The Cambridge Geek

Recovery of an MMO Junkie Anime Review
Recovery of an MMO Junkie

Or: Just shut up and have sex already!, the anime.

I admit, we watch this one more for the Girl's benefit than mine. When asked why it has such appeal, her only response is "this is my crack!" Better than actual cocaine, I suppose.

So, we're watching the life of "elite NEET", and...no wait, hang on, I have to go google something. Because NEET is rather obviously short for "not in education, employment and training", and has an English origin. But it still turns up in subs for anime. So is it just a convenient translation for something like Hikkomori, or is it used in Japan in that form? Wikipedia isn't very definitive. Let me know in the comments.

Back to plot. Moriko is an elite NEET, who has worked herself to near exhaustion up to the age of thirty, so that she can retire (more than a bit) early, and do nothing but play MMORPGs. Seems like a sensible plan. There's no chance of her suffering from extreme loneliness, fixating on the first man (Yuta) to be nice to her (after smacking her in the face) and dropping straight into infatuation, right?

Recovery of an MMO Junkie-1
No. Not hiding lust-filled face behind coffee. Honest.

Naturally, this is the internet, so no-one is what they seem to be. Moriko plays as a chap, and she has unexpected feelings for the female character she partners up with, Lily. And I'm sure there's no way that Lily is secretly the same man she fancies the pants off in the real world. That would be a massive coincidence.

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Guess which is which.

So begins a "will they/won't they" that has more of an emotional grasp on me than I'm quite happy admitting.

Recovery of an MMO Junkie-2
If you figure it out, let me know.

It's very silly, but oddly gripping. The main characters are great fun, in that "oh god why!" way. They do ludicrous things because of "feelings, so many feelings!" and you find yourself shouting at the screen a bit too often. Honestly, how hard is it to just ask a complete stranger in a shop whether they're OrcStrangler47?

The ensemble are a bit variable, with the in-game characters being a bit of a low point. However, out in the real world, some of the background characters are amazing. Yuta's manager uses the cockblocker/wingman line as a skipping rope, such that you want to give him a friendly pat on the back that just happens to push him over a cliff.

The animation is serviceable, being neither poor or particularly creative. There's the occasional drop into chibi-lite for emotional moments, but the animation is very much the medium not the message here.

If it'd just been me, I'm not sure I'd have kept up with it, but the entertainment value of watching the Girl have soppy moments is sufficient to keep it on the screen.

Recommended.

Tagged: Anime Comedy Otaku Video gaming Romance Crunchyroll Subbed