The first thing is that it is supposed to be realistic yet it feels way too unrealistic, there is a limit to my ability to suspend disbelief even after all I've read but the coincidences here are baffling, stuff like not only knowing eachother from a previous game but also living in the same town, meeting without knowing and knowing eachother in the game and somehow ending up in the same server and meeting eachother almost instantly when logging on for the first time? Come on.
It's meant to be a touching romance story, but it just lacks zest and the story is too slow for its own good, maybe compressing these 10 episodes to 5 episodes would've been better(about the size of a movie), removing superfluous parts and ending up with a slightly more intense story. As it is right now, I just don't feel much about them and their story is too shallow. The way the author wrote it, there's nothing more to do and the story just ends abruptly after they get together(or almost does), because there is literally nothing else that matters here, the only thing this story was about and the only thing that made it readable was the short story about their experiences together and how they end up getting together. It has nothing more to offer than that, no comedy, no good romance, nothing. This isn't bad per se, but it just doesn't leave any lasting impression, there just isn't any impact or parts that would make me feel immersed and for me to care about the characters.
Then there's the idea of this being a MMORPG world. This would've been more interesting and realistic if it was a futuristic VRMMORPG, but a normal MMORPG? Might've been a bit better if I was still playing MMORPGs like I did several years ago, but I also feel like it's also because I've played a lot of MMORPGs that I feel so put off by the ridiculous relationship these players have and that they somehow can express emotions and know what someone is thinking when they're just writing some messages, they're not even in voice chat or anything. It feels so damn forced and unrealistic and all these little weird, out of place and pretty much impossible things add up until I feel it's hard to enjoy.
It doesn't make it better that the MMORPG element was clearly there only to make a story, the MMORPG thing was never really used, it never mattered much, they never did anything in-game except talk and talk and talk and talk as if they were meeting up IRL, giving tips and talking about their IRL issues as if they're best buddies from school/work... Never before have I seen a "game" anime where the game part was so utterly irrelevant. They might as well have chatted in a chat app or something and it wouldn't have made much of a difference. It truly feels like the author has little to no experience with MMORPG's and just wanted something easy to write about, just the idea that "people get online, meet, play and talk!" thing and everything else was unimportant. Why even make it into a game anime in the first place? That's just annoying.
Also, this doesn't deserve to be called a "comedy", the "funniest" thing that happened was when the guy playing lily elbowed the mc IRL by mistake, knocking her out cold. This might've been way better if more focus was put on the humorous element, which would balance out the unrealistic/illogical parts and also make it way more interesting overall but instead we have a dull anime masquerading as both a "game" and "comedy" anime despite having pretty much none of either. It's kind of sad.
It was no doubt watchable, but it was a fairly monotone journey. It earned a 6/10 because I didn't feel so bored as to drop it and it had some touching moments, it was also refreshing to see an anime that had properly grown-up characters that truly acted their age even if their personalities and thoughts were a bit too dreary for my liking. A more accurate score of 5/10 for "average" might've been a better score, but despite making it sound as if it's a horrible anime, I did enjoy watching it, at least I didn't feel truly bored(where you want to drop it altogether). Give it a try, but expect nothing of the "game" or "comedy" tag, it has none. It's just a slow-paced romance story with shallow story and where every single character is extremely shallow except for the mc and perhaps lily/sakurai.
