net-juu no susume purports itself to be a MMO-flavored shoujo love story about two working-age gamers whose online and real lives have tangled around each other even more times than they realize, and the heart-pounding dual will-they-won't-theys of their relationship and their secrets
i like netjuu. in my opinion, it is actually about the following things (10 bullet points follow)
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normalize being in your 30s and kind of a disaster in that way where your self-confidence is somewhere below ground level and you burst out into long rambles whenever you are anxious
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normalize being extremely supportive of someone you know who is in their 30s and kind of a disaster, because they will tell you they've only had two people in their whole life say something nice to them, but it was actually you both times (oops!).
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normalize you owning a nice luxury apartment with shower knobs that looks exactly like mine, and cooking spaghetti when your anxious friend is in a mess. normalize going from being normal and supportive to trying to confess like ten times in one episode to your anxious friend because the show has to operate on Confession Is Everything standards, although it interrupts itself so hard that it actually wraps around to the correct take, which is that a close relationship doesn't have to be official to be a good one, and that the most important thing is being supported and taking a step forward for yourself and others
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normalize having a wingman who tries to shove you into taking action towards the person you're crushing on, by attempting to steal her away on dates. it's legitimately good how it's hard to tell how much of his actions were "if I do something drastic maybe he'll finally make a move" and how much were "ok I kind of like her too tho", and in a show that wasn't fairytailing around the main two so hard, I think that would be an interesting (EDITOR NOTE: did you write "interesting" when you meant "pathos-filled" again) characterization to dive into
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cleaning your apartment when you're anxious as hell is real and accurate. I actually have the Morimori Lint Roller somewhere in America because I won it from a Comiket gacha machine like 5 years ago
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live somewhere near more than one conbini. if I were super anxious and at the same conbini on four occasions I 1) was dragged into a date with an ex-coworker 2) ran into someone I awkwardly turned down after he elbowed me at an intersection and knocked me out cold 3) found out my guildmaster worked there 4) had my self-esteem crushes by an old lady, all the cheap and tasty bread in the world couldn't convince me to come back
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I just wanna say the hardest moment in the show is when the main couple (Morimori the 30s NEET and Yuuta the soft salaryman) go to the conbini and the typically prying old lady working there is like "there's no way you two are ~~~dating~~~, right", and instead of like getting really embarassed in that shoujo way, Morimori takes it as "there's no way you would date someone like Her, right" and it totally shatters her into pieces. absolute "the bank called and my self-confidence balance is negative" moment that I have totally seen in people before. she deserves so much support y'all.
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I gotta go see if there's a light novel for this or something because the rest of the core MMO cast have a fairly interesting set of personalities (including the college extrovert who seems to have hidden desires online, the married couple that plays together, the "give me your money" e-girl, etc) but don't really get explored that much and I'd like to see that. I'd also like to see Morimori and Yuuta kiss!!! ngl!!!!!!
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everyone in this show is a little bit of a mess, in a kind of very accurate "these people are REALLY gaming through it" sort of way. yuuta lost his adoptive family and immediately threw himself into MMOs because he liked when people said hi to him. he asks morimori on a date once, gets turned down, and immediately goes out and buys a cash shop thing for his MMO Bestie (unknowingly morimori) and asks to get MMO Married. morimori herself admits in an aside she started crushing on yuuta when he was in college because her job was so hard on her and no one else was nice to her. kanbe the guildleader probably actually knows who everyone is IRL and honestly that's a lot to think about when you work at lawson.
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the first shitpost I wrote about this show is that it sounds like it's supposed to be MMO Gamer / Salarylife Hell wish fulfillment at first glance, but it's actually about the fantasy of writing documentation so well that someone you don't know at another company is like "this person's documentation is GODLIKE I can't believe they quit"