Netoge no jome wa onnanoko dža nai to omotta?

I do not know exactly why; however, I quite liked And You Thought There Is Never a Girl Online? It originally came across to me as a sort of hybrid genre mash-up, with a crossover of slice-of-life mixed with harem and even in the MMORPG gamer setting, with a bit of comedy, some pretty likable characters, and perhaps not such an extremely original narrative. Well, in the end, it is, only it is not really a harem anime series because the main male protagonist is only really interested in a romantic sense with one girl, Ako Tamaki, and the other girls more or less respect that relationship. It is mostly more like a slice-of-life show about how a "cute" antisocial girl who does not know the difference between the game and reality and becomes infatuated with the male knight from the game, the initially slightly suspicious "typical student/otaku" Hideki Nishimura, who goes under the name Rusian. He decides to help her come out of her shell with his teammates and get her head right, which he partially succeeds in doing, although, at the same time, he starts to lose a grip on reality, and the lines between the game and reality become rather blurred. The characters are mostly classic cookie-cutters again (the typical student, the blonde tsundere, etc.), and Ako is the main driving force behind everything. Even though the main protagonist is supposed to be Rusian, everything mostly revolves around Ako in the end anyway. The problem is that Ako is a naive, silly girl who follows Rusian around like a puppy dog. Ako does not make sense at times, and it is mainly her who is supposed to be the funny and original comic relief. So the problem is that if you do not like this little girl, then you are not going to be able to watch more than three episodes because Ako is everywhere all the time, and almost everything is about her. I personally did not mind Ako and even found her weirdness charming, which is probably the main thing that decides the final rating. However, I was not too impressed with the soundtrack, and the animation was not world-beating, in my opinion, either. I would see this show more as slightly below-average, since especially the parts from the game seemed too colorful and weird (when I first saw Rusian from the game, or rather his eyes that look like someone used mascara on them, I was like “WTF?!”). Even though it is a very contradictory show, and qualitatively I would see it as worth two stars, my feeling from watching it was slightly better. Therefore, I will award it three stars, declare it more or less an average show, and end my dissection before I stop distinguishing the difference between the world in front of and in the computer. 5.5/10. (14.04.2016)