2018 SF, 12 episodes:
AniDB, in
the same setting as Sword Art Online but sharing no characters with
it. People come to the virtual reality game for various
reasons, and most of them find what they're looking for.
I found the Phantom Bullet arc of Sword Art Online II the
most interesting of that series, mostly for its setting – a modern
tactical combat game rather than the computer-RPG-fantasy of the
original series – and that's what this series is all about. But we get
a new protagonist, Kohi, who has a complex about being too tall; so
when she gets into VR games, she flips through them until she gets a
random avatar that's short and cute.
Which is the origin of Llenn, the Pink Killer Munchkin – who of course
has a massive natural talent for this shooting game. After the
flashback of episodes 2-3, the main narrative is a pair of team battle
royale tournaments with a variety of quirky rules; but really, when
your main winning tactic is "move really fast and burn off an entire
magazine from your pink FN P90 against a single enemy", this clearly
isn't one of those realistic combat games.
It's not by any means the world-shaking quest of original Sword Art
Online, but it's fun in a way that too many series forget to be. And
the original light novels for this spinoff were written by the author
of Kino no Tabi (Kino's Journey); OK, this isn't up to the standard
of that, but it's a lot better than one might expect for a side-story
of an anime series that's already gone through two full seasons and a
variety of spin-offs. There's an attempt to raise the stakes in the
second battle that rings a little false, and if you can't guess who
the Crazy Combat Chick is in the real world you really weren't
paying attention, but overall this is an enjoyable short series.
No word on renewal; the story arc is complete in these twelve
episodes.
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