There was once a legendary party named Subaru in the globally popular MMORPG Union. The group was made of elementary school friends. They earned fame in the blink of an eye for their unparalleled abilities in the Sense system at the core of the game. However, there was an incident where a player passed away inside the game. As a result of the death, Union ended service. Six years pass. Haruto Amō, who was a key member of Subaru, has become a hopeless high school student. His personality has changed, and he has no friends or ambition. A classmate gets him to log in to the new Re’Union game, and he ends up having a “reunion” that is hard to believe. He meets his former in-game partner and real-world childhood friend Asahi Kuga. The girl who was supposed to have died six years ago was there. – ANN
Streaming: Amazon Prime Video
Episodes: TBA
Source: Light Novel
Episode 1 Summary: “Union” is one of the world’s most popular MMORPGs, and the Subaru guild is known as one of the best groups of players within its world. Each member has their own special skill set that meshes well with the other team members strengths. They all also happen to know each-other in the real world and share a tight bond of friendship with each other. The group catches wind of a new, intense challenge in the game, one which has destroyed several other players. The consequences of losing to the final boss include perma-death – a permanent “game-over” for their characters. Though the stakes are high Haruto, a brash fighter and the de-facto guild leader, urges everyone to take on the challenge and they’re all excited to attempt the quest. Their attempt seems like it might be successful because they all reach the final boss room with ease. Very soon, though, the group is overwhelmed by the power of their opponent; even Asahi, a group member with foresight, is unable to anticipate the laser beam that fells her. Her game-over is bad enough, but there are also real-life consequences to her in-game death; soon after the rest of the group logs out, they find out that Asahi has died of heart failure in her home. Haruto receives much of the blame, as it was his idea to attempt the quest in the first place.
Several years later, Haruto catches wind of the fact that Union has been rebooted as “Re’Union” and the new game is highly exclusive. There are incredible rewards for those who reach the upper echelons of game play, and not everyone is even allowed to log in. Though in the ensuing six years Haruto has become a pained and sullen teenager, he’s talked into playing again by some acquaintances who want to use him to gain access to a special area. It’s all child’s play to Haruto, and he doesn’t expect much to come of it when they reach the treasure at the end, but inside the chest is something highly unexpected – Asahi’s player avatar, awaking from a very long slumber.
Impressions: There have been a rash of MMO-centric anime series over the past few years, and as a gamer with different tastes most of them have missed me. It’s not an insult against the genre so much as it is a declaration that I’ve never been entirely interested in the stories it has to tell. Me saying “I wasn’t interested in this show beforehand and I’m really not any more interested in it now” shouldn’t even be a surprise to most people. But in this case I feel as though the story has some additional problems in the telling that I found very bothersome.
One of my storytelling pet peeves in anime (and any other medium, to be honest) is “dead girl as man’s motivation.” When the shortcut for providing a male character with a tragic backstory and motivation is “kill the girl he likes,” you’ve already just about lost me as a viewer. There are isolated cases where I feel like the trope is used in a less-terrible way (Erased comes to mind – at least the dead mother was present throughout the story via other means and ultimately survives when the correct conditions are met), but more often it feels like a cheap and economical way to build drama and provide pathos to a character who otherwise might not be genuinely deserving of such extreme audience sympathy. In the case of this series, young Haruto is brash and motivated by his own desire to have fun and be the best (like a lot of kids). It’s the utter tragedy of his friend’s death (which isn’t a surprise – even four or five minutes into the episode there are death flags cropping up like dandelions) that turns him into a snarky, antisocial jerk. It’s joyless and disingenuous.
I feel like there’s also something to be made of the fact that Asahi reappears in Haruto’s life as the treasure in a treasure chest. This has all sorts of weird implications, all of which are troublesome to me as a viewer. Rather than sulk another day, Haruto chooses to humor his friends and log into the Re’Union game; this doesn’t require a lot of physical effort, but for someone who’s clearly depressed it can drain a lot of mental and emotional energy. So in going outside his comfort zone he’s rewarded with a “prize” – a girl (perhaps a copy of a girl) we don’t know well, whose life was brief and who was mostly defined by having feelings for Haruto and then dying. AnoHana managed to take a similar character and fill in the blanks pretty well, but I don’t know if this series has the chops to provide enough character depth to someone who was easily thrown away in the quest for emotional manipulation. When the only other significant female presence in this episode is from another girl who also feelings for the hero and is tsundere, I wouldn’t be too quick to assume a favorable outcome.
I do want to say something more positive about this episode, because as much as I’m critical of its treatment of certain characters, at worst I think it’s roughly middling. I really do enjoy the aesthetic of the game world and honestly think Asia has us beat when it comes to incorporating cuteness and color into video game settings (over here in the USA we’re too busy using shades of brown and being hard-core and gritty). I also do appreciate the slight mystery element to the story. There are some immediate questions about Asahi’s presence that I’m genuinely slightly interested in seeing answered. I’m curious whether her consciousness was retained somehow within the game, or if the new Asahi is some kind of copy, what her purpose is. It reminds me a bit of one of things that Den-noh Coil, Ghost in the Shell or Lain posited – could we at some point attain an existence that isn’t reliant on a physical body, and what are the potential consequences doing so? I think even wrapped in this anime’s package, it’s an interesting thing to consider.
You can probably tell from my over-long summary up top that a lot of “stuff” happens throughout the episode; it felt much longer than it actually was just because there was a clear focus on getting through a certain amount of material so that the first episode climaxed in a huge reveal. The problem is that my satisfaction with anime is based less on the amount of things that happen and more so on how those things make me feel, and I ultimately didn’t feel very strongly about the setting, characters, or story. It’s a shame because I think this series aims to take a slightly different angle with the “trapped in a video game” story, it’s just held back by its reliance on being not great to young women and placing an angst-factory in the central role.
Pros: I like the aesthetics of the video game world. I’m curious to know the circumstances of Asahi’s appearance.
Cons: The first episode has a problem with the way in which young women are utilized. The protagonist isn’t very sympathetic.
Grade: C-