7 October
Run: 10 Episodes
Studio: Signal.MD
Simulcast: Crunchyroll
Anime Info Page

Interview With Recovery of an MMO Junkie Producer Satoshi Taira

Summary

Moriko Morioka, a 30-years-old single NEET gave up on an ordinary life and now lives through online games. She makes all her friends online and tries to cope with her worries as she takes small steps towards real change.

Impressions

Thanasis

No Sword Art Online here, ladies and gentlemen. No silly gear and overpowered characters. No life-threatening situations and no evil masterminds behind the MMO. This is as real to an MMO game we can get, albeit with the unrealistic way the characters interact in-game (nothing to do about that, this is an anime after all).

Recovery of an MMO Junkie may well be the most realistic anime about MMO games I have seen so far. The protagonist, Momoka Moriko, is a 30-years-old office dropout who decides to follow the NEET life. I am still not sure how NEETs make money, but Moriko seems to have enough for food, rend, bills and for a new PC so she can indulge in her favorite escapism, an MMO game called Fruits de Mer, which is actually French for food of the sea, seafood. In real MMO fashion, she makes a male avatar and falls digitally in love with the female avatar, whose player we later learn is a male salaryman. I may be clean from World of Warcraft for more than 7 years now, but that was a scenario that we saw more than often in my gaming days.

The world of the MMO is cute and, like most real MMO, there is nothing special about it. People get levels and get into guilds and the company showers the place with Christmas decorations as soon as the festivities draw near. You have to pay money to play and gamecards are readily available at your closest konbini. Even if we see the players move like real people for the sake of the anime, we are frequently reminded that the interactions are actually a chat and that the players are sitting on a chair looking at a screen.

Even if the art itself is not anything extraordinary, the comedy moments will ring true to gamers and people who have experience playing MMO games. It’s funny, cute, and I had a good time watching it. It even reminded me of my own paladin days in WoW and my explorations of the beautiful scenery in Guild Wars 2.

Jennifer

Recovery of an MMO Junkie is an anime about a woman who didn’t choose the NEET life, the NEET life chose her. Oh no, wait, she DID choose the NEET life. After quitting her job, Moriko Morioka logs into a new online game for the first time, leading to her making friends under her ikemen avatar, Hayashi. One of these friends is a cute pink-haired girl named Lily. The first episode focuses on these two characters getting closer, developing a special relationship. Of course, we know that the cute girl is played by.. a cute guy!

The first episode of Recovery of an MMO Junkie was charming, and Hayashi and Lily were both so pure! The jokes (especially Moriko’s inner-thoughts) were pretty funny and I can relate to her in some ways (although I’m neither a NEET nor a fan of MMOs). I’m looking forward to hopefully learning more about Sakurai (Lily’s player) in the future episodes. The anime isn’t exactly high-budget, so I’m not expecting super smooth animation or orchestral scores, but to me that just adds to its charm.