15 Best VRMMO Anime of All Time
The term VRMMO means virtual reality massively multiplayer online (role-playing game) and is known among the gaming community, but did you know that the term is also popular in other artistic genres? Anime is definitely one such genre and VRMMO anime have been more and more popular in recent years. Some exceptionally popular modern-day anime titles are actually VRMMO-centered and if you like such settings, we have the perfect list for you. Namely, this article is going to contain a list of the 15 best VRMMO anime titles of all time so enjoy!
1. Sword Art Online
Original Run: July 8, 2012 – September 20, 2020
Number of Episodes: 96
Sword Art Online (SAO) is a massively multiplayer network role-playing game (VRMMORPG) virtual reality released in 2022: thanks to the NerveGear, a helmet capable of stimulating the user’s five senses through direct manipulation of the brain, the players can impersonate and control their own in-game character directly with their mind.
SAO officially opens on November 6, 2022, but logged-in users realize that it is impossible to log out. The creator of the game, Akihiko Kayaba, reveals himself to be a psychopath and informs them that he has imprisoned them: if they wish to be free again, the last level of the game must be reached and passed (represented by the 100th floor of the flying castle of Aincrad, in which the final boss is found), however in the event of a game-over or forcibly removing the NerveGear, the hardware will cause the player to go into a cerebral coma by means of electric shocks to the brain.
The players are immediately hospitalized and artificially fed. Among the many players to witness Kayaba’s words, there is Kazuto “Kirito” Kirigaya, one of the 1,000 beta testers who had the opportunity to try the game in preview. Strengthened by his previous experience, Kirito works hard to complete the game alone, but over time he will be paired with a player named Asuna with whom he will fall in love.
Two years later, the protagonist discovers Kayaba’s identity in SAO, confronts him, and defeats him once and for all, thus earning both his own freedom and that of the other players still alive. However, upon returning to the real world, Kirito discovers that 300 SAO players, including Asuna, have not yet awakened. Following a lead according to which Asuna would find herself imprisoned in another VRMMORPG called Alfheim Online (ALO), Kirito also participates in this other game, in which he meets by chance Leafa, that is her cousin Suguha.
2. Log Horizon
Original Run: October 5, 2013 – March 31, 2021
Number of Episodes: 62
With the release of its twelfth expansion pack, the massively multiplayer online role-playing game, Elder Tale, has unquestionably become the most-played MMORPG in the world with a user base of several million players. However, following the release of its twelfth expansion, Novasphere Pioneers, 30,000 Japanese players, and several thousand more around the world logged in at the time of the update found themselves trapped in the game with no ability to log out. Among these players, Shiroe, an unsociable young adult, and his friends Naotsugu and Akatsuki. In order to overcome the obstacles and dangers of this world that has now become their reality, they decide to team up.
3. Re:CREATORS
Original Run: April 8, 2017 – September 16, 2017
Number of Episodes: 22
At the end of 2016, Sōta Mizushino is a young high school student fan of anime and dreaming of writing his own light novel. Watching the anime adaptation of mecha Vogelchevalier’s light novel for inspiration, the touchscreen tablet he was watching the series on crashes and pulls him into the anime world, where he witnesses a fight between the character from the anime Celejia Upitiria and a mysterious young girl wearing a military uniform. After his tablet crashes again, Sōta returns to his world but ends up dragging Celejia with him.
4. No Game No Life
Original Run: April 9, 2014 – June 25, 2014
Number of Episodes: 12
No Game No Life is focused on Sora and Shiro who are inseparable brother and sister, both in reality and in video games (they are not actually brother and sister but see each other as such). As a team, their individual skills make them invincible: Sora has a shrewd intuition, great culture, very high intelligence, and unwavering insight, while Shiro possesses an intelligence beyond genius.
In the real world, they are reclusive, antisocial, and hikikomori. In the video game world, they play together as 『 』 (white), a mysterious group of online gamers unaware of defeat, finishing first in every game they participate in. Because character account names are always empty space, they are known as “White”.
5. KonoSuba
Original Run: January 14, 2016 – March 16, 2017
Number of Episodes: 20 (+ 2 OVA)
KonoSuba revolves around Kazuma Satō. After an untimely and embarrassing death, Kazuma Satō, a Japanese hikikomori teenager, meets a goddess named Aqua, who offers him to reincarnate in a parallel world with MMORPG elements, where he can embark on adventure and combat. against monsters. Although offered a divine item or overpowered ability to use in this new world, Kazuma, following a taunt from Aqua, chooses her to accompany him to Axel’s town, where he quickly finds that the latter’s lack of judgment is of little benefit to him.
6. Overlord
Original Run: July 7, 2015 – present
Number of Episodes: 39 (+ 1 OVA and 34 ONA)
The story of Overlord begins in Yggdrasil, a very successful online virtual role-playing game, which is about to close for good after 12 years of existence. The main protagonist, Momonga nevertheless finds it difficult to accept it, he has no family, no friends, no girlfriend, and no longer finds meaning in living in “reality”. He is the leader of one of the 10 best guilds in the game, the Ainz Ooal Gown guild, composed exclusively of “non-human” characters, and whose headquarters is the “Great Tomb of Nazarick”.
7. Accel World
Original Run: April 7, 2012 – September 22, 2012
Number of Episodes: 24 (+ 2 OVA)
In the year 2046, a technology known as neuro-synchronization, which enables people to completely control all of the five senses, has become so pervasive that people may access the Internet and visit virtual worlds using a gadget known as a Neuro-Linker. Short and overweight Haruyuki “Haru” Arita suffers from low self-esteem as a result of frequent bullying by some of his schoolmates.
Haru logs into the school’s virtual world to play squash alone in order to escape the hardships of his life. He consistently sets records and achieves fantastic results. One day, “Kuroyukihime,” the vice president of the student council, notices Haru and offers him the Brain Burst, a top-secret technique that makes time seem to stand still by substantially “speeding up” your own brainwaves in reality.
Unfortunately, there is a limit to which a person can accelerate as each acceleration costs points in Brain Burst and the easiest way to accumulate new ones is by defeating other Brain Burst users in combat in the virtual world massively multiplayer online fighting game (VRMMO) of the program. However, if a user reaches a score of zero, the Brain Burst program will automatically uninstall itself and block any reinstallation attempts, thus permanently losing the ability to speed up again. Also, a Brain Burst user can only give away a single copy of the game.
8. Digimon Universe: App Monsters
Original Run: October 1, 2016 – September 30, 2017
Number of Episodes: 52
Haru Shinkai is a fifth-year student far from being touched by this kind of formula, who leads his mundane little life. Although she is not disagreeable, the boy with little confidence persists in thinking that he is not the hero; unlike his childhood friend Yûjin. But when a strange monster named Gatchmon appears from his phone and offers him to become a real hero by accompanying him on his adventures in his new life in a different world, Haru walks away, not feeling himself up to the task.
9. Serial Experiments Lain
Original Run: July 6, 1998 – September 28, 1998
Number of Episodes: 13
Serial Experiments Lain starts after the suicide of the young Chisa Yomoda when some girls receive e-mails from the girl. The suspicion is that this is a bad joke, but one of them, Lain Iwakura is particularly intrigued. After asking her father for a new NAVI (Navigator, the evolution of the PC), she starts surfing Wired (a computer network similar to the Internet) in search of answers.
From here on, a series of inexplicable events disrupt her life. She learns that another Lain, quite similar to her physically but temperamentally opposite, has made an appearance of her both in the Wired and in the real world and that the Knights (knights – a group of hackers) are particularly interested in her.
11. .hack//SIGN
Original Run: April 4, 2002 – September 25, 2002
Number of Episodes: 26 (+ 3 OVA)
In 2007, the MMORPG The World is widespread and over 20 million players meet there virtually and experienced adventures together. This virtual reality serves as the setting for the anime. When the character Tsukasa wakes up in this game, he doesn’t remember anything and unlike the other virtual characters, he feels this virtual world is real.
He feels pain and perceives smells and temperature. Soon he has to realize that he cannot leave the game and that he has special abilities. As a result, he is soon pursued by the “Crimson Knights,” the game’s self-proclaimed guardians. Also, he is seen as a cat-like character who is not supposed to exist. Players who cheat/hack are commonly banned from online games.
When they find him, a fight ensues and a monster appears and protects Tsukasa. In doing so, the attacking red knight is not only killed in the game but suffers an epileptic seizure as a real player belonging to this character. All players are advised to stay away from Tsukasa and the monster, while another group is already making a plan to separate Tsukasa from the monster and arrest him.
12. And You Thought There Is Never a Girl Online?
Original Run: April 7, 2016 – June 23, 2016
Number of Episodes: 12
Hideki Nishimura expressed his affection to a girl he met while playing a game online who, ironically, was actually a man. The latter makes the decision to leave this terrible chapter of his life in the past and never again place his trust in “ladies” in online games. However, a female declares her love for him to him one day online, and this time it is a high school student whose name is Ako Tamaki. Ako has a hard time interacting with people in person and is unable to distinguish between the actual world and the world he lives in while he is online. In order to convince her to respond, Hideki and his guildmates plan to heal her in the actual world.
13. Do You Love Your Mom and Her Two-Hit Multi-Target Attacks?
Original Run: July 13, 2019 – September 28, 2019
Number of Episodes: 12 (+ OVA)
The main character, Masato Oosuki is a simple high school student looking to get out of his mother’s petticoats who remains very attached to him. One day after taking a random poll, he finds out he’s involved in a secret government scheme and finds himself in a role-playing video game world. This seems to be a boon for the latter, who wanted to get away from his mother, and as a passionate player, to be able to quickly show his talents in this new world.
14. .hack//Roots
Original Run: April 5, 2006 – September 27, 2006
Number of Episodes: 26
In 2015, most of the data from the online role-playing game “The World” with millions of players was lost in a fire. From the rescued data, The World R:2 is created and released in 2016. The game now allows players to fight each other and form guilds. The player Haseo is attacked right at the beginning of the game by player killers who kill inexperienced players. However, he is rescued by Ovan and soon joins his guild, the Twilight Brigade.
The aim of this is to find the six virus cores before the opposing guild TAN succeeds. During her adventures, Haseo gets to know the other members of the guild, some of them in real life. In an attack, Shino, a member of the Twilight Brigade, is killed in the game, in reality, she falls into a coma. Now Haseo is training in the game to be able to wake her up from her coma.
15. Psycho-Pass
Original Run: October 12, 2012 – December 12, 2019
Number of Episodes: 41
Psycho-Pass is set in 2112, in Japan, Sibyl, a computer system, transformed society into a “perfect world”, thanks to the ubiquitous cameras, drones, and scanners, Sibyl is able to analyze and quantify the criminal intentions of a person (named “Psycho-Pass “) and determines who is likely to commit a crime. When a citizen exceeds the norm, the inspectors of the Bureau of Public Security accompanied by their executors (person having an abnormally high “Psycho-Pass”), pursue and apprehend these people to make them undergo therapy, lock them up or shoot them down.
