Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear Punch! Review

Bear Babysitter

Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear Punch! (くまクマ熊ベアーぱーんち！) is the second season of Kuma Bear. And, it’s pretty much the same as the first season. There are a few new characters. But, nothing about this season is a huge departure from Season 1.

At its heart, Kuma Bear is a slice of life series. It pretends to be an adventure series. However, it’s really not. I mean, what adventure is Yuna going on? It’s not like she’s on a quest to defeat a demon lord or anything. The series follows her daily life.

There are three main arcs in this season of the series. In the first, Yuna serves as an escort for a group of students. In the second, she goes on a quest to obtain mithril. And in the third, she helps make a noble’s birthday party a success.

The first arc may have been my favorite of the three. Shia, Cattleya, Malix, and Timol are students at the knight academy or something. And, for school, they have to go on a short quest to a neighboring town. So, naturally, Ellalaura asks Yuna to be their adventurer escort for the trip.

Because this is a school trip, it’s supposed to be fairly simple. Yuna’s job is only to make sure nothing goes wrong. If monsters show up, it’s the students who need to fight. And, for the majority of the quest, everything goes as planned.

That’s actually what I liked about this arc. We know Yuna can defeat pretty much anything. But, I enjoyed seeing how the students worked together to bring down weak monsters. To me, that’s more fun than seeing Yuna use her Kuma Punch to one-shot a boss.

Also, we got to see Malix’s character develop over the course of the arc.

Bear Seeking Mithril

Now that I’m thinking about it, the second arc is pretty good, too. It’s only now that Yuna realizes what it means to be in a fantasy world. Being in a fantasy world means the existence of materials like Mithril exist. She only realized this once she was introduced to Adamantium (or something similar).

So, why does Yuna care about Mithril? Well, at her core, Yuna is a gamer. And as every gamer knows, Mithril tends to be the rarest of the rare when it comes to ores. Naturally, that means Yuna needs to get her hands on some.

The problem is that whole “rarest of the rare” thing. It’s not easy to gather enough Mithril to actually make anything out of it. That is, unless you were able to defeat a Mithril Golem. But, Mithril Golems are so hard that defeating one seems like an impossible task.

Now, it’s not the Mithril that I care about in this arc. It’s the fact that Yuna actually goes on a real quest with at least a bit of challenge. Though, the challenge doesn’t really come from the golems she needs to defeat.

The challenge Yuna faces is that she’s handicapped by the party she’s working with. There are some other adventurers who are also attempting to defeat the Mithril golem. Though, they don’t realize that’s what they’re doing, at first. They think they’re just getting rid of all the golems in a cave and don’t know why they keep respawning.

It’s only once Yuna goes back into the cave on her own that she’s able to fight through all the golems. And as a reward for her efforts, she gets a chunk of Mithril. She then has the Mithril turned into knives for herself and Fina.

Solo Adventurer Yuna

Instead of going over the third arc of the season, let’s stay on the topic of adventurer parties. The adventurer party Yuna teams up with temporarily has four members.

There’s Jaden, Mel, Senia, and Touya. Jaden is a swordsman, Mel is a mage, Senia is an assassin or thief, and I forget what Touya is. Based on their party’s balanced composition, I want to say Touya is an archer. But, he could be another swordsman.

Anyway, they’re your typical fantasy series party. And that’s exactly what I like about them. I think having a varied party makes quests more fun.

This is something Yuna has been missing so far. Whenever she takes quests or runs into trouble, she’s on her own. She’s not working with anyone else. And, she’s so strong that she doesn’t need anyone else. There’s nothing she’s going to run into that’s going to be a problem.

Kuma Bear has plenty of supporting characters. And there are quite a few major supporting characters, like Fina and Ellalaura. So, sure, we get a lot of content where Yuna interacts with them. But, that’s not the same kind of interaction as if she had party members.

Think of a series like KonoSuba. I get that’s far more of a comedy than Kuma Bear is. But, what makes KonoSuba a great series? It’s the dynamic between the main cast. That’s precisely what’s missing here.

As things currently stand, Yuna doesn’t have any close peers. Everyone she interacts with tends to be either older than her or younger than her. And they tend to either be associated with nobility, or a random restauranteur. Yuna doesn’t have other adventurers her age with whom she shares common experiences.

Conclusion

Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear Punch! gets a 6/10. That’s one point higher than I gave the first season of the series. And, I do feel like this season was an improvement, overall. However, it’s missing the character dynamics that a lot of other isekai anime out there have.

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