Love video games? Love anime? What if you could have both?! Below are 8 anime to checkout if you enjoy MMOs!
With all the acronyms running around these days, you may be asking what is an MMO? Well it is:
Massively Multiplayer Online: any video game that lets the player interact with a large number of other players online, usually in an “open world” setting.
**WARNING: Some spoilers below!!**
Is it wrong to try to pick up girls in a dungeon?
The story takes place in Orario, a city where gods come to seek excitement by limiting their divine powers to perceive and experience the hardships of the lower worlds. Adventurers visit dungeons and underground labyrinths to fight monsters and retrieve crystal shards and other various treasures.
The people of Orario join groups called Familia (similar to guilds) who can serve in anything from crafting to dungeon farming. Each Familia serves and is named after a Deity. The adventurers are grouped into levels and ability according to their achievements, similar to most RPG.
Bell Cranel is a 14 year old solo adventurer and the only member of the Familia Hestia. Being the only member, he has to work very hard to provide and maintain the Familia. Bell is in love with a powerful and famous swordswoman named Ais Wallenstein, who previously saved his life. Although Bell is unaware of it, other mortal girls and deities begin to develop affections towards him; most notably Hestia herself. The story follows Bell as he deals with these new affections, gains allies, and faces new challenges.
How Not to Summon a Demon Lord
Also known as The King of Darkness Another World Story: Slave Magic, How Not to Summon a Demon Lord was originally a Japanese light novel series written by Yukiya Murasaki and illustrated by Takahiro Tsurusaki. The novels were both published in english and adapted into a manga series.
An anime adaptation was aired from July 5th to September 20th 2018. The second season was announced to premier in 2021!
A hikikomori (recluse) gamer, named Takuma Sakamoto, is suddenly transported into his favorite MMORPG, Cross Reverie, in the body of his avatar. In an attempt to make him their servant, an elf names Shera and a pantherian named Rem have summoned ‘the Demon Lord Diablo’, Takuma’s character into the game. However, due to a magical item Takuma posesses, the spell rebounds and the two girls become his servants instead.
No game no life
Sora and Shiro are a pair of step siblings who form an undefeated gaming group known as Blank. The siblings became agoraphobic after their parents died causing them to delve deeper and deeper into the world of gaming. Sora excels at strategy and cold readings while his sister, Shiro, excels at calculations and logic.
One day they are challenged to a game of chess by Tet, a god from another reality. The siblings are victorious and are offered to live in a world that centers around gaming. Believing the offer is a joke, Sora and Shiro accept and are summoned into a reality called Disboard.
Citizens of Disboard are prevented from inflicting harm upon one another thanks to a spell called the Ten Pledges. This spell magically enforces the resolution of conflict through gambling and gaming. Rule enforcement of the game only occurs and is enforced if cheating is outed by the opponent, allowing players to discreetly cheat. Sora and Shiro’s ultimate goal is to challenge Tet to another game and win.
That time I got reincarnated as a slime
Satoru Mikami is an average 37 year old living in Tokyo. He is content with his monotonous life other than the fact that he doesn’t have a girlfriend.
One evening, while out with a colleague, Satoru is stabbed by an assailant. As his injuries take hold of him, Saoru hears a mysterious voice reciting commands that he cant understand. After regaining consciousness he discovers that he had been reincarnated in an unfamiliar world as a slime.
He stumbles upon a catastrophe level Storm Dragon named Veldora, who has been sealed away for 300 years. Feeling sorry for Veldora, Satoru befriends the dragon, promising to help destroy the seal. In return, Veldora bestows the name Rimuru Tempest upon him, granting divine protection. Rimuru embarks on a quest to prove his worth Word of his weird accomplishments begin to spread across the world, changing his fate completely.
Overlord
Overlord takes place in a DMMORPG called YGGDRASIL (Yig-dra-sill?). Within the game is a guild, Ainz Ooal Gown, credited for being one of the strongest in the game.
Once having 41 members, the guild slowly dies off until only 4 members remain. Among those 4 members is Momonga, the acting guild leader and skeletal overlord of Nazarick. The day comes when YGGDRASIL is to be shutdown and Momonga decides to stay logged in until the shutdown, hoping to see his friends in the guild one last time.
When the shutdown time arrives Momonga finds that YGGDRASIL has not vanished, but has been recreated as its own reality. NPCs (non-playable characters) come to life and Momonga realizes he is trapped inside of the game as his skeletal king avatar. With no way to log out, Momonga begins exploring the world in search of answers and other potential trapped players. With god like powers, purchased game items, and amazingly strong, yet obsessed, guardians of Nazarick at his side Momonga begins to shape the world of NPCs in his own vision.
Sword Art Online
In the year 2022, a virtual reality massively multiplayer online role playing game (VRMMORPG) called Sword Art Online was released. The players would dawn a helmet called NerveGear which stimulated the five senses of the brain allowing players to experience and control their in-game characters with their minds.
On the release date, 10,000 players logged into SAO for the first time, only to discover that they could not log out. The creator of the game appears and informs players that they must beat all 100 floors of Aincrad, a steel castle which is the main setting of SAO, if they wish to escape the game. He also informs players that if they die in game or remove their helmets out of game, they will suffer real life deaths.
Kazuto “Kirito” Kirigaya is one of the game’s 1000 closed beta testers. With the advantage of previous VR experience, he isolates himself and plays the game alone. As the players progress through the game, Kirito befriends a young girl named Asuna Yuuki, forming a relationship and later marrying her in game. Kirito and Asuna later confront and destroy the madman who trapped them all inside of the game, but that is only the beginning of this story.
Log Horizon
The massively multiplayer online roleplaying game, Elder Tale, had become a global success with a user base of millions of players. Eleven expansions of the game had been successfully released, however something went wrong with the twelfth expansion; Homesteading the Noosphere.
Thirty thousand gamers were logged in at the time of the update as they were transported into Elder Tale. Once in the game, players found that the had become their in game avatars.
A socially awkward gamer named Shiroe was one of these players. Having previously played Elder Tale for eight years, he gained infamy as “Shiroe the Strategist” and “Villain in Glasses” for his sometimes unethical approach to solving problems. Playing as a gifted Enchanter with a Scribe subclass, he is able to cast powerful support spells on his allies. To survive in this lawless world he teams up with his friends Naotsugu and Akatsuki as they take on this new reality.
.hack//Sign
Dubbed as the original MMORPG anime, .hack//Sign focuses on a Wavemaster named Tsukasa, a player in a VRMMORPG called The World. He wakes up to find himself in a dungeon in The World, but he doesn’t know where he is or how he got there as he is suffering from short term memory loss. The situation becomes worse for him when he realizes that he is trapped in the game and cant log out.
The series follows the quest for the Key of the Twilight, a legendary item rumored to have the ability to bypass the system in The World. Some characters believe this item will provide Tsukasa with a way to log out while others simply want to gain the power this item possibly possess. Despite their reasons for seeing the Key of the Twilight, everyone understands that it is related in some way to Tsukasa. Finding the Key of the Twilight becomes even more dire as you learn that Tsukasa’s real body is in a coma.
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