Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear

Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear

Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear anime series cover art
Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear

Series Overview

Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear (くま クマ 熊 ベアー) is a comedy, adventure, fantasy series about a girl who finds herself stuck in another world — how unique! But, as always, there has to be a twist to set this generic isekai apart from the rest. This time, the protagonist wears a bear kigurumi and all of her abilities are bear-based.

Now, before I get into this whole bear-based thing, I need to say something about the title. Kuma is just the Japanese word for bear. So you’d expect the English title to simply be the reverse: Bear Bear Bear Kuma. However, that’s actually the title of an anime short that pairs with this series.

Okay, so there’s no separate English title then, right? Wrong. The English title is actually The Bears Bear a Bare Kuma. And now you know why I’ve decided to go with the Japanese title for this review. The English title is so bad that I can’t stand writing it more than this one time.

Back to the bear-based abilities. You’d be forgiven for thinking that this means Yuna can “do everything a bear can do.” That’s not at all what it means. It means that Yuna has every overpowered ability that all generic isekai protagonists do, but hers are all bear-shaped.

For example, if she were to use earth magic to create a wall, it would either be bear-shaped or have a bear pattern imprinted into it. The rules aren’t well defined, so the bear nature can manifest in any number of ways. Well, until the end of the series when it just doesn’t anymore for some reason.

What all of this is really means is that yes, it’s just as generic as the rest. It only has the appearance of being different.

Main Characters

Yuna is the protagonist of the series. As is typical for isekai like this, she started off as a gamer and then one day realized that she was in the game for real. However, this doesn’t seem to bother Yuna all that much because she didn’t really have much going on in her old life other than gaming 24/7.

The one problem Yuna does have is that she’s effectively stuck in her bear kigurumi because it gives her insane stat boosts. She’s embarrassed to wear it in public. But at the same time, no other gear could possibly match its stat boosts — so she bears with it (I’m sorry).

Yuna from the anime series Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear
Yuna

Fina is the other truly main character. She’s a young girl — younger than Yuna, who’s 15 — and she works as Yuna’s personal monster butcher. Whenever Yuna defeats a monster, which is very frequently, she hands it over to Fina to cut into usable materials. That’s really the only thing Fina does. So she’s not all that important.

While not a main character, Noire Foschurose is a character who shows up enough times to be mentioned. She’s the daughter of a local lord and quickly becomes Yuna’s number one fan. She even starts a fan club dedicated to Yuna, although it only has three members. Those are herself, Fina, and her friend Misaana.

The final character I want to mention is Atla. Atla only shows up at the end of the series (and in the OP) and she doesn’t play a large role. But she’s worth mentioning simply because she has the best character design of the series. Atla looks like a character out of DanMachi, but at the same time looks better than any DanMachi character.

A New Sub-Subgenre?

Isekai series with female protagonists aren’t new. They’ve existed for decades. However, they haven’t been the most popular over the past few years. I don’t really know the reason for this, but maybe it has something to do with the whole power fantasy thing being targeted more towards a male demographic who want to project.

But recently, there have been a few series that combine isekai with the moe-blob genre. A popular one of these anime from the beginning of 2020 is BOFURI. And even before that, I suppose you could count Endro~! That one’s not an isekai, but it’s a fantasy adventure, so it’s close enough.

I don’t know much about the series So I’m a Spider, So What? that’s going to be airing this season. But I do know that the protagonist is female, so maybe it’ll fit into this category as well.

Atla (as seen in the OP) from the anime series Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear
Atla (as seen in the OP)

Overall, I have to say that I’m not too big of a fan of this type of series. I think I’d rather either take a pure fantasy adventure or a pure moe-blob series. Combining the two just feels like it waters them both down. Rather than watching a good anime in either of those genres, you’re watching a mediocre anime that combines them.

As I’ve already said, Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear doesn’t do anything unique. It’s a standard isekai, power fantasy and all, that just so happens to feature cute girls. The cute girls help it feel a bit more unique. But at the end of the day it’s just a facade.

Conclusion

Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear is a 5/10 from me. It didn’t do anything poorly exactly. But it didn’t do anything well either. It’s a middle-of-the-road anime that I’m probably going to forget about until the second season releases at some point. And yes, a second season has already been confirmed.

Normally I would have something good to say about either the OP or ED, but this time around I don’t. Just like the rest of the series, they’re both pretty average and don’t stand out. The only good part of the OP is the shot of Atla pictured above.

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My review of Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear Punch! is available now.

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4 Replies to “Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear”

  1. I think this show wasn’t half bad. Usually OP characters are annoying in these kinds of shows, but the world reacting to OP Yuna kuma Sue was entertaining at least. Also all the bear themed stuff was adorbs >w<

    1. I think BOFURI is a better version of the same concept. Maple is even more OP than Yuna is, and I think it did the comedy surrounding that better.

  2. I’ve just started watching this series and one thing I’ve noticed is that it’s not in chronological order, especially ep1 her bear outfit and she was already level 100+?, then ep2 she’s in her elf form then receives her beat outfit starting from level 1. I can see why given that the author…

    Writing by the Seat of Your Pants: Kumanano don’t have any pre-planning whatsoever for the story, coming up with the plot chapter-by-chapter, and even posting online about not knowing what they’ll do with present plot-points or how they’ll resolve a conflict until they write the next chapter.

    Unless this is a Very Compressed Adaptation like what Arifureta had suffered, it’s unfortunate that I might rate it lower than a 4. I know there’s Average Abilities, but despite the Distillation Adaptation, it’s at least chronological, including the flashback usage, that has made me believe the author takes chronology seriously.

    1. I hadn’t noticed issues in the chronology of this series. I guess I wasn’t paying all that much attention to it.

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