Shangri-La Frontier: Kusoge Hunter, Kamige ni Idoman to su

Honestly I was hoping that this will finally be the "Go inside the game" genre that's going to be unique and not generic. This is an anime that wanted to pay a homage to great games, or as they called it Kamige, but they failed miserably at it, the author feels like a normie who doesn't even understand any gaming nor dev knowledge.

First of all, this is definitely inspired from Elden Ring, and the Author somehow think that a game better than Elden Ring, The "Kamige", is when it's an MMORPG and there will be a unique quests hidden only for "lucky" players. How ... in the fuck would it be fair for other players? Why would there be content that only "lucky" players have? it's so stupid. Of course the MC is the lucky player and him having an advantage out of everyone else defeats the purpose of him being a "good player". It's so stupid from the start where he get the item for leveling up.

Now this item is beyond beyond stupidly broken, you will gain double and a half the stats when leveling up but your xp gain when wearing that item is halved. Again who in the world wouldn't want that? so if the MC is level 100 he's like level 250 stat wise. It's so bullshit. The MC is known for his gaming skill, why the fuck would he not play in the same level field? even better put him at an actual disadvantage but still power through because he's that good at gaming. But of course, the moral of every generic anime story is, you will not succeed unless you got "lucky", "chosen", "trained by the best", "prophesized", etc.

Disappointing, good animation but the plot is ultra generic. Was hoping to see how MC good at video games, but we are being shown how MC is the lucky player to get the "unique event" to make him the most OP because of stats. MF THERE ARE ESPORTS WHERE ALL THE PLAYER ARE ON THE SAME LEVELING FIELD, THE FUCK IS THIS ANIME TROPE BRUH, IM SO GODDAMN TIRED.

I'm confused: Is this meant to be a parody? Because I really can't tell. It certainly has all of the hallmarks of one, what with the ridiculous levels of pandering (male power fantasy, escapism etc.) and goofy character-designs.

Another reviewer claimed that it's better than Sword Art Online, which is a fair comparison, but I have to disagree on the conclusion; in the very least SAO had some tension, while in Shangri-La the protagonist is constantly yelling and overreacting to everything happening, but... y'know... no one can actually die in this game! That's right, there is no risk of bodily harm, which makes you wonder ... what the point of any of this is. It's not like SAO, where the VR-headsets have a microwave emitter installed for the purpose of keeping the players in the game, here it's just a videogame.

Not to mention the horribly boring romance which feels like it was tacked on in the very last minute to make the protagonist more enviable, because if they hadn't included that element to the story he would be like any other loser who does nothing but play videogames all day. He barely even interacts with the female lead for the first 9 episodes. I'm not exaggerating when I say that they've had like 5-7 minutes of screentime together.

The character-writing is also superboring. No one has any actual personality or struggles that it's worth connecting with: The main character, who is allotted the vast majority of the screentime, is essentially a blank slate; we don't know anything about his family, friends, any other hobbies or things that 'capture his imagination' - nothing. All of his dialogue amounts to, "If this swamp monster has a half-second delay on his upward slash, then I can get one hit in before having to dodge." In the very least, in the show it's a little more in-depth than what I just portrayed, so that I can get a little engaged in the... videogame he's playing that he can't die in, and where all the social interaction he gets is with an npc bunny. Riveting stuff.

Sometimes, he also rambles on for way too long about the game's mechanics. There's this one part in episode 8 where he spends 2 whole minutes describing a series of enemies he's defeating in arena-style combat, which I realize sounds pretty exciting, but it isn't because it's depicted with still images - sort of like a powerpoint presentation. It would have been fine if they had instead quickly regurgitated the names of the enemies whilst the protagonist is posing in the foreground, and the enemies bodies are dissipating in the background or something like that, but the way they chose to do it is incredibly obnoxious. Even the show itself points out how goddamn tedious this whole rigmarole is. So why do it then?

And whenever 'conversation' happens, it almost always commits the most deadly sin of all bad media, which is to have the characters talk at each other, instead of with each other. This is due to the fact that none of the conversations have been written with the intention of strengthening the characters' bonds, they instead exist to exposit information to the audience. For instance, in the first episode when the main character picks up the MMORPG that the series is named after in a videogame store he frequents, he hits up a 'conversation' with a woman who works the cash register. We don't really get any understanding of their relationship with each other, other than the surface-level reading that he's a regular customer who always buys trashy games. Most of the 'conversation' revolves around, again, the protagonist rambling - this time about a shit game he played. The whole interaction is so incredibly stilted; she just stands there, willingly listening to him complaining about a bad game he bought - that he knew was gonna be bad (because he only buys bad games) - which is presumably a 'conversation' they've had tens if not hundreds of times in the past. I can't tell if she's supposed to be annoyed or not at him, or if she's enjoying it, but she basically only responds shortly to his complaints, before recommending that he plays Shangri-La.

Why does she do that? Because the girl who's inexplicably crushing on him plays the game, something the cash-register lady of course doesn't disclose to him, instead giving some bullshit explanation about how playing a 'godly' (actual expression used all the time in the show, yes it's cringe) game will help cleanse his palate of the shitty games he's always playing, to which he agrees. The main character doesn't even know who the girl crushing on him is by the way. I'm not joking. It's so fucking stupid and annoying I can't believe I wasted 3 hours of my life watching this garbage. I'm obviously only writing this review to ramble myself, which I think I've reserved the right to do after having listened to the protagonist's rambling dialogue for a whole 9 episodes.

I could also talk about how many horrible design decisions there are in this supposedly 'godly' game that has over 30 million active players, but that would be even more time of my day that I'm throwing away, so let's not do that.

So should you watch Shangri-La Frontier: Kusoge Hunter, Kamige ni Idoman to su? No. If you're thirsting for some escapism, just play an actual videogame. Then, you might even feel some adversity, as opposed to what you will get from watching this frankly brainless anime.

Dont judge by its rating.how can people enjoy this throughout 25 episodes and still dint get bored.Its just an anime about a guy playing vr games and his daily life(sometimes).
The real life of the mc is very realistic and relatable for me but not the gamer part
The animation is topnotch and until episode 5 it will keep you engaged. But after that anime gets hella boring

Boring means not saying hypothetically ,just straight up boring.its so boring that you can skip straight up from ep10 to ep15 and still can understand whats happening.Its just they are playing games and the enemies have changed nothing much. ...

characters appear out of nohere..The mc is always shouting.its supposed to be a funny anime but Nothing comedy or funny i can remember moments.Emotionless characters etc. If the characters die you know they will be back as its just a game.

The only thing i was interested in the girl who have a crush on mc but cant tell him.. Even she try its always that romvom shit where someone stops them or the mc or the girl got a phonecall or email and then say "ahh nothing" Ir " Ahh sorry i gotta go" Shit.

I was excited how their relationship will develop but her screentime is only half of the anime.

If you have watched the whole anime without skipping bruh you are a god of persistent or you have a bad taste

Just wow. It's been a looooooooooooong time since I've wanted to drop a show less than halfway through the first episode. I made myself watch a couple more just to make sure but nope, there isn't any redeeming qualities unless watching good animation is the most important thing to you.

It continuously feels like the writer learned about games from a faraway land where no one makes or plays them. He was just out walking in the forest behind his house and happened to find a usb stick poking out of the mud, and in it was a collection of game reviews by Taylor Swift written ... in hieroglyphics. Honestly, I feel like even if I was 12 years old and this was the first anime I ever watched, I would still hate it just as much. I mean, I rated Boruto 1/10 and I like it more than this show.

I wish this could fall into the "so bad it's good" category, but I couldn't even laugh at how absurd it is. Watch literally anything else instead.

A lackluster anime that we’ve all seen before. Unfortunately, this one failed to set itself apart from the pack with thin characters, awkward comedic attempts, and a story that was boring.

The hook here is that the mc, an ultimate gamer, only plays games that are buggy messes. An interesting twist, which could have lead to fun and imaginative bugs, scripting errors, and zany hijinks, instead gets tossed aside in the first episode for a stereotypical power fantasy.

It’s possible this gets good in the latter half, but the first 3 episodes were so boring that it didn’t seem worth it to find out.

It's got an interesting premise, and even though it was using it to tell a pretty conventional fantasy isekai power fantasy story, it had enough style that I didn't mind. But after the first couple episodes, the pacing slows *way* down, more and more time gets spent on digressions and flashbacks, the premise comes into play less and less.

By episode six, watching honestly has started to feel like a chore. Every episode after 2 or 3 just left me thinking "well, that was ok I guess, maybe the next one is where stuff starts to happen?" Episode 6 just spent the entire runtime to not-finish ... a fight that started in episode 5. This fight is going to stretch across three episodes and isn't nearly engaging enough to warrant it. I was literally skipping forward repeatedly to see when they stop ineffectually swinging at each other. Isn't this supposed to be a show about a guy finding clever and creative solutions, system exploits that other people wouldn't think of?

Bottom line, while the show had potential it uses its premise in a conventional way that's competent at first but eventually falls victim to terminally slow pacing and fight setups that really don't use the premise at all. By the midpoint of the first season, where I'm writing this, I've basically lost all interest in the show. Seems like the next episode might actually be interesting again, but that's exactly what I said about the last three episodes, and at this point it's really starting to wear out its welcome. You could delete most of the runtime of this show and not only would the output be fine, it would be improved.

EDIT: Welp, I'm done. The setup for interesting character interactions is immediately thrown out the window in the seventh episode to focus on jack shit happening. Animation and fight choreography wildly inconsistent, ranges from 'pretty good I guess' to 'literally an extended slideshow.' Writing still ok at best, pacing still in the gutter.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me four times in a row and I guess I'll stop watching your show

This is the only anime where I got so bored during the supposed 'action scenes' that I literally counted the amount of seconds that nothing happened. Meanwhile we are forced to listen to pointless exposition about the meaningless event that is unfolding or about to unfold, ensuring that nothing will be left to feel excited about.

These 'action scenes' consist of characters inexplicably travelling a seemingly endless distance and floating in the sky (however long is necessary for the pointless exposition to conclude). Like you are having a nightmare where your punches don't connect, or you try to run but can't seem to gain any ... speed. The physical gap between protagonist and antagonist is not measured in meters, but minutes of monologue.

So if the action scenes are boring, what do we have left? A premise that hardly progresses while you wait out the nothing-burgers. I skipped through them, and there is nothing consequential. It's almost as though this was written by psychology experts, who are merely introducing new elements to ensure that people will keep watching, where every plot point or character is just watch-bait. Like a question that they are never planning to answer. Like a story beat that never drops, it's just perpetually almost delivering.

Despite all the exposition about what is happening, which should at least be setting rules about what characters can or can not do, the events will subvert/contradict anything whenever convenient, meaning that you just sat through all that exposition for nothing. This can actually be hilarious when done intentionally for comedic effect, but this show is serious.

Such and such is 'this arbitrary amount of powerful' and so and so is 'this other arbitrary amount of powerful', bla bla bla and on and on and on. It's all meaningless filler when none of the events that unfold (like baked molasses) adhere to any of it.

I find this to be a problem with most anime in general, but I can usually still grit my teeth through the idiocy and find something else to appreciate.

This is what I imagine AI generated content will be like. Whoever is entertained by this show is the absolute dream consumer group, and I salute the grift of catering to them, but this is my benchmark for what I'm just not willing to sit through.

They say that you can tell how crappy an anime is going to be just by the first 15 minutes of it alone. I don't believe that in general but oh boy, did this anime test my patience. There's a multitude of problems with this series that are evident within the first episode. By extension, you get a good idea of exactly how the writer handles things that bleeds into the writing for the rest of the franchise. Let me just list the things I noticed within the first 15 minutes and you can be the judge. They aren't small things. They're massive problems within ... the structure of the plot and affect the rest of the anime.

For some reason, there's a narrator. That itself isn't a problem but this narrator in particular is shoehorned in order to explain every little thing to you. That is NOT good. Having that kind of tool at the anime's disposal ruins any sense of mystery of the story or world. Having to explain why protag-kun does things, such as designing his avatar to be a bird-man, also takes away any nuance or charm his character might have had. Yes he designed his avatar to be a bird. They could've just left that part as is or made it a weird quirk of the protagonist but instead the show feels the need to explain how he did it for efficiency or how he beat the final boss of the previous game he played in a wrestling mask because it was a "quest requirement." Because hey, we don’t want the main character to be TOO quirky, right? We have to make him relatable for all the self-inserts watching this series. It just makes his character boring and generic, which is not helped by his bland protag-kun design. Narrator explaining why the protagonist spawned in a forest instead of the same spot everyone else spawned within 60 seconds of it happening gets rid of any intrigue or lingering questions we might've had about the lore / world building too.

This reminds me of a review I watched on the One Piece live action. One good thing the One Piece LA does that is brought up in those reviews is how the producers understand that weird shit doesn’t have to be explained. They’re allowed to just be. We can connect the dots ourselves. That gives way for freedom of interpretation, encourages audience engagement, and builds anticipation for what happens next. SHOW, don't tell. And this anime doesn't get that. We always have to be TOLD that a game in this anime is good or that it’s bad. We’re rarely actually shown any of this.

Here's another problem that I noticed right away. This anime's premise is that the main character plays crappy games. That automatically gave it a very interesting threshold to handle because anytime something dumb or boring happens in the plot or its characters, you could chalk it up to being commentary or self-aware. But within 10 minutes of the anime starting, he transports himself into a "god-tier" game surrounded by big busty women which essentially just turns this into any other generic and mediocre isekai anime with an overpowered protagonist. Now, there’s nothing wrong with writing a generic fantasy as long as the series does it well. But why go through the whole fantastical hook of being different just to bait us? It speaks of a writer who has no confidence in their story so feels the need to get viewers interested by tricking them into thinking this show is something that it’s not. Either that or it implies an unearned level of narcissism before the anime has even done anything. Pointing at all the games around it and laughing at how bad they are—but not *this* game, right? This game (anime) is god-tier. You have to convince the audience that your anime is god-tier, not tell them in the first episode before anything even happens. Neither message is great to portray to your audience to be quite honest so pick your poison.

I can't emphasize enough the irony of the first episode making fun of how badly written the heroine in the game he played was while simultaneously showing off how it had no idea how to write its own female characters either. The first female character we meet appears in three scenes and all three scenes only depicted her stalking the main character while we learn absolutely zero about who she is aside from "liking MC-kun." Don’t get me wrong. It’s perfectly fine to have a crush, but her scenes involving said crush were so overplayed and completely took over even a single ounce of personality she might have had that it was almost difficult to watch. Worse of all, it takes itself completely seriously as something cute and not something we're expected to roll our eyes or laugh at considering what kind of audience this show is trying to attract. This demonstrates the show having a surprising lack of self awareness despite what the premise of it is. It feels like the one who decided on what this series was going to be about and made the first 60 seconds or so of it and the one who actually wrote the rest of it were two entirely different people.

On that note, the first game he played having a requirement to beat the final boss in spandex and wearing a wrestling mask sounds like it would’ve been a way better game (at least entertainment-wise) than the one he ended up playing for this show. But instead we’re stuck with a boring generic protagonist who in fact does not troll and make the game around him fun by wearing a wrestling mask and instead was put in a game that made him do that, unironically making the “shitty” game more entertaining than the “god tier” game that he ended up playing. An implication that the show unnecessarily introduced within the first episode because of its need to explain everything. See what I mean about this show having no self-awareness? Whoever wrote this and thought that players nowadays would enjoy a good game more than a good game where you can also beat up its heroine in the last 3 minutes or troll by having you fight bosses naked have no idea what player bases are actually like. The videos with millions of views depicting the limitless ways you can kill off Astarion and trigger his extremely specific hilarious dialogue about the conditions of his death in Baldur’s Gate 3 are proof enough of this.

Too many anime nowadays have a fantastical premise or opening paragraph just to flub it all up within the first episode or two. Some people need to learn that following through with a premise is just as important if not more than coming up with it in the first place. Shangri-La Frontier is a great example of this as after the first episode, it just devolves into a generic wish fulfillment fantasy anime with a bunch of waifus. If that’s your thing then go for it. Watch this anime. But I can’t continue in good faith that it will be good after detecting so many problems in the writing already. There’s no sign of the charm it initially had at all.

Oh well. At least the animation is pretty good.

Show, don't tell. It's one of the very basics of storytelling, especially when you're talking about series/movies etc...
And this show, sadly, like to tell A LOT.

Instead of showing a girl been anxious through her body alone, you have her doing a cringe monologue in the middle of a crowded corridor.
If a character dare to have fun, he HAS to explicitely shout it, several times per episodes, or we would not guess it at all. It even drag down the pace of fights.
It turns the two main characters in an obnoxious version of themselves. Worse, there's even a narrator despite there be no need for one ... at all.
That's weird, because C2C is a veteran studio and i liked some of their recent productions. I'm guessing it's a problem already there in the source material but then why keep it in an anime?

Another grip i have with the story is the power scaling.
I can understand a newbie dealing on its own with the ennemies in the starting area, they're always full of weakenesses to exploit. It's okay...but that same newbie somehow lasting like, ten minutes against an overpowered raid boss nobody defeated before? He even have the time to stay there, motionless, spewing cringe bullshit for several sentences. Did the boss went to brew some mint tea in the meantime?
Even worse, he's getting xp when losing fights? what? Since when any games reward you for dying?
And then of course he has to have an owerpowered item for no reason...

Geez, this show is a mess.

I hope one day there's a study done on this anime. What's this phenomenon called? It's like when you talk to chat gpt and you purposely give it wrong information and it can't disagree with you. That's basically how people treat this anime, everyone says it's good and everyone accepts it as fact? This anime starts off okay, with good animation and a OP that seems straight out of a fanfic. But after the first few episodes did everyone just dream that the rest of the a one was good? Because I can't be convinced anyone could actually keep their eyes open for over half ... of this boring ass show with no stakes whatsoever. Characters are boring. Plot is non-existent. Pacing is SLOW. SO SO SLOW. But everyone says this show is good? Decent animation = good show? At least JJK season 2 had better pacing so I get why people enjoy that, but this? What's going on. I feel crazy. This anime should not be an 8 on MAL.

Whoever funded the fanfic OP has gotta be funding the bots promoting this shit.

Shangri-La Frontier feels like a very confused anime. The concept can be made interesting, but the series fails to achieve that. The story is very shallow, there's no aim to the actions taken by the protagonist or by the other characters in the game. There’s no common goal that everyone is going towards and there are no consequences for their actions. This makes the series very shallow and not enjoyable, in my opinion.

Main Story: There are many instances in the anime which have additional plot points, however it never seems to follow up on them - you're constantly thinking "so what?". The game mechanics are ... also poorly explained and seem like a side-thought, without being properly incorporated into the anime. It’s hard to review the story, when the anime feels like it just doesn’t have one. The episodes are very chaotic and generally they do not follow up from each other. E.g. There’s a training arc, but there is afterwards no consequence to the series based on the training arc.

Characters: The MC is not likeable - very often I found myself thinking "if he's such a good gamer, why is he not doing X". The other characters are basically non-existent. There are very few interactions with them, some just showing up for a few minutes. None of the characters develop over time or face any struggle. They just exist in the world.

Enjoyment: I did not enjoy this series. There was nothing in it that kept me interested in what will happen next nor anything I could root for. The story, world and characters were all shallow.

While the animation is great, the story leaves much to be desired.

The protagonist lacks a motivation for embarking on their journey (they more or less randomly pick up the game). As the story unfolds, goals are established, but they fail to resonate strongly with either the viewer or the hero. Moreover, there is never any real sacrifice or conflict. The hero never reaches a point of no return, maintaining the option to go back to their ordinary life at any moment. Consequently, the decisions they face hold little weight in shaping their character's arc. These story elements do seem necessary in a show positioned such ... as this one (action adventure with the focus on the journey).

I tried to make it through this show, but it's so bad. The first episode was honestly the worst first episode of anything I've seen in years.

There's just nothing new or interesting about this show, when there's plenty of other gaming/isekai anime to enjoy. The one pro of this show is that you can comfortably turn your brain off and watch it while doing other things. It's pretty much impossible to miss anything because, not only is there not much going on, either the main character or the narrator will repeat any semi-important plot point over and over instead of showing us through worldbuilding.

I'm halfway ... through ep 3 and I had to bail when the MC gets a "penalty" that's supposed to be severe. You know what the penalty is (minor spoiler warning)? He can't wear equipment. Usually, this would be extremely detrimental in a video game but the MC didn't wear equipment anyway. He literally started the game by selling all his clothes and walking around in only shorts and a mask. And his logic for this is so he can maximize the money he can spend on weapons but he actually skips the starting town and doesn't buy any weapons...........so then why?

This show is just too boring and dumb for me to continue. I actually like it less than when I started this review.

Rating: 4/10

Do know why have positive reviews to be honest, its a pretty average and mediocre anime with anime above average animation, there is no real danger like solo leveling, there is no drama not complicated stuff, nor romance, not funny stuff it just a very ok anime virtual reality game with a vey forgettable plot and characters, anime fans need to be more demanding and ask for better stuff, this is not good, and they are giving good reviews only because of the pressure other otakus are putting in webs like mu animelist, and that's just sad af to be honest, that's not good and ... we need to do better than that ok.

Probably the anime wih most confunsing score on MAL that i've ever seen, wich is the reason i'm writing this.
I have no idea how this got 8.10 (current score).
I'ts an anime with okay-pretty good animation and some nice character designs here and there and that's where the positives ends.
The main character "Sunraku" is someone that cannot help but scream at every chance he gets.
Asta at the beginning of black clover got a lot of hate for hos constant screamimg in the first 20 episodes or so, but trust me when i say that Sunraku is a lot worse.
He scream when he is happy, sad, excited, ... angry, fighting, calling someone, breathing, existing...
The story tries to put an original touch on it being a game with unique scenarios and a character that loves bad games but in the end it's the same generic game isekai where the main character is special for some really stupid reason combined with dumb luck.
The only real twist is instead of being a boring Kirito look-a-like, Sunraku is a really annoying guy with a bird head.
I suffered trough the 25 episodes and trsut me, IT IS NOT WORTH THE WATCH.

I gave this anime a fair chance and it dissapointed me immensely.

The main character is bland as fuck, his introduction may have been funny but it becomes very obvious that he is just another run of the mill generic genki boy.

He's not stupid on purpose, but he makes incredibly dumb mistakes in the game that make him seem like a complete amateur WHICH MAKES NO FUCKING SENSE since he's introduced to be a extreme veteran who can beat a CBT level difficulty game in record time. I have to admit that my dislike for the MC also has much to do with bias, as ... I am a gaymer myself. Not a epic one but I do enjoy the casual gayming expewience.

So seeing him make these goddamn baby ass mistakes pisses me off to no end.

This happens often with gaming/e-sports themed fiction I feel, despite the story often being about a god gamer it seems written by some complete novice who hasn't played a game since their teenage years. It's weird since you'll check out their twitter or pixiv afterwards and they very clearly ARE knowledged about modern gaming and MMOs???

Besides that we haven't gotten introduced to any gripping side cast, well, we have introduced quite a bunch of side characters but none of them seem interesting or had any screen time as we focus on useless battle scenes that look nice from an animation stand point but have basic bitch choreography and absolutely NO creative solutions, just basic hack and slash while you're forced to listen as Sunraku goes on and on about how good the game is.

Yeah it sucks, the visuals are good but that's it...Ironic.

"I'm a bird, Morty"
6/10
Alternative title: I max out Attack and Luck, and Truck-kun never got me, but VRMMO did. Am I actually the Strongest Lvl1 with solo-levelling OP cheat "debuff" skill in Another World?

Are the Visuals great? Yes.
Is it better than Sword Art Online? Yes.
Is Shangri-La just another generic non-tensei isekai without the visuals, and without SAO being the godforsaken benchmark? Also, Yes.

Takt Op Destiny, Lycoris Recoil of this season. Eyecandy hiding a boring AI generated story. One Piece levels of pace with barelarely 14mins of anime every episode, rest are recaps, omakes and mascot doll cringe. A short/ONA masquerading as a fullfledged TV anime
/EndReview.rtf
...
If you're new to anime, if this is your entry to this media after your friends recommended aN1mAyy, prefer visuals(=/=sakuga), or you have to participate in [Current Year] isekai fad to be accepted by anime society, then sure I recommend this over the rest.

In fact ShangriLa has some good pros:
1) No harem, No Ecchi(yet), No lolita, No Slavery or other morally ambiguous stuff
2) Visuals
3) Swapping to real life once in a while. Less escapism
4) MC is not some rejected by society, or crippled by overwork trope
5) Video Game Isekai and as such mensuration of xp, skills, equipment actually make sense vs Tensei Isekais

As for cons, the usual issues with generic medieval fantasy/isekais from japan. Just another OP MC with cheat level beginning aiming to be the top LoL player in some local ass server, but this time it's cringy Souls player in a WoW VRMMO, where he can endlessly respawn and succeed with enough grinding on meaningless fights. Zero Stakes. Usual MC in a tacky "I'm so special" half-naked+helmet outfit like no one has ever tried that in an online game. Copypasted mundane supporting characters with the usual archetypes and tropes. Supporting male character being a yesman and a nice_guy, while supporting female character being dumb about video game mechanics. No name AI beeg monstas as possible mid-season boss. The only thing partly new/rare is the FMC stalking her crush through the videogame depending on whether you consider Akane from Lvl[ArbitraryNumber] Yamada-kun and Suguha from SAO to be stalkers. It's Japan so karens stalking men is wish-fulfillment end of the day.

FMC is in one of those top guilds in video game because of course she is. She is totally not cuckoo to search for MC in the beginner pool of a massively played online game. In my 7k matches in a once popular game called DotA all match stats show I have met the same person twice only once. Now consider that for a currently popular game with majority players being beginners as the game is on a growth trajectory. This is the difference between random MMO inspired anime and .Hack franchise which was made by a game studio. That's not to say MC's path is entirely unrealistic. Top irl professional players like Grubby, s4, jerax have stomped other games purely due to skills carrying over from their signature games. But not failing even once to normal goblins is unrealistic. As for luck, I too played a Fire Emblem character Nephenee who's skill set enabled her to survive fatal blows with 1Hp and land a critical hit back which in turn she could lifesteal off of. Might as well could have added lifesteal too for MC and complete the OP trifecta.

There's barely ANY strategy shown. MC just stomps monsters while at 3Vitality and max Luck. The most unrealistic aspect for a game. Including the uNiQuE rare monster, he survives for more than a few seconds without knowing anything about it's skills and strategies it employs. Imagine stomp[ing an Elden Ring boss on the first try without knowing anything about it prior. Worse he gets the equivalent of magic resistance end of the arc, like that is TOTALLY NOT defense.

It's particularly funny when MC at ep3 screams at beeg "unique" AI monsta something like "I'll get you BigMonsta! I'll get you for sure next time!! I'll get back my treefiddy with treefiddy Interest!". Paraphrasing. Him saying that to a programmed monster should give you an idea how the rest of the season is going to be. I really have the urge to give a "Not Recommended" tag as I note all this but this is 2023 and it's about time for a new generation of zoomers to like a bland .hack clone like SAO was 10years ago and I know how rabid fans would get with sending deth threats and what not. So Mixed Feelings it is. Or rewatch and decide better. Imagine I wasted my lifespan watching a rando unlicensed game story and I can't even be bothered to remember MC's name. It reeks of the gazillion gachatrash available on app-stores.

The annoying cardcaptors keroberos type doll contributing nothing but plot armor doesn't help either. Worst of all is each episode is around 15mins of runtime and the gaps filled with after-credits moe gags. Production only puts in effort for 15mins, rest are all OP/ED, pointless gacha fillers and recaps.

Obligatory Disclaimer for potential blind people, this is a preliminary review and MAL allows for one post-watching three episodes so it's perfectly valid review. I can turn out to be entirely wrong later on like I was with my Eminence in Shadow review. So don't come to my profile after consuming laxatives for the brain unless there's anything useful to say. Just put confusing emoji and move on.