saving their universe, but even as they do so they wonder why? Why save the universe that produces the pain they have felt their whole lives.

The Subjective Drama is where these kids check their morals and their ethics and decide is it worth it to continue to live, let alone save these people. Some of them can’t handle it, and one has a psychotic breakdown. Wherein he refuses to fight, so another one of the kids cuts his throat and commandeers the mecha. To me this is an outstanding portrayal of the duality of man. Some men will show extreme cowardice in great situations, but some will pick up the knife and trudge onward to save humanity. This also begs the question “What right do you have to take another persons life?” but thats a question I will be discussing on the Gundam Post.

I guess in the long run I have no answers to anything in this post, consider this me thinking out loud and on a wordpress. All in all Bokurano is an interesting if depressing manga. I’m told the anime sucks, so I doubt I will revisit it on the blog, but who knows maybe I’ll do a top 10 mindfuck manga list or something.