Hey all, sorry that this was such a belated first impression review. (I at least managed to get the review out before the second episode aired, whew!)
With that out of the way, I have to be a bit frank about my current situation. I admittedly feel a bit burnt out on anime reviewing. I am also planning to move into a new place fairly soon, and am still juggling work and job searching on top of that. These factors make me very reluctant to take on a show to review and blog all the way through to the end. I simply don’t have as much free time as I used to. There are still a few anime episodes I need to check out before making my final decision, so there is a chance I may stick to reviewing something but just make my posts much briefer. However, if you don’t see me around in the next couple of weeks… then that basically means I’ve taken a break. Don’t worry–I’ll still be back by the end of the season for another big round-up review post no matter what ends up happening.
Summary:
Masato is a high school kid who doesn’t have the best relationship with his mom. After completing a strange survey (we’re not told how he got the survey in the first place, just roll with it); he gets scouted out by a supposed game company and is unceremoniously plopped into a fantasy game world. Masato is ecstatic about this… until he finds out that his mom has also followed him into the game world.
The two are quickly given a run-down of the game by a designated NPC character, and are allowed to choose their weapons. Mamako (Masato’s mom) somehow manages to acquire two ridiculously overpowered weapons. And thus the two’s adventures in a fantasy world begins.
My Opinion:
Before the summer anime season started, I was pretty interested in this series. I had heard a lot of hype for it before there was even word of an anime, and it was a fairly new concept for the isekai genre. After having watched this first episode however… I feel like my expectations for the show should have been a lot lower.
I had suspected that this was a show aimed at otaku dudes who had a MILF fetish, but I was still (stupidly) hoping that this would in actuality be a more heartwarming type of anime without the creepy crap. I was wrong. Oh boy was I wrong. Mamako’s entire character feels very uncomfortable to me. Despite being a woman who would at least be in her 30s, she pouts and talks and looks like a teenage girl. Despite being a fully adult woman who has years of worldly experience compared to her son, she’s portrayed as a bit of an idiot and an airhead. She’s also unusually clingy with her son, and the way she acts around him feels more appropriate (imo) for a sister character or (more sickeningly) a girlfriend…
Anime, please don’t. Please do not ship a 15 year old boy with his own freaking MOM.
Since we’re on the topic of Masato, our designated protagonist, let’s talk about Masato. To be blunt, he’s kind of a shithead. He treats his mom horribly. He physically shoves his mom away from him, he keeps telling her to shut-up, he claims that he’ll disown her… the list goes on and on. We’re given some half-assed reason through an awkwardly placed inner monologue, about how Masato only acts this way because he’s embarrassed by his mom or something (embarrassed about WHAT exactly???). And okay, I do sort of get it. Teenagers at that age tend to be intensely ashamed of their parents, and Mamako is really annoyingly clingy. But for how much she cares about him and how nice she is, Masato’s treatment of his mother seems almost cruel.
Even if this anime didn’t have all this creepy stuff (like the above mentioned potential incest angle, and all the close-up shots of Mamako’s huge chest), this… still wouldn’t be all that great of an anime. The first episode was extremely boring, as it was just one big exposition fest. There were also some lame jokes about MMORPGs throughout the episode, that I feel like I’ve already seen in many other isekai anime. The animation isn’t anything spectacular, and even feels lazy in some parts. (Boring samey backgrounds, scenes where the only thing animated are the characters’ lip flaps, etc.)
The tone of this series also feels “off.” Long story short, there’s a scene towards the end of the episode where Masato gets mad about his mom keeping some secrets from him regarding the game that they’re in, and Masato yells that he’ll disown his mom if she doesn’t tell him the truth. This affects Mamako really badly, and she starts crying. Upon seeing this, Masato starts feeling bad and apologizes to his mom, and she forgives him. This was likely meant to be a really touching or heartwarming scene but… it goes by so quickly that much of the impact is lost. The episode spent so much time explaining boring game mechanics to us, yet won’t even give a (supposedly) emotional scene the gravitas it deserves??? Geeze.
Apart from the main gimmick of the anime (of a protagonist and his mom being sucked into a game world), I did find the that the NPCs awareness of being in a game to be a little bit innovative. Unfortunately, this small bit of creativeness is not enough to balance out the sheer discomfort I felt while watching this first episode. I think it’s really disturbing that an anime mom has to be infantilized this much to be appealing to dudes, but I digress.
Out of five, I give:
Moeronpan 