「VR×リアル」 (Bui Aaru×Riaru)
“VR⨯Reality”

Oh how I love Wednesdays of late. Why you ask? Because it’s obviously isekai day! Don’t deny, you know it’s true – just look at every other damn Wednesday these past few seasons. Not that it’s much of a problem either given I’m a true masochist connoisseur of this genre, which shows like Full Dive here prove over and over again. This one especially is the same thing we’ve now seen countless times before, but I’ll be damned if I’m not curious about how it’ll turn out. Just slightly curious.

As per the always fruitful RC Preview, Full Dive is pretty much the latest in paint by numbers VRMMORPG tales. You start with your basic bitch dweeby MC Yuuki Hiro (Yamashita Daiki), add in some form of character trait getting him into giving a particular game a try, flavour with a variety of secondary cast and crew, simmer for twenty, and then hope the concoction turns out edible. Harsh? Potentially, but it can admittedly be hard finding intrigue after you’ve seen this concept done plenty of times before.

The good news, however, is that Full Dive doesn’t look to be following the herd too much. Just take Hiro, he may be pretty vanilla at face value, but there’s something to be said for a depressing backstory not overtly thrown in your face or a personality which possesses a modicum of spine. Then comes the game itself of Kiwame Quest which is defined by a crazy focus on feeling pain (no BDSM here I swear! Well, yet) and making the backend quest systems as organic as possible. It’s really nothing which hasn’t already been seen before in some form or another, but it’s enough to give Full Dive a decent running start.

This though leads into where Full Dive is likely to find its primary strength and that is the secondary cast. Simply put, expect plenty of female shenanigans here. Besides Hiro’s introduction to Kiwame Quest via the already chuckle worthy Reona (Taketatsu Ayana), the likes of NPC Alicia (Fairouz Ai) going full crazy over Hiro’s tutorial quest gone wrong (and oh how deliciously wrong it was) and the teasing of some likely fan favourites appearing down the line heavily imply plenty more fun and games on the horizon. While it’s truly anyone’s guess whether such chaos (and rest assured it will be chaos) is enough to keep Full Dive going strong, I will say if the humour at work keeps up and this show doesn’t deviate from its slightly over the top nature that we are likely looking at a decent bit of midweek entertainment here.

I won’t make any predictions on where Full Dive intends on heading, but I’m definitely down to at least finding out what the next couple of episodes bring.

 

ED Sequence

ED: 「キスイダ!」 (KisuIda!) by Reona Kisaragi (Ayana Taketatsu), Alicia by (Ai Fairouz), Mizarisa (Shiori Izawa), Kaede Yuuki (Aoi Koga)

Preview

11 Comments

  1. I’ll give this anime another episode.
    It did give me the lol factor when:
    1.) the under the tree thing with Martin. I really think this is a kind of joke for SAO that relates to Kirito and Eugeo
    2.) “lets heal heal him with herbs. Can’t you tell his dead already!!” that made me laugh.
    3.) Alicia going the red dead redemption

    1. I knew the style sounded similar. Deconstruct an Isekai genre by taking its tropes to its logical, absurd extremes. The series is right: an ultra-realistic VMMORPG would suck.

      The tone and the setting seem to be a bit darker, but that’s a plus in this case, I think.

      Mistic
  2. I’m curious too.

    I must admit I wasn’t too interested in the summary, but the art looked cool and I do like giving a chance to Isekais, video games, and video game Isekais.

    Then that tutorial happened. And now that I’ve learned that this is from the same author as Overly Cautious Hero, consider me intrigued. That series was great fun, and then a certain episode made the whole package look positively clever and dramatic in hindsight. So I want to see what this deconstruction of your usual Virtual Isekais has in store.

    Mistic
    1. What I’m hoping is that the level of crazy we got here can keep up going forward. The characters are already present for it or have already been teased, so it’s a matter of execution.

      I honestly didn’t expect this one to amount to much, but I’ll be damned if it’s not suddenly on my potential blogging list now lol.

Leave a Reply to Mistic Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *