Accel World

Just finished Accel World.

I give it an 8/10.  It's 2046, and technology has reached a point where physical terminals are no longer required to access computers.  The internet is ingrained into our lives, to the point where it has become even closer to a virtual world than it is today.  Arita Haruyuki is our protagonist, an overweight, self-loathing, insecure individual going through the darkest time of any outcast's life: high school.  Being constantly bullied, Haru's only escape is online gaming, particularly an online squash game, which he is exceedingly good at.

Enter Kuroyukihime, the cold, beautiful vice president of the student council and most popular girl in school.  She approaches Haru and invites him to play a secret online game called Brain Burst.  Brain Burst has a huge cult following, but there's a catch: losing the game causes the user to forget everything about Brain Burst.

I felt this anime was outstanding.  The story was very interesting and brings forward a few questions about virtual reality.  While using Brain Burst, thought processes are sped up to an insane rate, and it's possible to spend months or even years in the game when mere hours have passed in the real world.  At that point, which is reality?  It has kind of an Inception feel to it, which I thought was really cool.

You heard me, Niko.

At its heart, Accel World is a fighting anime, and each episode is action packed.  You'll see Haru get beat up a lot, you'll see Haru cry like a bitch, but in the end you'll be rooting for him.  Kuroyukihime is truly waifu-material, but she is a good example of someone placing their online persona ahead of their real-world one (though Snow Black is awesome).  The secondary characters are great, especially Niko.  Of course, there's Chiyu, the annoying childhood friend, which is an anime cliche that I loathe.

The animation in Accel World is great.  In a show like this it's important to have good action sequences, and Accel World pulls it off very well.  The game avatars look like something out of a Kamen Rider-type live action superhero show, which I thought was odd at first, but it was easy to get used to.

Can't say no to her.

The OPs and EDs are really good.  I especially liked "Unite" by Sachika Misawa.  "→unfinished→" by KOTOKO is good too (another KOTOKO reference in my blog, this is getting out of hand).

I would recommend Accel World to anyone who likes action anime.  If you liked Accel World, you'd probably like C, which has a similar battle system and story.

On a final note, I preordered Snow Black immediately.  I'm trying to cut back, dammit!  Thanks Kotobukiya!