The Library of Amestris

This may be your anime if you are looking for a straightforward slice of life with cute characters. There is some humor, but I personally don't find it particularly funny, at least, as other options out there -cof cof... Konosuba cof cof-. Indeed, if I have to describe this anime, I would just say that it is like a cookie dough made from Konosuba and K-On, all mixed in a mug and put in the microwave for five minutes. In other words, delightful if you are in the mood, but otherwise, you should just instead buy real cookies in a bakery or put bake the cookies in your oven instead of your microwave.

Another Isekai: The protagonist, Maple, is introduced to a new VRMMO, called "NewWorld Online." The only exciting concept here is that Maple is a noob, but with a noob, I really mean noob of the kind that smashes the keys of the control while playing smash bros brawl with Kirby. Accordingly, she placed all her skill points in defense, as the title of the anime literally describes. As you may imagine, the whole plot, after that, is that Maple made a broken character by mistake: a Mobile Fortress-type Rookie.

Is this pay to win?

Don't you hate when your friend kicks your ass with Kirby, and everyone laughs about the irony? Well, that is basically this anime. I didn't dislike the first two episodes. It was quite enjoyable watching Maple in the first battle royal. It was super predictable, but that is okay. I smiled while I was watching, and Maple is okay. In the second episode, we are also fully introduced to the second character, Sally. She is a bit more charismatic than Maple, and it was interesting to see how a pro would play the same game. Yet, it did not reach the level of an exciting conflict or plot. The humor was not particularly funny, as I mentioned above.

Something was missing in those two episodes. I have watched slice of life series in the past; for instance, Toradora is one of my favorite animes of all time. Indeed, I like the chill atmosphere in this anime genre, but also some conflict that connects the episodes. This conflict is usually some love interest or ultimate goal. I found no friction, which made the anime a bit disappointing and annoying. Of course, both Maple and Sally want to advance in the game, but it would be an unsweetened conflict. That is not a goal, that is a mean. Yes, we were introduced to the fact that Sally is some kind of MMO champion in League of Legends or something like that, which was a bit interesting, but not enough to catch us with this anime.



The final point that I want to address is a critic against the last isekais that have been released. Why the World is always SO GENERIC. Sometimes I feel that the previous 20 isekai animes that I have watched are placed in the same fucking place -the only thing that I found interesting about this World is that the cover of the game actually looked like the cover of a final fantasy franchise game. Besides that, it was just a random fantasy world-. I don't even remember if the main town has a name or something. During these two episodes, we only learned that the World is separated in levels and that there is a town, a cave, and a forest in the first level. Lol. Furthermore, the first town just looks like any other fantasy town stealing the typical architecture of Prontera (Ragnarok Online). There is also a mountain that has a dungeon with a random dragon, I guess.

 You can even see that publishers are having problems to market these productions, resulting in this ridiculous names like "I hate being in pain, so I think I'll make a full defense build,"That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime,"A returner magic should be special,"Who said that dating my party member who is an orc would be a bad idea?" (my friend Farfaramir made up this name, in fact, I think that it would be a great plot).

 In conclusion, watch this anime if you like kawai girls grinding a very generic MMO with OP characters. Otherwise, follow my advice and watch Konosuba and K-ON. I may be wrong. I understand that there are manga and some kind of visual novel, so I hope that the next episodes will be more enjoyable.