Back to himali's Profile himali's Profile

"Netoge no Yome wa Onnanoko ja Nai to Omotta?" (it means "And you thought there is never a girl online?") is based on the light novel written by Shibai Kineko, illustrated by Hisasi.

As shown in the title, the show depicts a romantic relationship in the online game. Since the most popular light novel, Sword Art Online successed at business, light novel and web-novel depicting the online games has been increasingly published for several years.

The main protagonist, Hideki Nishimura has been playing the MMO RPG Legendary Age as a male avatar named Rucian. Once, he was dumped by the female avatar named 'Neko-Hime' after he ... confessed his love to her. She said that she was a man and in general a player of a girl-look avatar was almost never a real woman. So, Hideki was broken-hearted very shockingly.

He sweared off marriage in online game. He thought there is never a girl online.

A few years later, another Legendary Age player, Ako Tamaki, is really persistent and then he accepts offer onlinegame-marriage. So, he meets up with his guild members including Ako in the real world and he is surprised by the fact that they are all girls and students attending the same school.

Ako is a online addict confusing onlinegame-marriage with real-marriage.She begins to call him his avatar's name 'Rucian' and behaves as if they were a newly-married couple at school. Her behavior cause the confusion among Hideki and other guild members.

Hideki, Ako and other members make up the new club to play online games together after school to have little by little Ako realize that 'Rucian' is different from Hideki. They spend more time together both at online game and at offline school.

Why does Ako believe that onlinegame-marriage is the same as the real marriage? Is she crazy? -- No. Her behaviors and thoughts are based on her experience that she had no enjoyable things in the real world and she had many enjoyable things in the online game.

As modern society becomes more complex, it becomes more difficult for young people to feel a sense of accomplishment. But, it is easier for online game players to feel it because goals of online game are very simple and clear. Also, they feels a feelings of solidarity each other throught in-game quests or in-game adventures.

It might be one of reasons that novels depicting online game player (and animes based those novels) are increasing in Japan.