Meeting IRL.
Warning: Full spoilers for the episode follow.
Moriko’s real and virtual lives converge after a chance run-in with a potential love interest. This time around her messy double life takes priority over MMO antics, providing a compelling story that broadens our understanding of our despairing hero.
At the episode’s start Hayashi is adventuring with his guildmate, Li, when she begins to pry about his real-life identity. In a panic, Moriko lets loose a white lie, and suddenly everyone in the guild believes she is a 20-year-old university student. She decides not to intervene, leaving her with some residual guilt but mostly relief that they don’t know her embarrassing secret. Despite constantly telling herself she is an “Elite NEET” we can plainly see she isn’t proud of her new life, adding to the mystery of why she abandoned her previous one. I found the following scene, in which Hayashi pries about Lily’s real identity, incredibly relatable, as I know the feeling of hesitance that comes with making online friends. I appreciate how well the show has managed to capture the joys and jeopardies of online existence so well, only two episodes in.
Hayashi and Lily ultimately decide to keep their friendship virtual-only, unaware that their paths are about to cross IRL. While on her way to get some cold medicine, Moriko crashes into a careless man and ends up in the hospital. The man, Sakurai Yuta, is heavily implied to be Lily’s real-life counterpart, and it doesn’t take long for Moriko to become infatuated with him. Their bizarre double relationship will no doubt be the subject of much confusion later, but for now it helped set my expectation for the rest of the season. After the premiere, I was expecting an adventure-oriented comedy about MMOs, but this episode has convinced me that romantic comedy is much more compelling. I can’t wait to see how their relationship pans out, and if Yuta really is living a double life like Moriko’s.
Back online, Hayashi’s guildmates sense something is troubling him, and he recounts the events of Moriko’s day (genders swapped, of course) in hopes of getting some useful advice. Li and Himerelda blow things out of proportions, suggesting romantic dates and ways to “get lucky”, while Kanbe suggests a simple email. The email lands Moriko dinner date, filling her with a mix of joy and dread. Li and Himerelda steal the scene with their hysterical unrestrained reactions, which felt eerily like the way my old MMO friends would tease each other about real-life troubles. The following scene in which she despairs about her looks provides another great parallel between her reality (unkempt Moriko) and her online life (glowing adventurer Hayashi). In the end she decides to put the date out of her mind, leaving us in suspense till next week.
The Verdict
Following last week’s somewhat slow premiere, “We Don’t Know A Thing” ups the excitement with a chance meeting between Moriko and romantic interest Sakurai Yuta. In ”Fruits de Mer,” Hayashi takes a break from MMO adventuring, but his various interactions with guildmates manage to be both funny and genuine. We are left wondering what will happen during Moriko and Yuta’s impending date, but I’m already excited to see what chaos will come out of their reality crossed relationship.
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