I’ve been recommended to watch Net-juu no susume, since the protagonist is similar to me for various reasons: her name is Moriko, she’s a 30 years old girl who works for a corporate, but she can’t take the stress and decides to drop out. From that moment, she calls herself “elite neet”, since she voluntary chose to give up that kind of life and be free.

She lives alone and spends her days playing online games, to escape from reality and finally be happier in a word that suits her more.

In this game called “Fruits de mer”, she impersonates a young boy, instead of creating a character who looks similar to her: this choice surprised me a bit, I guess she really wanted to live someone else’s life, changing even her gender. Her character is called Hayashi.

Since he obviously starts from level one, he keeps dying until he meets Lily, a pink-haired girl who saves him and gives him a lot of useful advices which will help him to succeed in his first mission.

At this point, happens something I really don’t get: the protagonist falls in love with the girl.

But why? Maybe is common for japanese girls having crushes on 2D female characters, but since I’m an otome game player, this situations seems a bit weird.

Her feelings seem to be reciprocate, but…….. what would it happen, if the cute Lily was actually a boy, in real life? And if he lived close by?

This is basically what happens in the first episode, I’m not going to spoil more.

What can I say about this anime?

I really appreciate how there’s a slice of life which portrays in a realistic way the lives of young adults, instead of just focusing on high school kids.

The struggle of wanting friends online, but feeling embarrassed of talking about private matters, wondering if you’re going to be judged online too, it’s something I sadly know really well.

I also appreciate the fact that she was so insecure about her appearance, even if boys around her think she’s good looking: it reminds us to not be cruel to ourselves, because we don’t really know what others may think while they look at us; being confident is not easy, but over-thinking makes only everything worse.

I enjoyed this anime a lot, but it felt too short and the ending disappointed me.

Of course, it’s obvious what’s going to happen, so there’s probably no need to show everything; but still, cutting the anime like this makes it feel incomplete.

I wanted to see her being happy and accomplished in real life too, accepting her flaws and overcoming them… even something cliche, like her starting working with Sakurai, would have been good. I guess we can expect that to happen, but…. I wanted to see it, not just imagine it.

It also bothers me that we couldn’t see more of the other character’s life.

What about their friends? One of them is working in supermarket, but the others? Do they live nearby too? I guess not, but I wanted to know more anyway.

In the end, I’d say it was entertaining and original, despite its flaws; I’m grateful I could see more mature characters in anime, and also a difficult theme like this being portrait quite accurately.

I hope this will get a second season!