Spring 2021 First Impressions – Full Dive

Streaming: Funimation

Episodes: 12

Source: Light Novel

Story Summary: 10 years ago VRMMO games reached the peak of realism. However, since people play games to escape reality, it was decided that games should go back to being more game-like. In the ensuing years those games lost much of their popularity. However, that doesn’t stop Hiro, a former member of his high school track team who now spends most of his time gaming, from seeking after the most recent installment of his favorite VRMMO series. After coming up short on funds, he ends up at a shady game store where a bubbly-yet-cunning shopkeeper named Reona dupes him into buying a completely different, older game with his hard-earned funds. Hiro loads it up anyway and is initially pleased with how realistic it is – until he finds he can experience pain and then accidentally kills an NPC. When he finally encounters Reona inside the game, she’s upset to discover that Hiro’s in-game title has already become “Best Friend Killer.”

Impressions: I occasionally like to play video games, but I’m very picky about the ones I spend any major amount of time with. As video game systems have become more and more powerful, with prices to match, I find myself more drawn toward indie games that mimic the aesthetics of yesteryear. It may mostly be my own nostalgia, but I also think of games as a type of art where visual creativity is one of their greatest traits. As the invention of the camera made true-to-life painted portraiture obsolete, artists created visual movements that sought to move beyond 1:1 depictions of reality. Now with the advent of motion capture and facial scanning, I’d rather just play a cute, cartoony game that I’m not constantly forced to compare with reality itself.

I find the premise of this series interesting, because I think it’s probably accurate in how humanity would (will?) eventually react toward ultimate realism in gaming. If there’s no element of escapism from the physical pain and mental boredom of real life, then really what’s the point of logging in? As Hiro hits his knee, and bonks his head, then takes a punch directly to the face with bloody nose and bruising, there’s a side of his brain that marvels at the technological accomplishment of it all and another that recoils at being forced to experience it. I wonder, as more powerful gaming systems are created and character modeling marches ever further toward the uncanny valley, if we’ll eventually decide as a society to go down a wholly different design path.

As much as I find the idea of this story interesting, though, I find other parts of it as annoying as I would have expected from an episode mostly about a guy playing a video game. Hiro definitely isn’t the worst protagonist in all of anime, but his bitterness at his life situation is palpable in a way that, while understandable, just doesn’t elicit a lot of sympathy from me. He’s left adrift after a bad experience on his track team and has really lost his way, which is a scenario that ought to make me feel at least a little bit invested in whatever he does next to address those problems. Yet I can’t fathom what sort of character development he’s supposed to undergo when he spends the first five minutes of his gaming session murdering someone and thus deeply enraging one of the girls in his eventual harem.

Last season in Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki, I feel like there was some good insight into what experience one might be expected to gain from treating life as if it were a game. To summarize, if you’re having a tough time of things it’s easy to blame the game itself for being bad; but oftentimes being willing to put a good faith effort into playing by life’s rules is enough to turn the tides in the right direction. I don’t think that’s universally true, but I did find it insightful. Even though life isn’t fair, if your situation is decent enough there’s a good chance that working to be better will end up paying dividends. But what if life actually is just a shit-tier game? That seems to be what this series is proposing, and while that’s sort of funny to think about, I don’t know that it’s the type of story I’m interested in watching.

Pros: This is honestly a really pretty show. While the game world leans into its realism and thus doesn’t have many fantasy-like settings to show off, the character art is smooth and pretty.

Cons: This is a feeling that’s always difficult for me to quantify and I feel like it’s a criticism I use a lot, but this episode reads as being very cynical to me. I definitely believe that escapism is in order sometimes (heck, I watch a lot of anime) and I also don’t believe that all protagonists have to be upbeat, upstanding citizens with no problems, either. But I’m just not feeling Hiro and his problem-laden life.

I’m also not a fan of outright manipulation, and I feel like Reona really did a bait-and-switch with Hiro’s money. Whatever happens in this series, and I suspect Hiro will eventually end up having fun at some point, I feel like in my mind that doesn’t justify low-key stealing.

Content Warnings: Mild fanservice (a revealing fantasy outfit and an obscured bathing scene). Physical violence, including fist-fighting and a murder involving a knife through the throat. Depiction of financial bullying.

Would I Watch More? – No, I think my plate is already getting full and I’m just not interested in Hiro’s further adventures.