I must first let it be known that I am friends with some of the voice cast of this show, so with any and all biases I might have made public I will begin.
The show takes place in a futuristic setting where video games have dominated pop culture to the point where it's the only thing people seem to be passionate about, lots of people train to make a name for themselves within the Esports scene but at the top are players called Meta Runners with their abilities enhanced with cybernetic arms. The story revolves around Tari who wakes up in a ruined lab with no memory of who she is or how she got there, she is even equipped with her own cybernetic arm. She has the unique ability to link her mind in to any game she plays and interact within it, catching the attention of two parties who want to use her ability for their own ends. The first party can be considered the antagonists Belle Frontier and her boss simply known as Lucks,who owns the company called TAS Corp which promotes Meta Runners under their employ and sell merchandise at their own stores; there are competing companies which presumably do the same. The second party,MD-5 is comprised as a rag tag band of Meta Runner who have a bone to pick with Lucks. The team is lead by a young man named Masa who befriends Tari and works with her to figure out her past and where she came from since their goals align.
The first season has concluded and while I did enjoy my time with it it left me feeling rather unfulfilled in a few areas to say the least, the story and world building certainly is interesting but it comes at the expense of much needed character development which doesn't even happen for most of the characters until near the end which may be a consequence of money and time being a new up and coming studio and all.
As for the characters themselves they're fine, I can't find myself getting annoyed by any of them but I've seen these characters before in other shows, I already mentioned that there wasn't enough time for character development and this is especially true for MD-5. Lamar is the carefree comic relief and Sofia is a quirky computer technician and the Leader Masa is a brooding emo and throughout most of the show that's all we really know. I'm not trying to knock on these characters for being archetypes but we learn nothing of value about these people or their actual goals until near the end of the season and I think that's a glaring flaw, luckily it's not a deal breaker as there are other things to hook you in but it is hard to ignore. Belle and Lucks however are far more interesting simply because the mystery of Tari's existence has a lot to do with TAS Corp, I won't give too much away as that would spoil a critical plot point but not only do we learn more about Belle but we also get a glimpse of how resourceful Lucks can be where you can easily see how he was able to climb the corporate ladder even if at first glance he comes off as shallow depiction of corporate greed.
The environments in this show are amazing, truly a site to behold. I love the look of the futuristic city setting and seeing what this world looks like was way more fun to see than anything else going on, I thought it was cool that you could just walk down the street and play a game for a few minutes! I love the idea hat people can rent pods for streaming video games like an internet cafe! I wanna see more! Like... what's mundane stuff like going to the DMV like in this world? What about bars? Movie theaters? Grocery Stores? Maybe an antique store that sells old game cartridges and systems with AV outputs? There's so much untapped potential here but we spend most of our time stuck in the hideout or a corporate building. If there's anything I want to see from Season 2 it's more of stuff like this! I like the music too, the opening theme kind of annoyed me at first but it grew on me and I love the choice in sound design.
Now I want to touch upon Tari's unique ability and in my opinion this is where this show really dropped the ball. As I stated before she can link her mind to the game and jump in as a player character to interact within the game. She is able to freely move about and she seems to have this built in system which allows her to view objectives and courses of action with a percentage of success displayed. Keep in mind she is the only one who can do these things therefore she is not inhibited by the limitations presented by a controller or a keyboard and mouse. Half of that is entirely meaningless when normal players can do some of the same things. For example when Masa is playing "Not Call of Duty" with Tari to test her ability he is able to move as freely and move all his character's limbs as if he too was in the game using a basic 8 button controller and I can't abandon my suspension of disbelief for that especially when everyone can do it too. I can totally believe that they can use their arms to scan their faces on their player characters (which they do) but I draw the line at anything more than an emote unless they're wearing some kind of VR Headset that uses the same function, perhaps that is supposed to be from Tari's perspective but I haven't been given any clues to anything like that. There's also little things that kind of make me go "Wait, how did she know how to properly reload that gun?" to "Wait, if she can feel pain in this game then why not in the other one? Last time I checked getting shot should REALLY hurt!" but I guess that's stuff that only bothers me. So yeah, the thing that's supposed to make Tari unique from the rest really isn't that special when everyone else can do a lot of the same things she can assuming this is not a perspective thing. I will say though that I do like some of the environments in the games themselves and I like the idea of giving Tari a new outfit to wear depending on which game she jumps in to, it's perfect fodder for fanart and that's always great for strengthening a community around your show. I hope we get more this at least.
So to summarize I really do like this show but there's no real hook for me to say that this is a must watch, I can only say that it's definitely worth a look and if you can turn off your brain during some parts you'll have a fun time with this show. It has it's strengths and I hope it sticks to them.
May this be the beginning of something great... Hopefully!
