Review of Recovery of an MMO Junkie

Net-juu no Susume is yet another game-world anime. But it's not an isekai anime, nor is it a gaming anime: It's a relationship anime that happens to use an MMORPG as its primary setting. Net-juu no Susume tackles in-game relationships and how those tie into real life. How an in-game relationship can (and sometimes will) lead to a relationship in real life. It deals with the issues that stem from that, namely the duality of online and offline personas and looks. If you were to ask me whether I liked or hated Net-juu no Susume, it would be a solid "I didn't hate it". They avoided doingsome of the usual trappings of these kinds of shows, while falling into others.

One thing that bothered me throughout the show was "coincidence". A lot of the progress made in the show is due to coincidences, whether it's a slip of the tongue or an unrealistic suspicion. I found these constant coincidences to really strain the suspension of disbelief beyond my tolerance and the show started feeling like fiction and not a good depiction of reality.

Net-juu no Susume stands out not with what it does or has, but what it doesn't and hasn't. There wasn't popping background music that was memorable. In the end, there wasn't that much that happened throughout the show and it feels more like a chapter in a story rather than a complete story. However, the story also didn't inspire confidence that it could pull off a second season, if one were to ever happen. The show also didn't have heavily stereotyped characters, which is a good thing. The characters, for the most part, felt like real people instead of tropes on a checklist.

Net-juu no Susume is not an anime about an exciting, eventful reality. It's an anime about a realistic, sometimes boring reality.