Embracing the Escapism
Sometimes I wished I could muster the courage to leave everything behind, lock myself away forever in an apartment, and devote the rest of my life to a single online role-playing game. In the midst of an enchanted fantasy world full of wonders, dreams and secrets I would transform from a peasant boy into a heroic warrior, find unimaginable treasures and fight monsters, and band together with other outcasts bored with real life to form a sworn adventuring party. My days would be governed by quests, rituals, and leveling, by the pulse of raids, and the slow comfort of companionship the real world denied me. My existence would turn into a digital meaningfulness whose end would arrive only when the servers were switched off.
Moriko Morioka, thirty years old, single, and unemployed, put my dream into practice: An escape from reality. After losing her job she became a NEET, neither working nor studying, and seeking refuge she drifted into the World Wide Web. There she immersed herself in online games and reinvented her life as a young man named Hayashi. As a newcomer she nearly dies in the game but is rescued just in time by a girl called Lily. Through Lily she finds allies she can trust and begins a life online that finally feels fulfilling. Meanwhile, in the real world, she meets a handsome businessman who reminds her of someone she recently encountered. Will that encounter influence the life she has built in the game, and what will become of Moriko’s fulfilled MMORPG life?
Recovery of an MMO Junkie by Rin Kokuyo is one of my comfort anime, even though I am not much for romances and the director involved later turned out to be a disgrace. I still love anime about people living inside online role-playing games like World of Warcraft, Guild Wars 2, or Final Fantasy XIV. Whether it is Sword Art Online, Shangri-La Frontier, or Bofuri: I Don’t Want to Get Hurt, so I’ll Max Out My Defense, I enjoy watching others enact my secret dream: Finding not only the time of their lives but a kind of meaning in an otherwise hollow existence. And perhaps one day I, too, will summon the nerve, like Moriko, to renounce the drab, gray, utterly magic-less reality and finally surrender forever, without regret, to the warm, connected wonder of a digital world.