It’s that time of the month again, even know we’ve skipped a few months because a lot of holidays fall on the last day of the month! What was I talking about? Well, we use this website called RandomAnime.org to generate a random anime each month. We do this to watch and talk about whatever it is, obviously.
The only rules I really have are that I don’t need to finish a series if it’s garbage, and I don’t need to watch all of One Piece or something long if we get it, just like 12 episodes or something. Let’s see what we get. I kind of want to watch Little Witch Academia, so I don’t know. Give me that one series, I guess. One of these times, I’ll get that right.
Ok, what am I even calling this? Both names are long as hell. Full Dive? Shitty RPG? Let’s go with Shitty RPG. So Shitty RPG looks kind of like hot trash just from judging the book by its cover, but let’s see what it’s about.
“Ten years ago, at the peak of the VRMMO development industry, a game titled “Kiwame Quest” entered the scene with potential like no other. Boasting a colossal total of 10 sexdecillion branches of possible story scenarios, this game pursued ultimate realism, ranging from humanlike NPCs to the perfect replication of all senses and physical abilities. But it soon became apparent that the game was too realistic, and the popularity of VRMMOs in general gradually began to plunge. At present, due to an accident a few years prior, the high school student Hiroshi Yuuki now immerses himself in full-dive RPGs as a form of escapism. After failing to acquire the latest version of his favorite game, Hiroshi stumbles upon a game shop and meets its beautiful clerk Reona Kisaragi who convinces him to buy a copy of Kiwame Quest so that they can play together. The first time Hiroshi plays the game, he marvels at the realism it offers. However, his astonishment is short-lived as he sets off a series of misfortunes, quickly realizing that the game is even worse than his already stressful life. Nevertheless, Hiroshi still finds himself logging on again despite his growing contempt for the game. With no do-overs in his current disadvantageous situation, Hiroshi only has one goal—clearing the game!”
That actually sounds ok. Better than I thought, at the very least. It is an ecchi, so we’ll see how that goes. I wonder if this random anime series is any indication of what genres are most common? We’ve definitely gotten more echhi than anything else.
Let’s watch, shall we? I’ll be back in like a few days my time, a few words for you.
Believe it or not, Shitty RPG didn’t only sound better than I thought, it actually was better than I thought. It was kind of good for having “Shitty” in the name. It showed a surprising amount of promise in some areas.
Starting out, I actually really like Hiro, our pathetic main character, and believe me, he is useless. Think of the most pushover, pathetic main character you can think of, and then double that, and you have Hiro. Shinji even has his moments of looking pretty cool. Hiro really has none.
So why do I like this pathetic guy whose big traumatic event in life revolves around him pissing himself? He actually pisses himself multiple times and is somehow even more of a screw-up than that.
It’s because, despite anything you might assume of this anime, despite how generic it may seem at first and how awkward certain moments can be, it actually has a really good message behind it, and Hiro is the perfect character to convey that.
See, Kiwame Quest goes for absolute realism. It takes this to the extreme. The only thing it doesn’t do is kill you when you die. It instead blows up both the console and the game, meaning you have to restart and waste a bunch of money.
It takes everything else to the extreme. You can murder anyone, you can get hustled for money, you can still piss yourself, and your ability in battle and everywhere else is determined by your actual physical strength in real life. It’s basically just fantasy world real life.
Hiro, coincidentally, sucks at real life. He has no aspirations, he’s stuck in the past, he won’t stand up to bullies. He has a, well, shitty life. So he uses this shitty RPG as escapism, but because of its realism, he ends up going through the exact same stuff.
He pisses himself and gets bullied by NPCs. He’s even still scared of everything and refuses to stand up for himself. So in a lot of ways, this escape from the real world shows him all of his problems in that world and forces him to try and fix them.
The series even ends with this positive message of not giving up. Hiro starts training in real life again, scaring away his bullies. He starts to not be quite as pathetic. It’s all in the name of beating this really hard, shitty game, but it means more than that. It’s about changing his life.
It’s actually a story about how the lines can blur between game and reality, which is something I already think about a lot. I don’t think someone will suddenly confuse the two, but I do think the story and experiences you have in games can change your actual life, and that’s what this anime shows us. It’s strangely beautiful for all the mention of shit and piss.
With all that being said, the series presents all this stuff to us in a strange way. The series is heavily a comedy. You can get all that by reading between the lines a bit, but for the most part, the series wants you to laugh at all the nonsense that Hiro and his busty fairy friend, Reona, get into. Ecchi elements aren’t that apparent, honestly.
It starts off strong with Hiro unintentional murdering people, which then spirals into a bunch of stupid events that all show how realistic Kiwame Quest actually is. You know, I think the point was to turn people off who wanted a super realistic VRMMO. I don’t care. I still want exactly this game in real life. I just don’t want the console destroying part. I’m pulling a Hiro and saying I don’t need that much realism.
And the series is actually pretty funny. I mean, not every joke hits perfectly, but for the most part, the humor is fairly good and it actually doesn’t rely on ecchi stuff quite as much as I assumed it would. It’s really not bad at all, which is more surprising to me than you’d ever believe. If you can get over a few piss jokes, that is.
This is another series that showcases why I do these random anime. I would not have watched this, period. This didn’t sound interesting to me much at all but ended up being so much more than what it looked like at the beginning.
You can’t judge every book by its cover, and Shitty RPG is one example of that. It had the ability to be super generic but actually ran with it and told a pretty unique story that I kind of respect. I’m still trying to wrap my head around that.
It surprises you at every corner, even with the ending. I did laugh quite a bit, partly from the insanity of this shitty game, but partly from all the stuff that happens in general. It’s a roller coaster that you get somewhat used to towards the end, but if you’re like me and aren’t expecting it, you better buckle down. It’s wild.
It perfectly encapsulates what that type of realistic game would probably be in real life. If a VRMMO ever strived for complete and absolute realism, playing it like a game as Hiro does at first would probably lead to many similar things happening.
It’s honestly kind of wild that the series can actually make me believe that all of this crap could happen. It’s crazy, but that’s why I actually grew to love the series. It has a good energy around it and mixes that in with the surprisingly deep message that Hiro shows us, and it’s actually really good.
I did not expect to like it, but I did, and sometimes that’s how things go. I was completely wrong about this series at the beginning. I would honestly recommend it to a lot of people. It’s a trip.
Thank you very much for reading
Please give me real life Kiwame Quest already.
