Toaru Ossan no VRMMO Katsudouki

To be quite frank, I never thought that I would actually leave a review for anything on this site, using it mainly just for informational purposes. However, after completing this show, I feel compelled to leave a review for it in an attempt to ward off anyone thinking it might be worthwhile to watch.

It isn't. At all.

It starts off mediocre and...fine. Unoffensive but lame.

However, by the time the show ends, we have been subjected to the main character (called "Earth", in the game which serves as the shows main setting) being an absolutely unlikable mean-spirited jerk for almost the entire latter part of the show. ... He has basically no redeeming qualities as a person, and only his "skill", in the game is actually what makes people drawn to him. In reality, he's just thrust into relationships with people, and by his own admission would rather completely avoid them than work with them other than when it serves his own purposes, such as going through a dungeon or having things made for him.

He happily uses powers bestowed to him by the Fairy Queen character of the game, but is largely extremely rude and ungrateful to her, at multiple points literally tying her up so that he can run away. His entire attitude towards the fairy NPCs is one of convenience, and they serve has nothing more than a means to an end for him despite them largely wanting nothing more than to help and support him because they are "drawn to him".

He becomes ostensibly the game's first "famous" player, but then is under the impression that he can seriously walk around just going "yeah you've got the wrong guy", when people see him. He was literally shown to every single player and seen by hundreds of players fighting in the tournament in which he battled the Fairy Queen. Other players started using bows simply because he used one in that fight. And yet he think he can just continue walking around thinking people won't recognize him? Seriously? Even though the player-base expands multiple times for reasons outside the game, that doesn't erase his reputation in it.

If, while playing an MMO, I see the same player a few times while doing my thing, I will remember them. If they were literally famous in the game, I would definitely remember them and even tell other people that I saw them. It's the equivalent of seeing a streamer in-game, basically. He cannot escape the fact that he is well-known. And yet despite allegedly having years of experience playing MMOs and being almost 40 years old in real-life, he cannot comprehend this simple fact.

The show tries to redeem Earth at points, but then is ultimately undermined almost immediately by him again being rude or at best standoffish to the characters who want nothing more than to spend time with and support him. As said above, his interactions with other players seem cordial enough on the surface, but in reality he only interacts with them to serve a purpose. Which, fair enough, plays in to his whole "want to play alone" nonsense. But that does nothing to endear him to the viewers of the show.

To be quite honest, Earth alone is reason to completely avoid this show. The plot is entirely forgettable, but again unoffensive, even if multiple plot points are left almost entirely unexplained or abandoned. If Earth had been even remotely likable...it still wouldn't be worth watching considering just how many good shows exist. But at least it wouldn't have left me with such a sour taste in my mouth. As it is, I am borderline angry with myself that I wasted my time watching this.

I doubt that it will, but I swear if this show gets another season I'm going to be extremely frustrated when it takes a wonderful show like The Devil is a Part-Timer a literal decade to get a second season.

It gets a 2/10 simply because the other characters are at least semi-likable and despite how much I hate how much time I wasted watching it I don't really feel comfortable giving anything a 1/10 because I think everything has *some* redeeming qualities.

A Playthrough of a Certain Dude's VRMMO Life - What's this, a "Let's Play" playthrough of somebody who has clearly never played a MMORPG in real life who yet manages to chock up 10 years of this seemingly "ambitious" BS fantasy work? That's quite the sus motive.

Yes, you heard me right. Novelist Shiina Howahowa started this work as a Syosetu title in January 2013, at the time when Reki Kawahara's Sword Art Online was taking off on its massive popularity, serving as the revival of the Isekai MMORPG genres, spawning works turned into anime, like Mamare Touno's Log Horizon. But you'd have to be a ... madman to realise that the author managed to come up with the LN, which, as of this review, is a massive 28 volumes long (WTF?), running at his or her own "pace" of what defines a "unique" VRMMO, but never having actually played a game for the most basic references. I'm sorry, but that just does not fly, but other than the current juggernaut that is novelist Katarina's Shangri-La Frontier also airing this season (which is just overall better in every way), I'd bet even ChatGPT could make a better story than this rather nonsensical BS plot.

You might be tempted to think that this show reeks similarity to the Isekai and reincarnation themes, but it's not. It's just a VRMMO that's monitored by its engineers, then programmed through AI to suit the themes of its setting, which is where lands the real-life 38-year-old man by the name of Taichi Tanaka, to be portrayed in "One More Free Life Online" as a young boy named Earth. Yep, you're not squinting your eyes; he's literally called Earth. (Why the stupid generic name!?) The rather unassuming young boy, with a rather unrefined skill that once harnessed, becomes a rather "unique" skill that allows him to create better weapons, cook appetising food for the masses, and also gets him to befriend godlike entities like the Fairy Queen. I'm just going to stop here because there is absolutely NOTHING that appeals to anyone about this show, even if studio Maho Film's anime adaptation came just about a decade too late. Not that anyone was thinking of adapting this (albeit with idiotic people thinking that this deserves an anime) and seeing it through as some production committee's "free time" to produce a subpar show that appeals to no one. (Hey, better use your resources for better shows).

Speaking of Maho Film, over the course of the studio's 4 years of existence, they've become the 3rd-rate junkyard studio for mediocre to bad Isekai and/or fantasy shows, and watching this show, you can really tell that it does not take debut director Yuuichi Nakazawa, series composer Touko Machida (which I consider to be one of, if not the worst screenwriters in anime), and the staff team much effort to produce this, which, come to think of it, is a rather good punching bag since better works are given to better studios to adapt, leaving new studios like Maho Film to "create anime with magic" of the BS kind.

Everything from the lackluster "Let's Play!" playthrough sequence is just awful for both the story and its characters to the literate point of boredom, which, coupled with the rather mediocre production and music, just screams like everyone working on this is "quite content" with getting by with the lowest (not even the bare minimum) of talents. And it really shows: the show's potential that it will not get ANY better.

Just do me a favour and make a hell of a skipping runaway from this show. The author clearly is warped by his or her own mindset, and if you take the plunge, you'll be the obvious clown of foolishness.

Plot
Just a middle-aged "gamer" guy playing a new VRMMO daily. Its mostly him whining that he wants to play alone, but still smh getting caught up in all kind of crazy situations making him the center of attention.

The Game:
The MMO is really futuristic. We are talking about people smelling, eating in-game food. The NPCs are also very advanced, making them feel like almost real characters. For example, the game allows people to have pets. But if the owners do not treat the pets nicely, the pets will refuse to cooperate with the owner. It even has kingdoms of different races, with their own politics going ... on.
All of this makes it feel more like an isekai than an actual MMO. Especially when MC is interacting with NPCs like they are real people, it starts to feel really cringe.

The MC:
is more of a lone wolf type. As usual, there's not much of a personality. His OPness is kinda bullshit. The world bends over backwards to make MC "smart" and the rest of the players dumb. He chooses crafting to make potions, which is supposed to be a useless skill, as everyone can buy them from NPCs. But eventually, NPCs run out of potions and now MC is the rare player who can sell potions. MC chooses to improve his cooking skills. And eventually the pets stop eating NPC food, so everyone flocks to MC again to buy his food. And apparently, even if other players learn to cook, its actually not going to taste as good as MC's food.. because reasons.
The entire series is basically filled with these plot armor bullshit.

MC being mostly alone means that there is A LOT OF NARRATION or info dump. This really cannot be understated. MC is always explaining his thoughts or feelings or game mechanics or commentating on events of the game etc.. So, you keep hearing his voice over and over. Sometimes, i wake up in the middle of the night because i hear his voice in my dreams.

Everything else:
The series is average tbh. There's plenty of crazy characters. Lots of potential with new kingdoms or races. Guilds. irl drama and balance. etc.. It also felt like a nice slice of life at the beginning.
But the writing is real subpar. all the serious scenes feel silly when you know that this is just a game. MC getting all "sentimental" about breaking his equipment is just gross. You are 40 years old ffs. And we don't know anything about MC except that he is a blue collar worker who spends a *huge* amount of time in-game farming xp. very hard to relate to a no-lifer like that.

Anyway, i really want to stress the "MC garbage" point. Because you will be seeing a lot of him. If you are okay with that, this is not bad if you want to turn off your brain and just watch something.

For most people though, just go find something better.

Imagine playing a cutting-edge, realistic VRMMO filled with amazing combat/life skills, and being extremely good at it! You're top-tier both at fighting and in crafting. So good, in fact, that you have the hot Queen of the NPCs with human-like intelligence (basically super-advanced AIs) falling in love with you, 3-4 parties to switch through and complete dungeons and events, and are frequently awarded a bunch of new objects and skills just for existing.

But you want NONE of that. Nope. You're playing a game, but you "don't want to stand out" (nerd face), so you basically spend your time crafting ugly-looking weapons to test out while ... solo hunting trash mobs, or cooking. You even reject said Queen, pushing her away after treating her like trash for half of the series (despite her skills saving your ahh more than once) and even physically hitting her, too, because you can't be arsed spending your time around her.

This would've been a decent 6/10 mid game-themed anime, but the MC is so annoying that it almost makes it unwatchable. Dude, you're playing a game, why do you care about "standing out"? It's not as if that's your real face or name, right? Jesus. And why do you treat everyone around you like an annoyance? Spell me out what "MMO" means real quick. For real, just go play Skyrim already.

Trash Game.

A Playthrough of a Certain Dude's VRMMO Life certainly does what it says on the box, nobody can argue that. This is the story of a certain thirty-eight-year-old dude playing a light novel shovelware game written by someone who has clearly never played an MMO or witnessed the toxic carnage of an online multiplayer lobby.

The light novel shovelware game fittingly called "One More Free Life Online” is the playground for the certain dude’s avatar… “Earth”… no seriously, his character name is “Earth”…
He decides to make an off-meta build as an archer who can craft healing potions and cook stat-buffing food and gets ... bullied by other players for it… for some reason… Just to be clear you can play as a mage who also uses long-range attacks so why anyone would be looked down upon for being an archer is beyond me. Anyway, because of a bunch of random patches made by the developers, Earth’s off-meta build gets him a lot of attention and things happen.
Honestly, trying to explain this anime is giving me an aneurysm. It’s almost as if the author played Skyrim for an hour, saw a dragon flying backwards, thought it was the greatest game ever made and then tried to write a light novel series about it.

The characters and writing are very baby’s first light novel. The characters talk like the actors playing upcoming release demos in Ubisoft/Activision-Blizzard E3 showcases rather than real gamers. Earth especially makes me cringe in my balls whenever he's facing a slightly higher-level monster and then states he’ll “use his thirty-eight years of experience” to defeat the monster… in a video game. Of course, it wouldn't be light novel shovelware if Earth didn’t have an increasing entourage of females, NPC or Player, wanting to jump his digital bone despite Earth having the personality of a piece of toilet paper.

If there is one thing that I can give A Playthrough of a Certain Dude's VRMMO Life credit it’s for its in-depth crafting system which does look genuinely fun. Earth spends a ton of time crafting new bows, bombs and even bladed shoes to fight his play style. It seems the only limit is your imagination and the time spent needing to craft the equipment, but I would happily play around with this system for hours. Unfortunately, Earth seems to be the only player who uses this system and is ridiculed for his off-meta equipment by other players so it’s completely undermined.

A Playthrough of a Certain Dude's VRMMO Life is another light novel show in story and presentation completely overshadowed by another VRMMO anime airing this season, Shangri-La Frontier which is a thousand times better. It’s just more shovelware with an interesting but wasted crafting system.

3/10 Wasted Potential.

Never thought I’d see a so called “Slice of Life Isekai” be so bad. This animes only redeeming quality would be the character Queen, everyone else is generic AF and the show made the supposed heroine a Bokke character. Main character wanted to have an easy life that when he triggers an event, he complains and whines about it so much it’s insane.

I will now compare this Anime to other SOL Isekai and explain why it lacks a redeeming quality

Slime Taoshite 300-nen, Shiranai Uchi ni Level Max ni Nattemashita - Main character also wants a slow life but finds appreciation on the changes on ... her life. UNLIKE THIS ANIME

Benriya Saitou-san, Isekai ni Iku - Introduced a variety of characters and have their own lore that adds up with the story. Not just some randos you team with for 1 ep or 2 like this anime.

Level 1 dakedo Unique Skill de Saikyou desu - Show sucked but atleast the Heroine has some screentime and MC takes care of her.

Tondemo Skill de Isekai Hourou Meshi - MC is legit having fun with his party, and when he said he hated fighting, he really meant it and pursued what he wanted. Also, Sui is adorable AF unlike Pikasha

Kami-tachi ni Hirowareta Otoko - MC is restarting his life and enjoying the things he do, never complains and is very modest.

Isekai Nonbiri Nouka - MCs obliviousness is Cute while Earth’s Obliviousness is somewhat an annoying trait.

To make the long story short, this anime has rude attitude MC, complains about events, Rude to Heroine, acts friendly but is fed up when people coddles up to him afterwards. Thinks of himself miserable when he has power.

Does not recommend

If you close your eyes and breath deeply through your nose, what do you smell?

Air freshener and the faint scent of musty sheets? Axe body spray and unwashed gym clothes? Flat Mountain Dew Code Red and stale Ranch Doritos?

If any of the above apply, consider cleaning your room. Your time will be better spent than watching this show. If not, consider scouring your corners for dust bunnies as you will have a more exciting adventure moving your furniture around and searching for dirt than watching the main character Earth and his attempts to be the coolest anti-social, but actually social, mid-life crisis gamer.

The show ... reeks of wish fulfillment, which is not necessarily an issue if used properly like in shows like Mushoku Tensei or Welcome to the NHK, and has writing and characters that feel like a 10 year old narrating the epic battle between his Godzilla and Hulk Hogan action figures as they smash plastic tooth and nail to shiny pecs and stache. The first episode is all about building up Earth as not a show off and is bullied for picking the bad skills that are secretly really good. Now this wouldnt necessarily be terrible given this is a wish fulfillment show, but he and everyone else have the IQ of dirt, probably why he's named Earth, with none of their actions or thinking being very reflective of anything someone can actually self-insert over unless they turn off their brain or are grossly out of touch with how actual people and/or MMORPG players think and act. It's like if the author could have, he would have written an entire arc about how the MC was the very first to ever think about breathing and because no one else had ever thought of breathing before and now he is teaching them how to he is the coolest most smartest kid in school. On top of that he is not actually a hardcore gamer because hes actually a working man who can only game 3hrs a day, but is still super cool and doing things in the game no one else has done before.

No words can truly describe the amount of brain-rot I felt trying to wrap my head around what the author was thinking or feeling as he wrote this story. None of that makes sense, and quite frankly being able to sit down and game 3hrs EVERY day as a late career adult is a dream, but I guess to each their own and their responsibilities. It goes beyond fantastical wish-fulfillment and deeply embeds itself in the muck of delusions for the incompetent/ignorant. The least the author could have done is write a character and story that you can actually self-insert in if they were going to write this kind of story. Even if you try, there are so many incongruencies that you'll be ripped out of your fantasy a couple min later by some nonsense only conceivable by those who don't bother to do any research or story planning before putting pen to paper.

Do yourself a favor and don't even bother with this show.

It's not even a funny bad watch, it's just dumb and rather infuriating since it could very easily be salvaged into some palatable junk food anime if they even just followed the formula of every other fantasy mmorpg story instead of this garbage they put out. They already had the premise of junky anime, so how did they mess up the basics? That just points to bad/incompetent writing.

3 out of 10

This anime had a good oportunity to work with the initial narrative about an adult men with so much little time to play games, could evolve the story about the problems of the japanese society and a really good anime about MMO games, unlike the other trash of this season (Shangri-la) that is another horrible anime in another way.

But for something that I can't even undestand this anime become a isekai, nothing happens out of the game, we even don't know when the dude logoff and how he live, which problems the game will help him to surpass... It's just the guy being MC on ... a MMO game with some NPC that lives, and like any other anime like this, he's the special one and complete everything with the script force.

I'm a MMO lover and watch these horrible series about MMO make me upset.

Toaru Ossan at VRMMO Katsudouki came to make anyone's day more miserable than usual, but that's life, what do you do?

The definition of this work is very simple, we have a middle-aged gamer playing a VRMMO style game, for fun, and we have the ´´pleasure`` of following this ´´beautiful`` story, a plot never done before, Even so, that's okay, how many times have we seen an anime be generic and more of the same be good due to striking and unique characteristics that differentiate them from so many others?

Unfortunately, I must inform you in advance that this is not pleasant, cool or fun to watch, ... just painful, displeasing my eyes with an isekai anime plot or any other game.

The anime revolves around the figure of a player called Earth, that's right, it's not a joke. He initially seeks to play casually, without drawing attention to himself, having chosen skills considered useless and harmful for a player to use, such as the archer characteristic, however our user with the ridiculous name follows the opposite path to that defined, this has specific and consistent causes, which I mention are: his ability to refine and improve his unique weapons more and more, his vast culinary knowledge, capable of making delicious food, the friendship that he develops in the future with the Fairy Kingdom, making him stronger, I would like to Also mention its ease of creating medicines and magical potion items, both useful for many people to use both factors as a means of weapon to triumph in battle or as an item for rehabilitation and mana replacement.

Perhaps with the exposition of the anime above, the reader will think that the anime should deserve a chance, I must agree with you, if your intention is to create irreparable anguish in your heart, I will only tell you one expression, ´´good luck`` !!!

There is nothing that deserves to be taken as a highlight of the production of this work, everything is so hideous, from the battles with static animations, containing absolutely no movement, encompassing only ugly frames of action, it doesn't stop there, the character designs are bad , with the characters' eyes often becoming distorted, an event exclusive to a bad anime produced by a terrible studio, continuing, the story is generic, there is nothing different, unique, innovative, interesting, only erasures in the plot are noticeable, so needy and poor, which doesn't even deserve to be explained, as I have basically already explained the ´´history`` above. The characters are not funny, they do not attract attention, they are extremely crude, robotic and predictable in their decision-making. Toaru Ossan's scenery does not go unharmed from negative criticism, as the colors are often dirty, colorless, with poorly drawn, crooked, poorly framed drawings and, worst of all, they have an unacceptable morbidity, something truly unhealthy and regrettable, I mean. This is because even with a lame studio and a tired plot, it was possible to improve the fights more, at least in the primordial parts, where there should be no lack of investment, there was also a lack of improving the script, writing captivating characters and rewriting the story or better yet, playing it. completely in the trash (unfortunately that didn't happen.)

As there is nothing that cannot get exponentially worse, the Maho Film studio, producer of Toaru Ossan no VRMMO Katsudouki, is well capable of adapting more animes, news that would undoubtedly be tragic.

In conclusion, I would like to highlight that my experience with this anime was one of the most tedious and unpleasant in recent seasons, which is why I warn you, if you haven't seen Toaru Ossan, please don't watch it, just avoid such rubbish, because As I have already tortured myself enough, there is no need to do the same with your valuable lives.