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What Moriko Morioka experienced was something darker and meaner. It was a clearly exploitive and destructive work environment so nasty that it broke the normally stoic Japanese workers in months. The turnover rate would be a national corporate embarrassment, if it was publicly known.
There is a reason the normally careful and empathic character throws away the flowers. By the time you watch the whole series and/or read the manga it becomes obvious how wildly out of character that is for her as an action.
It also makes a lot more sense on why she jumped so hard into the world of online gaming as an escape. It wasn't just because she was an introvert. We'll get into more later.
There is also a reason why she takes such a shine to Lilly. Someone who was there to help.
This becomes that classic divide between the world we wished for as children...
And the real world that we actually exist in.
As a PVP Healer, I also appreciated another metaphor that the series shows. That the support character Lily was there to give the main character the support they needed to deal with their issues at hand.
It's a game mechanic metaphor for the people we depend on in real life. The Author's deep understanding of games there are at least as complex as the original World of Warcraft is something that becomes more apparent as time goes on.
This is a work that also understands how vital those positive experiences can be to our experience as humans. We all have those friends in gaming or real life that we will be telling our stories to for years afterwards. They tend to be the moments that shine in our hearts and memory long after the days of drudgery have evaporated from our minds.
Thus we move from the experiences of being that new solo player to a group. This moves to the next step of any MMO, the guild.
Chibi Reviews
Ahh, the magic of Guild Chat is on display.
A force far more powerful than the normal spam as you learn you have just joined a community. Herein is a chance to learn about your potential online friends.
There is something in the manga that doesn't completely translate to the anime. Chat is maintained just like it is in several games, by the dialogue color, showing who is speaking. This is a classic MMO mechanic done well to make it easier to follow the story along. It's also done in the real life scenes making it obvious why this work needed to be in color.
This also leads the Role Player minefield of trying to keep your information private if your interested in the RPG side of MMORPGs.
