Welcome back guys! Its high time for another anime review from our Anime REvisited pick; And You Thought There Is Never A Girl Online. With it being the third episode of the series we’re pretty much out of the introductory phase, so now comes the sustained challenge of the members of the main cast helping Ako (Tamaki) distinguish between the game, and reality. Let’s see how that’s going, shall we?

Kicking off the third episode Rusian meet up with Nekohime; the magical catgirl who says that she’s actually a guy in his 40’s in real life. It appears that Rusian (Hideki) is pretty much ok with the fact that despite Nekohime’s real-life identity as a dude in his 40’s, he still thinks she’s cute – though that might change later. Back at school Hideki and the others are having their usual L.A. gaming sessions as they head to a mountain full of fire and fire golems; battling against them and collecting EXP, loot, and whatnot.

Midway through the episode Hideki chats with Ako in hopes that she’s starting to understand that the game and reality are two different things. He just wants to be friends in real life and tries to remind her to call him by his real name, and not his game name. Although it’s still a challenge it seemingly looks like slight progress has been made, however a sudden dilemma occurs as the class president Kyo tells the net gaming club members (Hideki, Ako, and Akane) that without an advisor for the club, its legitimacy is in jeopardy. With that in mind Hideki asked Ako to meet with him at the gaming club in one big last attempt to help her differentiate between L.A. and reality. (Prior to this he asked Nekohime for advice on how to help Ako with this issue as well.)

It backfired terribly; as Ako accused Rusian (NOT Hideki) of cheating on her with another woman, due to him confronting her about her gaming addiction. This is usually the time after the intervention, where you hope to God that the other party (with the addiction) doesn’t do anything irrational; or anything that’ll put them in prison! In this case; Ako states that she has some ‘important business’ to attend to after meeting up with Rusian and the others in-game, which raises some red flags for the crew IRL.

Near the end of the episode Hideki still can’t seem to grasp why Ako doesn’t understand the difference between the game and reality, but after some assurance from Akane and Kyo about him stepping up and going after Ako because he genuinely cares for her (and concerned for her safety), Hideki races to the place where he initially met Ako. He tells her that as his in-game husband he doesn’t approve of her offline meeting, but it turns out the person that Ako is meeting wasn’t a man, but it was actually his homeroom teacher – who was a woman. Not just any woman, but Hideki’s homeroom teacher Ms. Sato (aka Nekohime).

After realization hit Hideki in the face that he, in fact, purposed to his homeroom teacher, Ako confronts her and appears to take out some kind of weapon and lunges at her; not realizing that due to the line between fantasy and reality being blurred in her mind, that she could be criminally charged with assault and battery. (That is if Ms. Sato hadn’t close-lined her.) Needless to say, Ako is a work in progress…we hope.

Other than another member of the cast being introduced (somewhat) and Ako still having issues, there’s not a whole lot that happens in this episode. The content is relatable, as some of us may have been in Ako’s shoes at some point in time. MMO’s and video games are awesome, but we gotta remember that even though we hate it, adulting is something that we eventually got to do. We’re not saying you gotta be an adult 24/7, but if you’re able to find that balance while still enjoying life, then you’re doing it right…we hope.

That will do it for our episode review, but as always there is still more content to come from us at D&A! Until next post, stay nerdy! 😉