English Dub Review: Recovery Of An MMO Junkie “We Don’t Know A Thing”

Shoujo manga turns the corner encounters.

Overview:

The guild members try to find out Moriko’s true age, and she ends up going off a misunderstanding. Lily tells her about what happened to their guild in the past. After getting sick, Moriko ends up literally bumping into an attractive stranger and struggles to send him an e-mail reply.

Our Take:

The first thing about Recovery of an MMO Junkie– this is one of the few shows that actually dare to say that the lifestyle of a NEET (Not in Education, Employment, or Training- basically those not in school, working, or seeking work) isn’t a positive thing. A lot of anime these days play into the idea that being a NEET is okay, or at least a cute and quirky thing if the NEET in question is a girl. Because it’s totally fine to not have a job or want one, ever! Rarely do these anime go into the psychology of why people end up taking that position— but instead just act as simple validation? A fair chunk of their audience consists of male NEETs, after all.

Moriko categorizes herself as an ‘Elite-NEET’, but as much as she seems to take pride in it herself, she is reluctant to tell her guildmates the truth. This implies that she’s not as proud of her status as she appears. She’s not proud of her age, and she’s not proud of her NEET status, so she lets assumptions and misunderstandings continue, rather than tell the truth. She doesn’t go out a lot and doesn’t go shopping, which makes her nearly starve. The lifestyle of someone so isolated isn’t glamorous, and it’s a good move that it’s not made to be.

She has a chance encounter with Sakurai, after running into him in a cliche turn the corner shoujo manga encounter. It’s an extreme meeting, but she needs something extreme to snap her out of her lifestyle. Hopefully, this will launch Moriko into an arc where she is forced to interact with people outside of her circle. Even if Sakurai is implied to be Lily’s player, he still has a job and is a salaryman. Regardless of whether this ends up being true or not, he’s made an impact on her and forces her to be more social.