Kokopelli gets fifteen kids to sign a contract to pilot a giant robot, then the show spends twenty-four episodes systematically destroying each of them in ways no mecha series should be allowed to. The battles themselves are almost boring, which is exactly the point, they're just the mechanism that forces ordinary people into positions where dying means nothing compared to living with what comes after. You watch a shy girl become someone else entirely, a delinquent find the only thing worth protecting, a coward discover he was never the coward he thought he was. The show is built around this: whoever pilots the robot next is already dead, and the show has all the time it needs to prove why that matters.

Fifteen kids on summer vacation stumble into a hidden grotto and meet Kokopelli, a mysterious programmer who's created something he calls a game. He wants them to take turns piloting a giant robot defending Earth against alien invaders. All but one of the children sign his contract. They wake up on the beach convinced it was all a dream. Except the robot soon appears for real, and the children find themselves inside its cockpit as it battles a similar machine. What looked like harmless play turns horrifying, both for how real it is and because the first death among them comes right after their first win. Worse, none of them knows how to quit. Bokurano is a psychological mecha drama that turns a seemingly exciting premise into something far darker.