AWTY 204 - Cheesums Please Call (Recovery of an MMO Junkie)

How the heck am I supposed to know how other girls feel? I don't know when I am one. I'm never gonna lose my virginity as a man. Wait, that's obvious.

Hello, and welcome to our weeb area in exploration and education and anime. I'm your anime idiot. Patrick.

Do you get I'm an anime expert, dee hollander.

And I'm brenda mccullough, your anime tank support. But I'm clean for seven years. Check my toes. No tracks.

Toes.

That, my friends, is a heroin joke. People would check people's arms for heroin so they would inject it between their toes.

Thanks.

You're welcome.

I only know that from the Simpson.

I know that from going to upper middle class white suburban high school. It's the most drugs I've ever seen in my life. How annabelle?

Well, good. We're on a great start here.

Doing good.

Doing really great. What are we watching this week?

I was like, how do I make a segue out of heroin? The only heroin I need is a powerful woman in an. This week we're watching a recommendation from Stephen Moore. We're watching the recovery of an mmo junkie.

Thank you.

I blew a hole in the ship and I said, Duke and what are you doing? Why are you trying to shove out the water? Just let it go down. I apologize. Come on.

We're 30 seconds into this. You can already let it crash and burn.

I apologize. This one's on me this week.

Is this a show either of you are familiar with?

I feel like I've heard the title, but I don't know anything about it.

Yeah, this one I believe my old company actually worked on because I know I saw a lot of reports of this title going around and, boy, howdy was there a lot of shit to fix.

Ain't that just the way?

Like, a lot of things you may have worked on. If it regards media, you work on it so much and you pull your hair out that you never want to see it again. So I not watch this one, though.

Thanks. Thank you for that.

You're welcome. You're welcome.

Well, I also did I forget the name? And I love the show. The one about making anime that calls both of you flashbacks.

Chero. baco.

Giro baco. The movie is coming out soon. I love it.

Hell.

But I know I'd like to think.

It is just a movie about them making that movie. And it is the most metaphysics just a documentary.

Yeah. It's all live. Like, there's no animate. You never see a single frame of animation. It's all it's like live.

That one episode of chowder where they lose the money for animation.

They have to do a car wash to get the money back.

You know that bit? It's a good bit.

It's a good bit. Anyway, I know as much about the show as the title suggest.

Great. We're all doing great.

Do either of you, since none of us really know too much about it. And it was a recommendation. Do either of you have mmo experiences?

No. I had a friend who played Maple Story, so I tried to get into that but never did. And we had Worlds of warcraft on our computer, but also never could get into it. I think I was too young, like, almost too young to really get into them.

Bless you. Kind of bless your youth.

Yeah, I think I was in the similar boat of, like, World of warcraft came out and I was ten, so not when you typically want your child to be hanging out with strangers online.

Unfiltered Internet.

I have flirted with some mmos, just, you know, casually. I slightly got into Elder scrolls online for a minute and then could not keep up. And then it got too sammy.

The.

Beautiful gem of Fallout 76. I put way too much time into that because there had to be a point where it got started.

Right.

It's a fallout game. So I wasted probably 100 hours in that. Here I am now, trying not to let my life get eaten by elite dangerous.

Oh, boy. I dug my toes in quite a bit. Had good old runescape in middle school where someone's like, hey, this is a cool game. I played with everyone else, started at the same level. Next week, I was level 40 and completed all three Club penguin count.

Yes, absolutely.

I used Club penguin and gaia online, which was I only really used the forums, but it was adjacent.

It was there.

Yeah, but I had a boyfriend on Club penguin and you mentioned runescape. Hold on a second.

Well, we digging into something.

He stopped using Club penguin and I noticed and one day I saw that one of our mutual friends was online, so I went to their igloo and I was like, hey, whatever happened to this guy? And they were like, oh, he only plays runescape now.

Abandoned. She's starting young.

It's fine. Hey, if you're listening and you had the name cheesem on Club penguin, first.

Off, what's telling her name?

I'm getting married in two weeks.

It's too late for you, Mr. chants punk.

Unless it's Paul. I think we've talked about it.

We sorted that out. Like, date one.

Sorry. Between you and Paul, I think Club penguin has come at least once in.

Your interrupted your online legacy print.

It's no surprise that I don't enjoy the outside world or interacting face to face with anyone. That's why I got them on a podcast. So, yeah, I had runescape. I burnt through all the free to play stuff within, like, a week. Terrifying. All of my friends did Lord of the Rings online. I played a wizard who, to cast spells, you had to sacrifice your own hit points, which is, in my opinion, a terrible gaming system.

That's a bad mechanic.

I'm a glass cannon and I'm chipping away parts of me and throwing the glass at the enemies. You die a lot? Elder shows online. Same. Pretty good. Got real same real quick. World warcraft I did the tutorial, went to the first city, walked off a cliff and immediately died. Never cleaned it again.

Great.

My big bad was City of Heroes. I put a good couple of years in there. Stayed up till 05:00 a.m. skipping school to attend a virtual wedding as a 14 year old on hand. My favorite story, my mom woke up to go to work and she said, what are you still doing up? I said, I'm not going to school today. And she said, Fair. Yeah. City Heroes put a lot of time with that. Another bad gaming design. When you died in that, you got debt for your experience. So if you died, you had to work twice as hard to get out of debt. Like real life. It sucked.

Yuck.

Yeah.

That's where bezos actually started out in the industry.

Oh, boy. That's where City of villains came from. Also a real game. Not as good, but yeah. To no one's surprise, I played a lot of games. But enough about me. No one wants to hear.

Yeah. Shall we all gather up? Everyone ready? Up? We're about to start the race.

It's.

Oh, boy. You'd think I would have thought of a better thing after I flubbed our first comeback, but nope, I'm sticking with that one. Hi, we're back from break. Yes, again, technically, but you didn't hear it.

Once again, I appreciate the commitment to the bit.

Best part is dugan edited so dugan could fully not reference stuff. We're cutting out.

It's almost like it's detrimental to the.

Show, but I applaud you.

It's good to be real.

We're the real anime podcast.

We're going to show you the behind the scenes stuff that the other anime podcast doesn't want you to know.

The raw shit.

We're the Joe rogan of anime podcasts. Meaning we're unreliable and a bad influence. Well, I am not in the same regard as Joe rogan. I am sane.

But anyway, starting episode one, joe rogan walks home. Oh, that's why he's our star.

He's the protagonist of this animal.

So we see a woman walking home. She has some flowers. where'd she get those? Don't worry, it does not matter. She goes into her studio apartment. It's very barren. And she immediately throws the flowers away and flops on the bed and passes out when a relatable start to an anime already. So she wakes up the next morning, her alarm goes off. She freaks out for a second, and we're like, oh, she's late for school, boy. But she looks at her phone and she's like, well, I don't need that alarm anymore because I don't go to work anymore. Oh, an adult not immediately rushing to her first meeting of the mmo Club.

Just ain't throw this bingo card out. Not going to need half of this anymore.

So she gets up, sits at her computer, and is like, okay, it's been, like, six months, but my old trusty mmo nantar sg is there for me. She logs in service discontinues.

Oh, man.

Beans.

So typical. They sell it as a service, but once they release nantar sg Two, it immediately drops, looks at it, overwatch. So she has to Google, all right, what's the hot new game? And finds out. It's a game called Fruits dimmer.

Classic.

I respect the names of mmos in this because they are nonsense.

Like, mmo names are yeah, they're like, nothing is going to be clean and elegant if they can't get it right in the real world. You can't hold us to those standards.

Exactly.

So this is maurico morioka. She is a 30 year old elite neat. She's a shuddin. She's a nerd, and she recently dropped out of the corporate world, so she can game full time. How does she get money? Don't worry about it.

That's what I was thinking. I was like, she must have been making so much money at her job.

If she can do this now, retire.

Because the passage of time in this is quite a bit, it seems like. So my first thought is like, oh, severance. She's just going through the depression of getting laid off, but no time certainly passes. She makes her character, she makes a cute boy and names him hayashi. She talks about how she put way too much effort into the name, but she's a level one, little cute haired, green haired boy. And it's confusing because every other boy has green hair but slightly different shades. So you can't even say green hair boy because it's which one?

I didn't notice. But yeah, now that you say that, that's weird.

That's true.

Yeah. hayashi is more blue. And just we'll get it out there. Gender will flip around a little bit because we are talking about the very CIS thing of playing as other gendered characters online and putting way too much stock into it.

In your real life, it's super not gay, super not, like, exploring your don't worry about it.

Just don't worry about it.

Don't even think about it.

Sweats and don't finish your thoughts.

Sweats and female monster hunter character. I have 130 hours.

Brenton will talk. Yeah. Starting out at level one, hayashi starts questing but immediately is stuck on a mouse boss and is just getting his ass kicked. So he keeps getting bumped to the lobby because he keeps dying. And we see a cute girl ask if he's okay. So we keep cutting in and out of the game. So we see Marco sitting at her computer being like, oh, my God, this girl is so cute.

Again, I'm not going to examine this.

And this is lily, who will become a friend. And she's like, hey, you're bad at this, so let's go for a walk. How about instead of immediately hitting your head against the big boss. What if we appreciate the scenery, pick some weeds, get xp that way. How about you get good scrub and immediately adopts him, being like, hey, I'm going to coach you because you are clearly lost on your so they keep grinding through the early game, and thankfully we don't get twelve episodes about it. We cut to, hey, you're getting the hang of this. Oh, you're level eight now. You can finally take on that boss again. So they go through about to get his ass kicked one more time, but lily is there to heal and place support. And he can finally beat it. Cut off his dumb mouse head. So he gets the silver sword. So he finally has like, a real weapon for the game. And they also get a chest with gold and matching bracelets. And lily's like, oh, yeah, you can equip these now, but you can swap them out. And he's like, oh, no, I'm going to cherish these forever because there are matching bracelets.

I was hesitant at first, but it's around here. I checked off the gay because you don't get that full committed without feeling something.

And I do appreciate that. Morico is pretty much just like, this girl is so fucking cute and I think I really like her. It's not a big thing. She's just like, yes, girls, girls, girls, girls.

Yeah. Because it's also not like, oh, well, I got to role play this guy. I need to keep my identity secret at this point. So it's not like overly leaning into it. You'll never catch the scent that I am also a woman. We see them, Morico, outside of the game, having a fun time. Hey, I'm finally clicking with a game again. And, oh, boy, it's like 04:00 a.m.. It's bedtime. So we have our commercial brake bumper and we join in and we see them flirting underwater. They're in a cnm. It's so closed quarters. We got a cuddle. And we also see that outside the game, Morico is becoming super invested. She fully upgraded her computer and gaming setup just for this. And she's level 82.

Double screens.

Yes, two monitors, RGB light, full gamer. I also have friends.

We see them in the game, still underwater, and oh, weird, there's white stuff falling. Oh, it's snowing. Oh, what a bad programming choice for me to pick this because it's Christmas time. gosh dang it the holiday we're currently celebrating in our world. It's lining up so perfectly. Glad we burned a very infinite resource of Christmas themed animes.

Rich.

Well, so they're starting out the Christmas events, and as they're meeting up one day, hayashi is like, oh, sorry, I got to run some errands, and starts avoiding lily. What's this about the trauma, the sudden change. So we meet up with hayashi's guildmates in a tavern. They're all chatting. Very refreshing. Hey. Yeah, just we time jumped. You have friends now. We don't need long drawn out explanations. Of who each person is and their thing.

Don't need one episode per meeting. Then?

Oh, God, the joy. I will say real quick. One of them says, like, oh, yeah, I stopped by at an Internet cafe after work because my commute is 3 hours. What do you mean your commute is 3 hours? And you're just like killing oh my God, how do you live?

Yeah, because it wasn't like, yeah, I'm waiting out traffic, it sounds like. Yeah, so since it's 3 hours, I go an hour and a half stop and play games for 10 hours, then go another hour and a half is how he made it sound.

And I also think, don't they say that he's married or something? Do they allude to that?

I think so, yeah.

So that's also like, hey, your partner is waiting for you at home.

It's a real casual line, applies nowhere to the rest of the story. But that just really hit me hard. I was like, what are you doing? How do you live your life?

Yeah. So the friends are reminiscing about how hayashi was just such a noob and how you're finally up to our level. And then we see one of them. He may seemingly like the gay older brother of him.

I love him.

He sees lily drinking alone at the bar and goes over to her, is like, hey, why so glum? She's like, oh, well, I was hanging out with hayashi and he seems to be avoiding me, and I guess I'm just so annoying and doesn't want to hang out with me anymore. And he may is like, okay, I'll figure out what's going on. So he may talks to the guildmaster to figure it out as well. The smallest green haired guy. So, yeah, hayashi and the guildmaster go out on a quest alone, and they're like, hey, we just want to chat. Do you know what's up with you and lily? I mean, first off, there is a romance policy in the guild, so I'm not pushing you in that direction or anything, but since you two are clearly in love and want to figure out what's up, even though it is against the rules and I'm kind of the rules guy, we do want you to fall in love.

They are rooting for you.

But he's like, yeah, so you have a good thing going. lily, being a very cute avatar, gets harassed by a lot of creep, so it's really hard to tell anyone's true gender in this game. Right, bro? Right? My brother, dude, my bro. My bro. And crime chest bump, bro.

What up? Yeah. Part of her hand shut.

Yes, we see morrie Coast starting to freak out as she's like, oh, they're onto me up. But ayashi is like, oh, well, it's almost Christmas, and I'm doing Christmas shopping. I'm trying to grind to get a rare crystal rose drop, and I don't want her to help me get her thing and I also don't want to buy her a thing that doesn't show any meaningfulness because we're just casual friends. And then they're attacked in the dungeon. They're in by a giant boar because they're still playing a video game. So we cut away to lily sitting in a tree, and hayashi finds her and climbs up. He's all beat up, so she heals them. They have such a good, dynamic girl healer.

What a nuance.

Revolutionary.

So lily asks, like, hey, I know you've been avoiding me. I know I'm probably getting in your way because you're getting much better than me. And moroccan outside of the game is like, god, as a girl, I don't know how to talk to girls again. I'm not going to lose my man virginity. These are normal, CIS things to think. But he's like, hey, sorry, I know I've been distant, but what are your plans for Christmas Eve? I want to give you something. And we cut away, and we see a new character. We see a man leaving his office on Christmas Eve, talking with a coworker, saying, hey, what are your plans? He's like, oh, I'm meeting up with someone. You know, a friend. It's not like a date or anything. We see Marco at home. She's out of food, has to go get something. Naturally. It's Christmas Eve, so I have to deal with all these couples shopping and being out in public. So she's just trying to buy some Christmas chicken. And her classic rumbling so loud.

The classic Christmas fried chicken leg.

Love it. Keep doing. You, Japan. So she's standing in line to check out her stomachs rumbling, and she's like, I'm so embarrassed. No one is thinking about anything else but my stomach right now. And there's that one piece of chicken left. You know what's going to happen. You know what's going to happen. We see him in line at a different register. They get up there at the same time. He looks over, sees she has a card for fruits, demur coins, and her checkout cart. And they both, at the same time, order the chicken. And they make eye contact, and her stomach rumbles. And he's like, oh, shit. You're way hungrier than me. No, you can have it. And then she takes it, and she runs away, and it's like, oh, that was so embarrassing. I will never return there again. So close.

So close.

But they join in game. lily's dressed up in a cute Christmas costume and gives her rose brooch. And she's all embarrassed because she only got him, like, a bought thing from the store. And that's where we end episode one.

Yeah, they don't really talk, but he sees the gift card in her bag for the mmo they play. If I ever saw someone with a gift card for the same mmo I played, I'd rather walk in front of a bus than ever speak to them in person. If we're both playing City heroes for seven years. We never talk to me.

Oh, yeah. It is such a gamble. You're not going to have a Meat Cute of, hey, you're a random person who also plays wow. In 2022. You must be a real cool person I want to hang out with all the time.

What are the chances that they both live in the same city in Japan?

So we do get the rare opening for episode one, and we get the ending. And the ending does imply that we never see it in these three episodes, but that the cashier at that store is also a player, and it's just like the coincidence.

Yeah.

My guild members in cdr were in Australia.

Wow.

Like, other side of the country. It's never the dude in your neighborhood.

Yeah. So in episode two, we start with hayashi fighting a very round, dragon looking monster, kind of a dragonite vibe, with another member of the guild. Her name is lilac, and they defeat it. hooray. She comments on the fact that no one else is online during the day because every other member of the guild are, like, older and have jobs. And she starts to say, Speaking of jobs, and Morico is all worried that lilac is about to call hayashi out for being a neat, but she just asks if he's a student. Since everybody plays at night, she's typically lonely during the day, so she's excited that he's around now. And she guesses how old he is. She guesses 21. Because that's how old she is. You think so?

Never trust anyone that tells you their age. And never give anyone your age on an mmm. That's just rule number one.

That's a good point. So she's like, Are you going to be job hunting soon? But Morrison is freaking out because she's unemployed and in her 30s.

Hell yeah.

So afterward after that, some point, lily and hayashi are hanging out on a beach, and she reveals that she knows how old he is. Now we get a flashback of lilac telling the rest of the guilt how old hayashi is, and they had bets on how old he was, and she won. And lily tells him that she's surprised he's so young, which is thrilling that 21 is considered young in an anime. Absolutely delightful.

You'll love to see it's.

So rare anime about adults.

Who would have thought something else?

She says that she thought he was older than her, but it's exciting that he's so young because he's got his whole life ahead of him. And it's weird. We get, like, hayashi thinking, but when you think about it, it's really Morico thinking, but it doesn't go out to her sitting in her desk, saying it out loud or thinking about it. So he thinks, oh, I feel guilty for lying, but I'm relieved that they can just believe that I'm 21 or whatever. So he asks lily how old she is, and Morico is freaking out she's like, oh, I shouldn't have done that. And then lily gets, like, weirdly serious and is like, why would you want to know personal things about me? Like, from someone from a video game that you don't even really know. There might be some things that are better off not knowing. And hayashi starts crying, and she apologizes. She's like, I'm sorry. I was joking. And Morico is just spamming the cry emote.

I enjoyed the Spamming the Cry emote because there's a lot of anime about. mmos, I wish they made more in game or mechanical jokes of talking to someone, and then someone just takes off. You like, oops, sorry, I hit the auto run button and then run back. Stuff like that, I would enjoy.

But lily, she does get upset at lilac for crying about his age. She's like, oh, she shouldn't have done that. But she wanted to know too, so she shouldn't judge her for just saying what everyone else was thinking. And she says that she does want to know more about hayashi and to share more about herself. And he says he's curious and that there's a lot to learn about each other, but maybe they should give it more time. And they promise to talk about more personal stuff after they get closer in game, which is nice. That's just like, this shit's good. This has, like, effective communication, which is delicious.

That's how you know they're adults and not teenagers.

Yeah. Like, even when hayashi, like, straight up, the guy with the green hair who runs the guild is named kombi, when he tells him, like, yeah, I'm looking for this crystal Heart, I feel like in a different anime, it would be like, no, nothing's weird, you know?

Yeah. To go, you must be in love with her. It's like, no, it's just a hard item to get, and it shows the effort.

Yeah, no, now I need to be mean to them. Just but I like her.

So lily talks about a time that the guild almost disbanded. The old guild master got a new job, so he had to stop playing the game. And we see a flashback of that guy freaking out about it. He has too specific of a character design for me not to think that he might come back.

Yeah, he's not generic enough to just be a one off.

Yeah. So we see him. He's, like, about to click the button to disband the game, but combi tells him to transfer leadership to him because they shouldn't disband. Like, they're all friends, but also because we're a max level guild, and it would be a waste.

Sometimes you need a guild level in order to get a house or, like, a base in an mma you can't get rid of that easy. That's tough to get.

So lily says to hayashi that the guild is still here because of comb. And Morico is like, Why did she tell me that? And they sit on the beach, and lily is like, I think he did it for us, like, for his friends. And we see maurico notice that it's 05:00 A.m., and in the game, hayashi tells lily the time, and he's like, don't you have work in the morning? And she's like, oh, shit, I do. I guess I'll just stay up all night. It's that point.

Mine as well.

So hayashi is like, I'll stay up with you. The next day, Morico gets up. She's sick, she says, from staying up all night, I guess.

Fell asleep at the desk.

Morico has to go to the pharmacy. And we also see that guy from the end of the last episode. I called him Glasses Boy for now, presumably.

Lily, how can you say such a brave, daring thing?

I will say, at the end of the last episode, when he was, like, shown talking to his friend, I was literally holding my ipad, being like, Is it hello? I was so excited that it was, like, a cute guy. So he's on the phone. He's rushing to work. He's like, I'm going to work extra hard today. I'm so sorry. And then they both round a corner, and he elbows her in the face with a cold.

That's got to be I'm glad she got knocked unconscious, because that would have been extremely painful.

Yeah, more like a beat cute.

That's a good one. So Morico yeah, she just passes out, and she's dreaming. And in this dream state, she sees this, like, angel kid, and he asks her if she's okay, and she turns into a little blue haired character, and it's the characters from the old mmorpg she used to play. And then the scene changes, and she's back to normal, but there's this huge castle with a bunch of guys in suits marching toward it and jumping into an abyss. It's capitalism. Our old friend rears its ugly head. So in the stream, she runs away. And then she wakes up in a hospital, and that guy is there with her, and she's like, oh, look at his blonde hair. How pretty. She moves to sit up, and he tells her to be careful because she has an IV in her arm. He explains what happened and apologizes. He asks if she's okay, and she says she's fine. And he's like, oh, you have a cold, too. You should get a prescription for your cold while you're here. She's like, oh, I don't have my health insurance card on me. And he's like, that's okay. I'll pay for it. And I was like, never in the Us.

I would note this is you know, it's not in America because you can't have Meat Cute in the hospital in America.

That was my exact thought.

Yeah. She would have woken up, and first words would have been, I'm suing you.

Why did you call an ambulance?

Yeah.

So he realizes he hasn't introduced himself, and he like, scrambles. Around for some business cards, doesn't find one. Writes his name, phone number, and email address on a piece of paper. His name is Utah. So she thanks him for all he did for her and introduces herself, and then back in the game. hayashi is standing on a bridge. They stand on bridges quite often, and every time they do, I'm like, this is like the peanuts. They go on that stone wall.

Not what I would have.

They talk about their troubles.

I'm depressed.

You can't have a great pumpkin in an mmo. That's a Halloween event.

So he's standing on this bridge, and all the guild members go up to him. They notice that he seems a little down, and they offer to listen if he needs someone to talk to. And Morrigo gets all emotional when He May says that they're all friends. They change locations. They're, like, sitting at a fountain now, and hayashi told them the story of what happened, but he switches the genders so they still think he's a dude in real life. And hayame, that's not the name. He May. hemay, and lilac are freaking out. They're like, It could get romantic. Like, you guys could go out for dinner together. Oh, my God. But conby is the voice of reason and suggests that he just call or text or email whoever saved him and say thank you and that he shouldn't leave them worried about him. So hayashi is like, yeah, okay, I'll email them. And mauricio is, like, super nervous to do it, but she sucks it up and does it. And then we see Utah at a restaurant with his friend from before, and he gets the email. He looks at his phone, and he smiles, and his friend goofs on him. In the game. He May is really excited for hayashi, and cone is like, why has it got to get romantic, though? Just let him be. hayashi returns to the game. He tells them that they replied right away and that they want to go to dinner. A date. Well, maybe. morrico freaks out a little bit. She's like, I have not been taking care of myself, so he'll probably think I'm unattractive if we go out together. But she jumps back into the game. He's sitting in the tree. hayashi is sitting in the usual tree, and lily shows up, and she says, he seems like he's feeling down, and she's like, hey, when I'm upset, I usually also go to this tree to be alone. I don't really have a lot of people to talk to in real life. And when I come in the game, I don't want to bring anybody else down because they're trying to escape their troubles through gaming.

Whoa.

You come in the game? That's my guy. To gain.

Jesus Christ. One of those bayner ads.

Knew it.

Sorry.

I knew it as soon as I said it.

I said, oh, I shouldn't have said it. That way.

You come in real life.

Well, I mean, you ever played, honeypop?

Yeah.

So lily says to keep their brooding tree a secret. And she says that she thinks they should vent to each other if they need to. maurico is like, I got a reply to the email. So she's like, yeah, he deserves a reply. And she sends the reply and notices that it's 02:00 A.m.. And it's like, fuck, probably shouldn't have done that. And that's episode two.

I'm extremely guilty of sending the 02:00 A.m. Messages. Two people have normal sleep schedules and.

And going, Shit, I hope that in a later episode, lily and hayashi kiss in the tree because, you know K-A-S-S-I-N-G.

You know the old saying. You know the one the old proverb we live by? I will say that I didn't write down Marika's in character name or in game name. But we do see that she's level 80 and has two hot bars with seven abilities on them. Mostly the hot bars are blank. I am judging her. That's a shit layout.

I don't know what that means.

Regardless.

That'S a lie.

You're also on this anime podcast, none of Us Are Cool. Episode three starts off with Utah in a completely empty bedroom. Like, he's got a bed and a nightstand and that's it. And, like, I live pretty spartan. That's depressing that's he must be rich.

I feel like that's what rich people.

Do, is minimalist, not poverty.

It's liminal. It's sad. It's upsetting. But he answers his phone. He sees the email that morocco sent at 02:00 A.m., and he's kind of shocked. Like, oh, she replied, okay. And then we cut him out to dinner, lunch out to a meal with his work buddy. I think we got the work buddy's name. I do not care. No. He's voiced by ian sinclair in the dub Love. A good ian. St. clair Voice His buddy's giving him crap for being so uptight and saying he's like blood type A. And you're just teasing him for being essentially the EDA of the show. And you to ask his buddy about his last job, saying, like, hey, you used to work at this company, right? He's like, yeah, he just asked me. Did you work with someone named morocco at this last company? I guess you two looked her up and found out where her previous job was, which that kind of concerned me.

Totally normal.

Super.

Not weird, right, to print out a packet about her.

She super gave him her information. That super happened.

Hey, we're talking about nerds being scared of socializing and doing way too much research.

You know what?

I think it lines up.

He got me there and he says his work buddy is like, oh, yeah, I used to work with her. She was pretty good at her job, and then she resigned not too long ago. He used to call her Old More because her name was morioko. Moriaca. So he gave her like a nickname. Our departments worked with each other a fair bit. Never like too much in person, though. And then we get a flashback of him at his old job working late. It's like 11:00 p.m.. And he's calling up her department and she's like, oh, my boss isn't here. I'll work for you. I can get this done in 30 minutes if that's okay. He's like, yeah, sure. Thanks for your help. And we hear her crying. He's like, oh, are you like stressed out? Is that like an overworked cry? Don't worry, let it out. I was like, that's not help. That shouldn't be common enough. Are you in a response to that?

I mean, well, he calls her little mori at first, which is a little weird, little creepy, but for the most part he's like, really sweet to her, which I was not expecting from the way he interacts with Utah. So she's like, oh, that's nice.

He does try to flirt with her a bit over the phone, yeah, which.

Is weird, but but he's nice to her. She starts crying and he's not like, gross, what's happened?

He's like, all the feelings, goodbye, just give me the work.

Yeah. So we see him come back to the present day at the meal, and he brings up like a tablet and he's like, oh yeah, here she is. I found an old, like, her work ID from the company website. And he shows Utah, who immediately recognized her as the girl he ran into and put in the hospital. And his buddy starts singing like, I should maybe hit her up. She was always attractive and doesn't work at the company anymore. I should look to see where she is now. Utah gets all flustered and startled. And then Utah drops his chopsticks, and then his buddy drops the chop. They drop chopsticks and they go back and forth for like full four solid minutes about weird bit. I don't get it. It wasn't funny. So then they're finished with their meal, they start heading back to work, and his buddy is like, hey, I'm going to grab a cup of coffee before you go back, so you go on ahead of me. So you see, he's walking back by himself and he's rereading morocco's email. She's basically saying, like, thanks for the offer, but I already troubled you by you taking me to the hospital and then paying for it. I don't want to trouble you anymore, so thank you for the offer, but I'll pass. And then she's skirt and we cut to morocco herself. She's out and about and she says she sent something big happening. She's gone out. She bumped it to a guy who had a nice time. They replied to her emails, but she's reflecting on it positively. Like, yes, I sent that email. I'll never see him again. She turned them down in it, but we see her go to the convenience store, reflecting on the email she sent. She's happy about it. And we see the store clerk is actually surprised to see morocco. I guess she's a regular there. Actually kind of happy this time as she's buying another ingame currency gift card for the mmo. And we see the clerk stare at the card again from the ending. He very much is going to be a main character, but not yet. And he doesn't say anything. And he rings her up and she goes back home. And once back home, she hops online immediately. And in the game, she meets up with one of her guild members, Lakashi, I think. What's the name? That's what I'll call him.

Big Guy.

Yeah, big guy. And so she meets up with him, and he's saying, like, oh, you look more relaxed, more at ease. He's like, oh, yeah, I got some of the stuff worked out, so I'm feeling better. He's like, oh, good. We worried you were stressed earlier that you'd be too stressed to get online and play with us. And she's like, oh, no. The gaming is the stress relief. I'll never be too stressed to get online. It's how I will unwind from my hard day of unemployment, from my hard day of gaming.

I like the game.

I call that post to me. We see as they're talking, a bird shows up with a present for morocco. And it's a gift from lily. He's up. He's like, oh, what could it be? And it is a very fancy outfit. And they look it up and it's like 20 million currency. Whatever the ingame currency is, it's expensive. And she's immediately like, oh, that's a big gift. I don't know how rope lily. She must have a lot of money lying around to afford this as a gift for me. I can't give her something expensive like this back. And the cash, she calls her, oh, yeah. She starts like, daydreaming of, like, if lily's giving me this this gift, I have to give her, like, this kind of gift back. It starts like daydreaming about a very, like, trophy. I'm forgetting the word sort now, but just like a very tropy, typical romance novel sort of situation.

Oh, yeah.

And she like, I guess describes this like daydream out out loud. And Lakashi actually kind of calls her out of like, you got a weird idea of what masculinity is. Which I thought was funny, both because it's so trophy, but also because she's not a man. And Lakashi says, yeah, something similar actually happened to me. The other guild member, nico, a character we have not been introduced to yet, he's like, yeah, a while back, she gave me a gift as well. And I felt weird. I felt like it was indebted to somebody, and I don't like that. But she ended up saying she liked me as a person, and she wanted to invest in our relationship so we could share each other on. Once we were able to talk it out, we were able to work around and we like cheering each other on. So we get each other's gifts every now and then, but without any ulterior motives. And the whole time they're talking, Lakashi is making a bunch of spell scrolls he's crafting for non magical casters so they can cast like, spells one time use. I'm assuming this comes up later. If not, that's a weird detail.

I wrote down detail about the game.

Yeah, he's crafted we're seeing the ingame mechanics and he says, yeah, he should help out lily. However roku can, unless she's got an ulterior motive for buying you a very fancy suit. But that would be weird. lily's nice. So morocca starts getting worried about her and lily's relationships, about their motives, and we see her in real life. roku starts, like, stress cleaning her apartment for a bit, trying to work out what lily might be thinking. And then she goes back online to meet up with lily herself. And they meet up at their tree, their usual spot. And she thanks lily for the fancy outfit, but she being awkward and not a lot of subtlety. Just comes right out and says, I'm worried about your motive behind this, lily. It's a very expensive gift.

Again, though, nice to be straightforward.

We say that, but also she's lying and saying she's a university student.

Well, I look at it as like, the stuff that's happening in the game feels like a separate anime from the stuff that's happening in real life. Like, that feels inconsequential because at this point, it's like, oh, there's no possible way I'm actually going to meet this person in real life. You know what I mean?

Yeah, that'll never happen, not in My. But Mercury kind of makes it clear of like, I can't repay you. This is a lot of money. And lily confesses, like, oh, I'm surprised that you would think that way of me. But if I'm being honest, I wasn't fully without an ulterior motive. So you're not wrong. And lily tells her about when she first started playing the game. She made the terrible mistake of being a girl on the Internet and got a lot of creepy people coming after her with invites and messages and whispers and just harassing her nonstop, as is the internet's way. And it was very overwhelming and she hated it. And she tried to distance herself from people for a long time because of it. And even when she joined up with certain guilds and joined other guilds, she started getting accused by other guild members being like, oh, you're getting close to the guildmaster or to the guild leader. You're just trying to warm your way up to them and get close so you can get power and just real petty shit between other girls and the guild and stuff. So she had to leave that guild and stuff. Just a lot of drama that was just very one sided on everyone else's side and unwarranted. And ever since that happened, lily kept having trouble and kept having to distance herself from people because it just became harassment. But she still wanted to play the game because she used to play an old game where she met up with someone online. And through the game they developed a very precious relationship between each other. And that person is very precious to lily. And she's hoping that she'd be able to find that type of relationship again in a new game with a new person. And that's why she keeps playing this game, even though it's less than stellar at the moment. And morocco confesses that she actually has a similar relationship. That's what we saw with the flashback to the NASA previous game that no longer it's online with the little angel characters we saw in her dream. So they were both looking to rekindle a relationship of that kind. And that's why lily keeps playing. And she says that combay the Guild Leader actually gave her advice on the situation. And we see a flashback to that where he's like, oh, why don't you just be like super stereotypical girly girl and like obnoxious and try and scare everyone away? And she's like, yeah, but being that obnoxious would scare everybody away, even my friends. Like, that wouldn't be good. He's a guy. You got a point. Well, what if you just lie and say we're partners in game and that way just say you're taken so people stop harassing you constantly. And she's like, oh, you can do that. Yeah, we're not actually partners, but you could just tell people we are so you can get some peace and quiet for once. We love a good beard. And then she met up with moroku in game, who seemed to gently enjoy playing the game and living through the game, not just power gaming her way through, enjoyed being in the game and around the other people. And it kind of resparked lily's love for the game as well. She saw it in a new light and then she asked moroku if he'll be what's gender? If she'll be her new partner in game. And then when we come back from the flashback, we see lily is also wearing the fancy outfit now. That's why she sent it to morocco match. That means you're married in game. And lily says she plays with morocco. She feels more at peace than ever before. And we cut to the real world of maruka is like freaking out and rolling around to her apartment and like grabbing her stuffed animal. It's like, how do I process this? What am I feeling? What are these feelings? Like, I can't be feeling this way. I'm a 30 year old woman. This is a video game girl. I can't be feeling this way. It's like, yes, you're in love with a virtual girl. congrats, you have a wife. Who join the club, and she yells at her. She's kind of, like, admonishing herself about this and feeling this way. Like, how can a game get her to feel these, like, real emotions? But in game, she accepts the outfit and puts it on and says she would gladly be lily's partner. And then we just pan over and we see the entire guild hiding behind a tree, like, poking out, like, Little rascal style. And we see Lakashi being like, oh, I guess lily did have an ulterior motive, but it was a good one. And everyone's happy, even though there's a no romance rule in the guild. And at the end of the episode, we pan out and we see a computer screen with the chat box having the chat messages that lily Mercury were sending back and forth. But it's from lily's side. It's lily's user. And we zoom out a little bit and we see the back of their chair with their head sticking out. And we see some spiky blonde hair. Wonder who that could be.

Probably the character.

And that's episode three.

Yes.

So are we there yet? Are we mmo. junkies.

Oh, this was a treat I was not expecting. I was like, okay, let me pick one from the list. Okay, this one's been looking at me for quite a while. We're going to deal with some otaku shit. Okay, fine. And then it was just animate the guild. And I was like, okay, this is good. This is not hitting every trope. We're getting some, but we have interesting ways to introduce characters, interesting dynamics where it's not like, oh, hi, you who you play this game every day from 08:00 A.m. To 06:00 P.m.. Here's your specific time and what you do in the game. And here's your character and your back story. And oh, that was our first episode. We'll meet one new character tomorrow. We got past that annoying set up stuff pretty quick. They even introduced lily to be like, yeah, let's just grind through the beginning of this game montage. Yeah, this was lovely. It was sweet. It really hits that gender is all sorts of fucked up any way you look at it. But yeah, I enjoyed them.

Yeah, it's always exciting to find a show that's not about high schoolers.

Oh, yeah.

And yeah, the relationship dynamics are neat. They're fun friends. And I am excited to see everybody else in real life because presumably we get to meet everybody else in real life. I would think that even utah's friend, I think, probably secretly plays.

Yeah, we get a bunch of character snippets in the end thing, and I feel like they're all going to be characters in the game.

Yeah, it was just very sweet and it made me happy. Which anime normally doesn't?

It's a big hour.

You're telling me.

Yes, I enjoyed this one very much. I mean, it's only ten episodes. I think.

I think that's key to a lot of stuff where it's like, it wasn't dragged out, it wasn't a slog because some of those shows are, like, 23 episodes, and they really got to stretch it at times. But this one, because it's shorter, I feel like it's pretty self contained. I'm like, we can pace it out pretty well. And I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, I don't think there was, like, an info dump because the game was like the game mechanics aren't important. It's the relationships in the game. So we never really got a big dump of anyone's personal life or in.

Game life a little bit with, like, lily talking about how she was treated when she first started playing.

Oh, yeah, you're right.

But it didn't feel like because it was, like, her telling hayashi and also, like, a flashback with her in Columbia. Like, it was not it didn't feel terrible.

Yeah. It was also upset three, so it's.

Yeah, well or yeah, it felt like, I hey, I'm sharing a vulnerable thing with you, like, friendship, and not, hey, I know I'm saying this to you in character, but this is for the audience. This town was founded.

Yeah. Because they establish that they actually really want to get to know each other and that they're going to talk about their in game lives before they move on to talking about more personal aspects.

Of themselves, explaining barriers.

Good.

Wild.

I know. I love it. That's great.

Yeah, I was surprised. Yeah, I think the pacing of it is well thought because it's, like, shorter episodes and it's adult, so a lot of the awkwardness is already avoided. And clearly Utah is lily gasp. Shock, surprise. But I think that's very clear where it's going. But yeah, I was expecting high schoolers, given the title. I was expecting someone who was, like, very addicted that would interfere with their lives to mmos rather than someone kind kind of relapsing back into it. And it seems like just one mmo as opposed to a bunch.

But she also appreciate that she's not, like, completely terrible socially.

She's not a monster.

Yeah. Like, when she went to the store, when she was, like, in a good mood and we saw the cashier, got, like, a little moment, she was like, Hi, how are you doing? And I was like, Hell yeah. I love that. She's not like hi. Hi. You know, I might need sustenance to survive today.

I need my gamer feel. What's a mote. That's it the other show.

Yeah.

This character sucks. Yeah, she's a neat, which we didn't address put for anyone who's not familiar, not employed, educated, or trained, like, military wise. But yeah, a lot of neats just live off their parents income and get allowance from them. But, yeah, I guess she just earned enough from her previous job that she's just retired at, like, 30. But, yeah, it was not stellar. It didn't blow me away. Nothing, like, knocked my socks off, but it was a very refreshing take on stuff we've seen a lot of and got very trophy. Yeah, I enjoyed it. Good ganmay, good cane.

Sorry stepped on you. So if you have a good ganmay that you would like to recommend to us, you can send your recommendation to our email. Are we there yet@gmail.com? The G stands for Ganmay. You can find us on social media, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok at. Are we there yet? On all three.

You can find me on Instagram and TikTok at honey. Period D, or on Twitter at honey d eight and Honey d art and Honey is spelled H-U-N-N-I-E. You can find.

Me on Twitter, retweeting stuff to try and get stuff for free because I don't like spending money at abts Brendan. It stands for Almost Better Than Silence, which is a video game podcast I did 400 some episodes of, so good luck with that one.

Thank you to camille ruley for artwork, and thank you to Louisong for themed song stories. You can find all of louie's music at louisong. Bamcamp.com. Thank you, and we hope you'll join us next week as we learn to live with anime.

Cheesems, if you're out there, I hope you're doing okay.

Cheesems, if you're out there, hit me up.