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I wasn’t really interested in this series at first because in my experience anime about videogames tend to be crap, but this one got quite the positive reception so I checked it out, out of curiosity, and surprisingly I found it to be fun and I enjoyed it.
Unlike other videogame anime this one doesn’t have endless exposition about how videogames work, partly because the protagonist doesn’t care about the lore of the game he plays, and partly because the director realized he could add all the information needed as quick short descriptions in or outside the HUD of the videogame for those who don’t play and don’t know the terminology of MMORPGs.
Since a big part of the second part it’s about a specific boss raid, it means that part of the buildup to that it’s showing the lore behind that boss, or train in order to defeat him, there is more exposition than in the first half unfortunately.
Same thing happens with the pacing, although there is no long term objective, thus it’s weird to say that the series was moving well in the first half, it was definitely faster and with more energy than the second half. But still, it makes sense when you consider that part of the second cour is the fight against a raid boss that can literally kill the characters in one hit, so they have to get around that somehow.
The show also lacks all the stuff that people that want a videogame anime don’t want to see in them, no slow moody bonding between sad people like in .hack//sign, no tons of plot points that overstuff and ruin the series like Good Night World, no pretentious and cringy sense of empowerment for playing fucking videogames like in Accel World, and no overpowered protagonists with an endless harem for a sense of a self-insert male power fantasy like, well…a lot of titles with a similar premise actually. And it’s also not an isekai or a semi isekai, thus it doesn’t feel like you are following a setting that should be natural and instead feels artificial. You know this is a videogame being played by real people, so you can adjust to the mechanics and simple lore and world building much easier.
Did I say world building? Yeah, there is some explanation behind the lore of some npcs, enemies and weapons, but because the characters don’t care much about it and don’t properly explore it, it feels short, simple and disjointed from everything else.
The show focuses on people having fun playing videogames, simple as that, and it looks like the author pays enough attention to actual mechanics and builds, since the protagonists goes full aggro focused on damage and agility with twin blades and masters parries, like the dude that solos her in Elden Ring that became a meme. I mean he even goes half naked with a short and something on his head and nothing else, like that player. Actually the whole thing feels like if From Software made a VRMMORPG, and now I kinda want to see that happening, but with their usual tone and aesthetics.
The power and level scaling feels mostly appropriate as well, since even though the main character is particularly good at videogames thanks to all his previous experience playing lots of them across different genres and implementing that knowledge and mechanics into the titular one, he still gets his ass killed easily by a secret boss that he found randomly, as it sometimes happens in videogames of this kind.
He also unlocks secret scenarios for the first time, and it’s cool to see how everyone else reacts to that in a way that feels plausible.
Oh, and I also have to mention how no one takes the game nowhere near as seriously as I have seen in other anime, so I never cringed with this title as I did with all of those other anime I mentioned earlier.
It’s not like everything about it it’s believable of course, such as the placing of the bosses and the amount of players that the game can support at the same time, among others that have been called out, but for the most part I can buy the way things in this series are presented and play out.
On top of that the series is pretty well animated, especially in its initial episodes. The character designs are typical both in and outside the videogame, but the artwork is often very good, the backgrounds are pretty great and so are the motions and special effects. The directing is quite good in portraying the parries and following every element and abilities or spells used during the fights, and even implementing the HUD and effects such as the parry confirms into them. Now that I mention that, perhaps there are some moments that deserve a seizure warning. There is some CGI but for now it’s well rendered and mixed with the rest of the visuals, even though it’ll inevitably look worse in some years. In the second half, some episodes looked and were overall worse than others, but overall it was a very well animated show.
As for the audio, the sound effects are loud, impactful and just very good as a whole, the voice acting is nothing special but properly done, and it’s funny how sometimes the seiyuus imitate the characters of others during some short lines. The soundtrack is composed mostly of electronic themes and although I’m not into that genre much, it fits the action scenes well, I otherwise prefer the more fantasy themes and the insert songs sung by the seiyuus. The openings are typical j-rock stuff and the endings are typical j-pop stuff, I liked some of them but they don’t deserve any special mention.
The thing about this show that prevents me from giving it anything more than an average score is exactly the same thing that can make it enjoyable for its target audience, there is no long term objective so what are you watching this show for? There are no antagonists besides some player killers that get disposed of quite easily and fast, there are no stakes whatsoever besides some in-game death penalty that hardly matters to these hardcore gamers anyways, and there is of course no ending.
And the characters are completely shallow, they barely have some presence and personality, and are otherwise given no immersion or characterization whatsoever beyond their play-style or short scenes of their everyday life, plus the girl that’s in love with the main character for superficial reasons acts like a creepy stalker half the time, even if it’s played as comedy.
The anime also has a comical mini segment after the ending and a similar issue that Megumi no Daigo has, the recaps at the beginning of every episode that takes away runtime from it and makes the pacing feel slower than it actually is. It’s not as bad as it is in that other series, but it’s still a problem, even more so because this series even had special recaps, outside the episode count, like that other show, were any of them even necessary? The plots in both series are extremely simple to begin with.
So those are my two cents about the show, well made in aesthetics and accessibility for its target audience or anyone else that just want to kill some time with something easy to watch, but also lacking in any actual content, substance or characterization to care for in it, which is what ultimately makes it a title that you watch casually and most likely forget about once it’s over.
March 30th 2025 update
Well the second season is here and since the specifics were already covered on the first one, this one will be shorter and more straightforward, kinda like the show itself. People keep playing videogames in a mostly fun looking way so there are still reasons to be pleased with this continuation, but it’s definitely worse than its predecessor due to the following reasons:
-The pacing is slower. The first season already had a slower pacing on its second half, and it became worse in here. Now the main characters have interacted and formed an alliance with other players that care about the lore and unique scenarios and epic bosses of the game and stuff, which is good, but now there is a lot more sitting down and talking and exposition going on.
-Speaking of exposition, it had become worse in this season compared to the one before it. Since the protagonist has leveled up and unlocked new weapons and abilities, there’s a lot more inner monologues about that, and even on screen there are a lot more explanations about in-game mechanics. And since the show moved on to the fights against the epic bosses that affect the whole in-game world, there is a lot more strategic discussion between the characters. Infamously, there is an episode where half of it or more was about a party planning what to do against an epic boss while having it occupied with a decoy.
-The protagonist is now more broken. He has access to an OP inventory full of powerful items that even serves as a room to teleport to, so he uses it in battle as an escape route to rest and heal a little, and to come back from, more geared up. Speaking of gear he also gets more powerful weapons as he levels up and works with NPCs, so he doesn’t struggle nor is as creative against small enemies as he used to be. Yes, it is a natural course in videogames in general so it makes sense for the writing to be that way, but it doesn’t really prevent it from being a slightly worse watching experience. Even when it seemed that he was disadvantaged at some point, he works his way around it and comes off as more OP and it never feels like he struggles much.
-There is little plot progression. Despite seemingly moving forward due to showing more characters, enemies and places within the in-game setting, the characters don’t really progress much in what they want to do in the game. The protagonist even gets a second chance against that one epic boss from the first season, for the MMORPG and the show to pull out a troll.
-There is focus on other type of content in it and not in the best ways. The series now bothers to explore the backstories of other characters and how they began to play videogames and roleplay and why they choose their playstyles in specific. Character fleshing is good but when an action show does it in the middle of a fight interrupting the flow of the series, it is an issue. And although I now don’t find Rei to be a creepy stalker, I still feel like her attraction to the protagonist is rather silly and superficial and I wish there was less focus on it.
-Related to that, the anime is now slightly more serious. Although still primarily a comedy action adventure show, since now characters even have entire episodes dedicated to introspect about why and how they play videogames and roleplay, they started to take, well, videogames, more seriously. It is nowhere near the embarrassing levels of other shows, which I already criticized on my review of the first season, but it was preferable as it was before.
-The series dedicates runtime to other videogames. I don’t really find this to be an issue, as it shows more of the characters outside the main game and playing more stuff and using other mechanics. I find that to be a nice change for a short while, and the anime even uses that to show how someone can get a burnout from a hobby, and it even ties the characters and events from those other games to the main one, so I don’t take it as wasted screentime. The directing even went to change the title of the anime at the beginning of some episodes and commercial brakes, which was a nice touch. Other people did find it to be an issue, so I think it was worth mentioning.
-Since I covered the occasional change of videogames, that leads me to talk about another actual problem which is the animation becoming worse. One of the other videogames is a so-so and far more generic looking mecha fighting game with far less customizations, so its aesthetics are more plain and boring looking, and even has weak CGI and less detailed artwork all around. But even within the main game, the artwork and character figures became weaker, the backgrounds and special effects, and even some epic monsters have now far more and more noticeable rather poor looking CGI. Even the motions and impact frames feel and look worse than they did before. At its best the series still looks great and sometimes even far better than it did in the first season, but its overall decline in visual quality is very prominent and can’t be denied. Near the end of the season, the characters play another fighting game with roleplay elements, which although it had uninteresting gameplay, it also featured interesting mind game like abilities and much more interesting and better visuals.
-Even the audio department is considerably worse. The music is still the same but less prominent and with a several case of lacking good insert songs, there are two new openings and two new endings, none of which I liked particularly but the first ending was nice to look because the characters were in suits and dresses. The voice acting is about the same, and the sound effects are far weaker than they were in the first season.
-The ending is still open of course, as the source material is ongoing, but it is also a double cliffhanger of sorts, so it is worse than the one from the first season. Luckily the continuation was already confirmed, but is that a good thing?
As a whole, the anime is still watchable to kill some time but it has undeniably become worse than it was and if they don’t stop its production for a little while to try and polish it to its previous level, it might affect the following entries to the point where they might become bad.
5/10
