Netoge no Yome wa Onnanoko ja Nai to Omotta?

After mustering up the courage to propose to a girl in an online game, naive otaku Hideki "Rusian" Nishimura is devastated when she flat-out rejects him. To make matters worse, the girl reveals that she is actually an older man in real life. With his dreams crushed and his heart broken, Rusian comes to an abrupt decision in the midst of his raging fit: he will never trust another girl in an online game again.

Years later, Rusian is now in a guild with three other players, one of whom possesses a female avatar by the name of Ako. Ako is deeply in love with Rusian and wants to marry him. Although he entertains the possibility that she might be a guy, Rusian accepts her proposal, claiming that her gender does not matter as long as she is cute in-game. However, after a discussion between the guild members that led to all of them having an offline meeting, Rusian finds out that Ako, along with the other members, is not just a girl but also his schoolmate.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Edit

Background

Netoge no Yome wa Onnanoko ja Nai to Omotta? adapts the first 4 novels of Shibai Kineko's light novel series of the same title.

Episode Videos

Edit

Related Anime

Adaptation:

Supporting

Yamashita, Seiichirou
Japanese

More staff

Staff

Cook, Justin

Producer

Fukura, Kei

Producer

Herek, Samantha

Assistant Producer

Yanagi, Shinsuke

Director

Edit

Opening Theme

"1st Love Story" by Luce Twinkle Wink☆ (eps 2-12)

Edit

Ending Theme

	1: "1st Love Story" by Luce Twinkle Wink☆ (eps 1)
	2: "Zero Ichi Kiseki (ゼロイチキセキ)" by Yoshino Nanjo (eps 2-12)

Reviews

Jun 23, 2016

Lil-Bird

Recommended

There are some series that leaves an impact on the consumer, whether positive or negative, influencing or degrading, enjoyable or painful. They fall into a specific spectrum of very good or very bad. But then there are the in-betweeners, some which have good qualities but still missed their mark more times than acceptable, or are of the “so bad, it's good” due to managing to hold on to some charm that saves it from the trash bin. Others, however, manage to find comfort in the very middle by just “being there”, not picking a side and not making an impression good or bad enough to ...

Open

Gift

Jun 23, 2016

Stark700

Mixed Feelings

Netoge is the type of show where it’s pretty much every school, game tropes, and roleplay coming together in one package. The English title is “And you thought there is never a girl online?” The first thought that popped into my head reminds me of the second season of Sword Art Online. To sum it easily, it’s a show that blends fantasy and reality. From the real life perspective that shifts into the MMO world, Netoge is probably a show you’ll enjoy if you’re familiar with storytelling related to such themes. Otherwise, this could just be another blend LN adapted series that serves no more ... than eye candy.

In terms of story, the show should be taken more as a comedy, almost like a type of satire. Because let’s face it, the show itself isn’t based on characters playing as saviors to defeat some overlord or escape after being trapped in some alternate world. The main character Hideki Nishimura goes by his in-game name “Rusian” and apparently finds out that his wife from an online game (Legendary Age) is also a girl in real life. Take this further and soon, he realizes that all the guild members are classmates from the real world. And they are all girls! I think this ties back a bit where Rusian needs to reevaluate about what he learned. Luckily, Rusian’s classmates accepts him as who he is because like him, they are also gamers.

However, one particular gamer seems to have difficulty of differentiating between fiction and reality. Meet Ako Tamaki, the girl that proposed to Rusian and now is technically his in-game wife. The problem is that she takes that idea too far and also considers Rusian her husband from BOTH worlds. Most of the comedy comes to reality when misunderstanding develops between the duo. Because let’s face it, these kids are still in high school and getting married at their age is almost unbelievable. Plus, Ako has somewhat of an obsession toward Rusian, like the way a clingy wife does when they are lonely. Judging on Ako’s character alone, she genuinely seems like a kind person with a bit of an airhead-like behavior and lack of common sense. Perhaps she spends too much time online and her ideas about relationships reinforces that.

While the majority of the relationships focuses on Ako and Rusian, there are times when other girls step in to show their knowledge about gaming and real life. Characters such as Akane often tries to get Ako to be more herself rather than an in-game character. Kyo Goshuin, the leader of the Alley Cat guild (also student council president) plays the role of a commanding leader. As such, she often serves a big sister to the other characters and bears a lot of responsibility on her shoulders. But needless to say, these characters are still one dimensional. Ako gets jealous like most wives tends to do when other girls are flirting with their “husbands”, Akane is the classic tsundere, and Kyo is pretty much a walking billboard of fan service in-game. Rusian is perhaps the only normal character with some common sense. Despite that, he still get dragged into various affairs whether he likes it or not.

A portion of the enjoyment coming from the show is the humor. The story itself isn’t well written as it mostly focuses on the life styles of these gamers but the comedy can be quite fun once you get sucked into it. What does that mean? It generally means try watching the show with an open mind. Every episode mixes in a variety of ideas from gameplay mechanics, relationship dynamics, and sometimes nonsense that transforms into absurd humor. While the show’s story lacks on most parts to explore relationships, it does give a decent meaning to Ako and Rusian. The duo accepts each other more and more throughout the story and in one episode, Ako’s trust towards Rusian is proven after a malicious incident. This is characterized by Rusian accepting Ako for who she is (both in-game and out in the real world). The reality is that Ako is a timid girl and Rusian may be the first person to be honest about what he likes in her. While the couple is silly to watch, there is a genuine heartwarming feeling about them as well.

On the downside, I think the show overemphasizes on their relationship with minimal characterization about the others. Nearly every episode shows Ako getting girly with Rusian. She even has yandere-like moments when another girl approached Rusian. Akane’s role in the series can be rather annoying to watch as she constantly denies about her gaming lifestyle from the public. At some point, those scenes feels like it’s taking on TV time. The only tolerable female character out of the group may be Kyou (Apricot) She even sets up a club to unite gamers and tries to help Ako connect with reality. Unfortunately, her role in the show (particular when in-game) shows she’s more of an eye candy rather than a role model.

Oh boy, the artwork of the show. When I first found out that the original source was drawn by an H-artist (Hisasi), I was already rolling my eyes. While the anime is tamer than the light novel, the series still has fan service. The prominent example is the in-game design for Kyou where she wears little clothing to cover herself. Ako isn’t far off as there are times when she’s goes full nude because of her lack of common sense. There’s also the classic beach episode with skimpy swimsuits. In one particular scene, Rusian gets hounded by three girls at once to help him “put the lotion on”. Artistic wise, the show is fairly average in terms of quality. Nothing too impressive but also not atrocious either. The in-game character designs are perhaps what stands out the most while their real life counterparts is nothing special.
Soundtrack is one of the lesser noticeable parts of the show. The OP and ED theme songs does characterize what this show is about on paper. Character voice mannerism is moderate although listening to Ako’s voice makes her sound like a child on most occasions. Akane’s tsunder personality is clearly evident in her voice as well. There are also some occasionally sad and heartwarming moments with a surprisingly decent soundtrack to bring it together.

By the time I finished this show, I pretty much thought “ok”. Because quite honestly, I think this show is fine as it is. If it stretched more, it’ll feel dragged and quickly gets old while rushing isn’t doing the source any favor. Ako and Rusian’s relationship can be a mixed bag for most viewers where at times, they can be really fun to watch while other times feels like it’s a chore. But in retrospect, Netoge is what it is, with nothing great but also not so easily forgettable either.

Open

Gift

Jun 23, 2016

Veronin

Not Recommended

Oh, great. Another light novel adaptation with a harem, a stupidly long title that nobody in their right mind would want to pronounce, and a story revolving around MMOs. The anime industry clearly hasn't had enough of those.

It would be one thing if Netoge was just more run-of-the-mill mediocrity, but it instead goes all the way in being silly tripe. This is an anime where the protagonist's entire set of friends in an online game just so happen to be attractive (in some cases, popular) girls who, conveniently, attend the exact same high school and know him personally, including a twintailed tsundere and his ... in-game waifu who immediately clings all over him and proclaims herself his wife, despite not actually knowing anything about who he is in the real-world. If you were to drop the show immediately after the first episode, I would not blame you, and I would actually suggest you are making the right choice. It certainly does not do anything in the later episodes to convince otherwise.

For what is supposed to be an anime involving romance, said 'romance' is about as shallow and as juvenile as it can possibly get. They love each other over a video game. A game! This is not love--- it is two mentally troubled and lonely children infatuated with one another because they share a superficial hobby and because they cannot get anyone better. Anyone who has dated before, especially at a young age, knows that desperate relationships like these never go anywhere. And the two of them like to imagine themselves a married couple? Really? Marriage is not play-time-- it requires a great deal of compromise and sacrifice, and would crush their childish fantasy as a result. A couple like this would not last more than a few weeks in reality, much less a lifetime. So forgive me if I do not care when the show tries to make me feel for them (and often, unfortunately, it does).

Anything that comes out of Ako's mouth is a pain to the senses. She claims real-life is a kusoge and compares luck to item drops in a game. Even the most extreme of otaku on 2ch and other places have the sense to treat these sorts of comments as a joke. That Ako is completely serious about it makes it quite clear that she is a basket-case and that the show has no interest in painting her as an actual person. She is a collection of silly tropes to throw on a body pillow and sell to otaku. At least something like Oreimo, as painful a show as it often was, actually made an effort to make its characters something more than that.

On numerous occasions, Ako makes it clear that she is a terrible girlfriend who has no right dating anyone. She even goes as far as to lie about meeting up with another dude to get back at the protagonist and make him jealous. Anybody, whether male or female, who thinks this is acceptable behaviour is, frankly, scum. He should have dumped her right then and there. But he didn't, and he won't, because this is a harem anime, and harem anime do not care for their characters behaving like sensible human beings.

Netoge isn't all too interested in making the other girls (and there are a whole four of them) feel like they actually have a place in the story. They could just as easily be taken out of the show entirely without it affecting all that much. They exist primarily as eye-candy, showing up, for example, in a vapid 'beach episode', where they join Ako, swimsuits and all, in lathering the protagonist with sunscreen. Netoge doesn't really have any idea of whether it wants to commit solely to Ako or fully embrace the harem route, and often it will switch directions one or more times per episode. They encourage the protagonist and his relationship with Ako, and then the next moment they'll be rubbing their breasts against him or blushing in some pseudo-confession scene. Why? For what purpose?

(It also goes without saying that Netoge, given its genre, is ripe with unnecessary fanservice. The girls will all bath together, making vaguely homosexual comments about each other and comparing their breast sizes, with huge amounts of steam covering their bodies so that otaku will be manipulated into buying the uncensored BluRay version. How many more years will it take until the anime industry matures beyond this?)

Every male besides the protagonist is depicted as a horrible loser with no hope of finding love. His group of male friends (who, by the way, were even less of an otaku than him) do nothing but envy his apparent success with the ladies, despite him being entirely bland and average and without anything that would make the opposite sex interested in him. The protagonist is the single most important character in a story, and here he is the least interesting. I get it-- the girls need to be cute in a harem series, and so they might take a higher priority, but that is still no excuse for making the protagonist a lifeless sack of nothing. I suppose the one thing that can be said in his favour is that he isn't entirely dense like most other protagonists in the genre, and actually makes an effort to go out and get things done. He could be worse-- he could be, say, Ichika from Infinite Stratos.

Netoge tries to go for a similar art style to No Game No Life, with its blue-coloured outlines, although, quite thankfully, it does not try to assault the eyeballs nearly as much as did NGNL and its excessively bright colours. Interestingly, Netoge shows the MMO gameplay from both the player's perspective (with sprites similar to Ragnarok Online) and from some sort of fantasy (a la Sword Art Online) presumably going on in their heads. If it truly wanted to appeal to the audience's nostalgia for these sorts of games, it could have done without the latter. We don't need to see random online girls having their boobs bouncing against the protagonist's arm. The real-world side of the story already has enough of that.

Unless another lame harem anime is something you absolutely need in your life, Netoge is something to be avoided. It is completely manufactured, playing the genre trope for trope in order to manipulate a few poor souls into paying money for it. You're better than that. You deserve better than something like this. Heck, anime deserves better.

In a few weeks' time, nobody will even remember Netoge. The next generic light novel harem will roll around, as always it does, season after season. Will anime fans ever get sick of them? Perhaps. But I sure don't want to sit around and wait.

Open

Gift

More stacks

Interest Stacks

Best Romcom anime

by JehadKun

41 Entries · 6 Restacks

Male Demographic Anime for Female (P2)

by dolly94

34 Entries · 10 Restacks

animelon complete catalog: JPDB level 3

by database_animal

46 Entries · 3 Restacks

More recommendations

Recommendations

View All

More news

Recent News

North American Anime & Manga Releases for November

Here are the North American anime & manga releases for November Week 1: November 6 - 12 Anime Releases Black Clover Part 2 Blu-ray & DVD Combo Galaxy Angel Z...read more

Nov 5, 2018 2:27 PM by Sakana-san | Discuss (7 comments)

North American Anime & Manga Releases for July

Here are the North American anime & manga releases for July Week 1: July 4 - 10 Anime Releases Bakemono no Ko Blu-ray & DVD Combo Collection's Edition H...read more

Jul 3, 2017 11:26 AM by Sakana-san | Discuss (9 comments)

More discussions

Recent Forum Discussion

Poll: Netoge no Yome wa Onnanoko ja Nai to Omotta? Episode 10 Discussion ( 1 2 ) Stark700 - Jun 9, 2016	78 replies	by k4cper0 »» Apr 7, 3:00 PM
Poll: Netoge no Yome wa Onnanoko ja Nai to Omotta? Episode 9 Discussion ( 1 2 3 ) Stark700 - Jun 2, 2016	120 replies	by k4cper0 »» Apr 6, 2:39 PM
Poll: Netoge no Yome wa Onnanoko ja Nai to Omotta? Episode 1 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 5 ... Last Page ) Stark700 - Apr 7, 2016	331 replies	by k4cper0 »» Apr 2, 3:03 PM
Poll: Netoge no Yome wa Onnanoko ja Nai to Omotta? Episode 12 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 ) Stark700 - Jun 23, 2016	179 replies	by RGreatDanton »» Nov 2, 2023 12:33 PM
Poll: Netoge no Yome wa Onnanoko ja Nai to Omotta? Episode 4 Discussion ( 1 2 3 ) Stark700 - Apr 28, 2016	142 replies	by RGreatDanton »» Oct 29, 2023 6:59 AM

Recent Featured Articles

Top 10 Characters Who Would Make the Best Anime Girlfriend

If it was physically possible, and we managed to avoid being put in the friend zone, it would be almost every anime fan's dream come true. Let's take a peek at some characters that would make for the best anime girlfriend!

by MisterD98

313,736 views

Collection Character Analysis Cute Girls Heart-warming Love Hot Naruto Bleach Fairy Tail

Top 10 Deredere Characters in Anime: Deredere Meaning

A look of the top deredere characters, and what it actually means.

by madokamage

298,326 views

Spoiler

Collection Cute Girls

Netoge no Yome wa Onnanoko ja Nai to Omotta?

Alternative Titles

Information

Statistics

Available At

Resources

Streaming Platforms

Synopsis

Background

Episode Videos

Visit MALxJapan
MALxJapan -More than just anime-

Related Anime

Characters & Voice Actors

Tamaki, Ako

Segawa, Akane

Goshouin, Kyou

Nishimura, Hideki

Akiyama, Nanako

Saitou, Yui

Ako's Mother

†Kuro no Majutsushi†

Batz

†Claude†

Staff

Opening Theme

Ending Theme

Reviews

Interest Stacks

Recommendations

Recent News

Recent Forum Discussion

Recent Featured Articles

MoreTop Anime

MoreTop Airing Anime

MoreMost Popular Characters

Netoge no Yome wa Onnanoko ja Nai to Omotta?

Alternative Titles

Information

Statistics

Available At

Resources

Streaming Platforms

Synopsis

Background

Episode Videos

Visit MALxJapan MALxJapan -More than just anime-

Related Anime

Characters & Voice Actors

Staff

Opening Theme

Ending Theme

Reviews

Interest Stacks

Recommendations

Recent News

Recent Forum Discussion

Recent Featured Articles

MoreTop Anime

MoreTop Airing Anime

MoreMost Popular Characters

Visit MALxJapan
MALxJapan -More than just anime-