A popular game Online Sword Art helped bring into the mainstream receiving a powerful, literal translation of the most unlikely anime series, And you thought there was never a girl online? Harem And You Thought… is so unflinching with its thorough anime fan service that the later episodes exploring the darker aspects of the game will delight every viewer no matter how they’re watching. sarcasm or consider it a guilty pleasure.
This unexpected turn of events can easily be understood as a literal metaphorical phenomenon that Sword Art Online expertly tackles, in which players become so engrossed in gaming that they become trapped in a digital world. Literally digital. Of course, Sword Art Online portrays this psychological condition as a game that literally imprisons the player, but And You Thought… explores it as the player intentionally chooses to immerse themselves in the game, turning them into prisoner of the demon inside him.
Is there a difference between real life and gaming?
Even before the aforementioned development, the anime adaptation of the original light novel by writer Shibai Kineko and illustrator Hisas always had the potential to be a charmer. Serious gamers belonging to the same clan in an online RPG called Legendary Age (LA) decide to meet each other in real life and while some of them have stable lives in the real world most of them prefer to play games. Ako Tamaki’s condition is quite serious because she has difficulty distinguishing between games and real life. Of course, the first few episodes take Ako’s confusion less seriously, giving the impression that the anime romcom will just be a compilation of humorous anecdotes in which Ako’s exploits embarrass her fellow guild members. or even get hurt. While this was happening, the series began to move into more serious territory by tackling profound questions.
It’s only episode 5, And You Thought… that effectively captures Sword Art Online’s metaphor when real life becomes so traumatic for Ako that she decides to fully immerse herself in LA. Her escape from the real world turns out to not be enough. Ultimately, she immerses herself in such a way that her friends can’t connect with her and wouldn’t be able to if they didn’t know where she lived in the real world. In essence, Ako locks herself in LA in the same way the VRMMORPG of the same name in Sword Art Online prevents the 10,000 people in its mainframe cyberspace from logging out. As for Ako, her mental imbalance will not allow her to stop playing, a state that would continue to exist if her “game husband” Hideki Nishimura were not physically involved.
Reinventing popular Anime tropes
The plot of the original Sword Art Online popularized the RPG subgenre within a much broader genre known as isekai, where a character is transported to another world. Another popular subgenre of isekai is reincarnation stories, in which the main character dies in the “real world” and is reincarnated into a highly fantasy environment.
Incidentally, the way Ako manages to fully immerse herself in LA is through a process called reincarnation. Only gamers who drop out of school and/or work to dedicate their lives to LA can reach such a high level that they can transfer their stats and items to a completely new character. This particular episode is definitely a nod to anime’s rebirth, especially since it’s currently saturating the entire industry to absurd levels.
And you thought there was never a girl online? is streaming on Crunchyroll.