Manga Review: Bokurano (Ours) by Mohiro Kitoh
Fifteen middle-schoolers are at summer camp when they discover a seaside cave and decide to investigate. Inside, they find a man called Kokopelli, who is surrounded by electronic gear. He claims to be developing a new game where you pilot a giant robot to defend the Earth against alien invaders. He asks the children to help him test it, and they agree to become mecha pilots (but one boy prevents his little sister from participating.)
That night, the children find themselves transported to the cockpit of a giant robot (which will become known as Zearth) and watch as Kokopelli demonstrates how it works and defeats an enemy robot. He then tells them it’s up to them now, and teleports them back to the beach, with a robot creature called Koyemshi as their guide.
Each of the children must now take their turn as pilot of Zearth, defending the blue planet of their birth. But they soon learn that Kokopelli concealed important information from them, and the “game” is far crueler than they could have imagined.
Despite the age of the protagonists, this manga was aimed at the seinen (young men) demographic, and is not at all kid-friendly. I’d rate it for senior high schoolers and up.
I’ll be discussing spoilers below, so for those who prefer to go into series with some secrets preserved, I will say that this is a well-presented story, with disturbing themes. The artist’s style works well with the awkward middle-school anatomy. There is also an animated series that softens the ending a teensy.
SPOILERS beyond this point!
In a neat narration trick, the narration of the first few chapters is by Takashi, the first pilot and typical shounen genre protagonist. It’s done in the past tense, making it sound as though Takashi is remembering it years later. And then, after Takashi’s battle, Jun accidentally knocks Takashi off the 500 meter tall Zearth’s shoulder, and the narration cuts off mid-sentence.
Shocking, but that was an accident, right? Until the second pilot just up and dies after their battle. Turns out Zearth works on life force, and each child will die from piloting the mecha. Oh, and the “alien invaders”? They’re actually from parallel Earths, no better or worse than “our” Earth. The losing robot’s universe is destroyed, and there’s an infinite number of “games” going on.
Meanwhile, the children (and a handful of adults who are let in on the secret) must live their own lives, and we learn about each pilot’s backstory and issues. Some of them have normalish kid issues, others are Afterschool Special-worthy, and one story is Law & Order: SVU territory and may be triggery.
The volume at hand is number 11, the final book in the series. We are down to our final pilot, Jun. He’s not exactly the person you would have picked as Earth’s last defense, having been a real jerk in the earlier volumes. But he’s learned that most of the assumptions he made to justify his horrid behavior were false, and seen the sacrifice that others made for him and the Earth. And Koyemshi is finally opening up a little now that all the secrets are out.
Jun prepares for battle, but the enemy’s plan will give him one more cruel set of choices to make. There is no escape from the cycle of death.
