Yuna’s an anti-social girl who’s completely shut herself off from friends and family, only spending time playing video games. In her case, World Fantasy Online has taken up much of her time. But in a new update, she gets the option to pick a chest, and that contains an embarrassing (but cute) yet overpowered bear onesie. Then after answering some personal questions, she thinks she’s heading to WFO…
But when she arrives, it feels a little different…she’s back to Level 1…and she also soon realizes she’s wearing the bear suit!
Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear in novel form is different in a few areas from the manga — well, aside from this being the original source of course. There’s more of Yuna’s internal monologues that couldn’t all be in the first volume (like her continuously noting how each new equipment, ability or spell she learns mysteriously tacks bear onto it) and the manga only got to Yuna being asked to take care of goblins — in this LN she learns there’s a lot of goblins — so the manga gets to the halfway point of the LN.
But in this first volume, there’s obviously more she does. After Yuna gets sent to this other world by answering questions in a manner that pleased the game god, she ends up learning what’s standard — like needing a guild card made or realizing what has to happen to animals — and what her bear suit can do. That is the only appeal of Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear aside from overpowered female protagonist in an isekai. It’s always good to get all types of isekai rather than just ones starring guys, but this one’s different because the gimmick is cute girl upsets the balance of this world in a bear suit because the game god said so. You have people all around that see her and are at first weirded out (especially villagers when they see her when she has to complete a quest) or in amazement (eventually she gets the nickname “Bloody Bear”).
And well, that’s fine. Fine may ultimately be a way to describe this series, but pleasant may be how I’d see it. This work is fairly inoffensive in its first volume and avoids common isekai tropes that are thrown in with little thought about what to do with it. The point of this light novel is seeing a bear girl wreck havoc with this world’s balance. By that I mean her defeating packs of wolves and a Goblin King with relative ease, unexpectedly giving more work to certain guilds, and randomly building houses out of nowhere.
Oh, did I forget learning how to summon bears?
But yes, despite all of that it is still your typical overpowered isekai fictional light novel, so if that’s not your cup of tea, this won’t change your mind. Otherwise, Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear quickly establishes itself to be fairly low-stakes but in a manner that’s enjoyable. We get to see Yuna figure out how broken she can be wearing the bear suit (and in conjunction, how ordinary she is when she’s not wearing it); what happens when she reverses said suit; chapters involving a character Yuna meets early in this LN, Fina; and also see that bears are indeed fierce, just as creator Kumanano intended. So if you’re in need of a relaxing fantasy read, this is very much it.