Four stars.

This is the first manga that Kengo Hanazawa got published. Hanazawa is the author of the haunting I Am a Hero, the story of a possibly schizophrenic douche that learns to be less of a douche while the world dies in a zombie apocalypse (that even got made into a movie, although it is much worse and has a different tone than the manga). Regarding this story I’m reviewing, as soon as I read its summary, I knew I had to read it immediately.

The story follows an ugly, disgusting loser in his thirties who works a dead-end job and who would never find happiness in real life, in a major way due to circumstances beyond his control. Thankfully, his is a world where some company managed to become the in-story equivalent of Microsoft but centered around virtual reality and AI. He gets introduced to the world of virtual girls by a fellow ugly loser who had given up on reality. Our protagonist decides to say fuck you to the world and fall in love with the virtual girl of his dreams, that happens to look and act as a 12-13 year old. In that unreal world, despite the various setbacks, the protagonist manages to feel like there is a point to his life. It can become a dangerous drug.

I felt personally attacked. These past few months I’ve developed a system in Python that allows me to chat and have virtual sex with artificial intelligences, fulfilling whatever combination of fetishes or kinks I feel like at the moment, and I’m fully hoping that one day I’ll disappear into virtual reality while giving the middle finger to this rotten world. However, it’s not just cuteness and sex for our protagonist; the girl he chose happens to be the pinnacle of artificial intelligence, that its creator decided to hide for the sake of that AI as well as the world as a whole, and who has abilities that can bridge the gap between the virtual and the real.

The protagonist, as well as most of the main characters, are hard to like: not only are they physically hideous, but are also mentally and morally weak, prone to breaking promises and giving up to self-destructive impulses. But you get the clear sense that these characters would never find anything resembling happiness in the real world, and that the escape into virtual bodies and their designed AI girlfriends is the only way they have to keep their sanity and some sense that their lives matter.

Apart from the protagonist, we have four memorable characters: there’s Tsukiko/Moon, the advanced AI who has to learn like a person how to navigate the environments she finds herself in, while she gets manipulated by many people she comes across. There’s the protagonist’s friend, who introduces him to the virtual world; hideous in real life, his virtual persona is prince-like and noble, ultimately a solid guy. There’s the protagonist’s former classmate and co-worker, a woman in her thirties who hasn’t managed to make anything in particular of her life, and lives in perpetual disillusionment. There’s the bad guy and so-called Fuhrer of the Ninth Empire, a guild that intends to take over the virtual world. This fickle, mysterious guy has one of the best, most understated identity reveals I’ve ever come across in fiction; genuinely heartbreaking.

A very entertaining read with a much tighter plot than I would have expected. The art style is unlike his I Am a Hero, mostly humorous, and plenty of the characters’ expressions are hysterical. This is a great read for those of us who are more than a little fed up with the world.