2015 fantasy, light novel adaptation in 13 episodes:
AniDB.
Momonga stays on-line as his favourite VR MMORPG Yggdrasil is shut
down, and finds himself not kicked out but stuck in the game world.
And now the NPCs are acting like people…
Momonga is one of those players, the ones who put in endless
hours and have All the Stuff. The avatar he inhabits is a lich,
basically invulnerable to most attacks, with huge magical abilities
and similarly huge hand-to-hand combat strength. And he has a
stronghold full of high-powered magical items and loyal NPC retainers
(including Battle Maids – well, this is a Japanese series).
That's where it starts to get interesting, as those retainers start
acting like actual people, though still within the parameters of their
defined personalities. One of them is utterly in love with Momonga, to
the point of absolute and total faith in him; most of them have utter
contempt for the low-level humans in the world. After all, they serve
a hugely powerful evil master! But Momonga doesn't want just to have
minions now that the game's NPCs seem real; he aims to become known
across the world and find out if anyone else "real" has managed to
transfer into it.
But it's still a world full of monsters, and human factions that hate
each other; and a super-powerful being that's suddenly stirring rather
than staying in its lair is a disruptive factor, whether he wants to
be or not.
That's a great setup, but sadly in thirteen episodes it's about all of
the main story we get. There are nine light novels in this sequence so
far (it was the most popular light novel series in Japan in 2015), and
there's no time here for anything significant to happen: there are
some minor skirmishes, the most significant being against one of
Momonga's own henchmen who's become possessed, but before you know it
the thing's over, and no plans for a sequel have been announced. Even
plot elements which do make it in here are often skimmed over quickly
rather than delved into at any length.
It's a fascinating world, but it needed to be given at least two or
three times the space to work in. Unless a sequel does get made, all
this really has is ideas.
Comments on this post are now closed. If you have particular grounds for adding a late comment, comment on a more recent post quoting the URL of this one.