Finally, after the halfway point of the series, we get into the meat of the story. Took long enough, doncha think?
We start things off with Mika Konoe, the assistant who wants to be noticed by Rina-senpai.
She’s pissed that Itsuki seems to be getting all the attention, so she drowns her sorrows in – what else? – PSO2. We learn that she uses a Lillipa-costumed character that uses Wired Lances. FINALLY!
Unfortunately, the animators really dropped the ball here, or they outright just didn’t care. My excitement that we finally get to see the Wired Lance in action was swiftly killed after seeing how the weapon was represented: Outside of one instance where she actually throws the Wired Lance at an enemy, all we see her do is wave her arms around a lot while the blade doesn’t leave her hands. If this was your first exposure to the Wired Lance, you wouldn’t know that it was a mid-range weapon at all.
Anyway, Mika runs into a Darker that is for some reason indestructible. Kind of like a… Data Bug? Naaaaah, must be some kind of coincidence.
She escapes and turns off her game, but the Darker remains on the screen, dark stuff appears around her, and she disappears, presumably into the game.
Before I forget, there’s this pointless subplot about Rina wanting to hold an after party but she can’t get any support from the school board or the club presidents. I acknowledged it exists, now it’s time to move on, because it’s utter shit.
Rumors spread about Mika’s disappearance, and our two leads investigate casually.
Aika asks around if she played PSO2, and Risa spots her breaking into Mika’s room and looking through her stuff. She complains about what Aika’s doing, but doesn’t seem to bat an eye when she steals Mika’s NotVita. I guess Risa’s just grown numb to how seriously she takes PSO2.
Since Aika is bringing attention to PSO2, naturally this investigation ends up in PSO2, though to be fair, Itsuki didn’t put much stock into finding her so much as he wanted to distract Risa from worrying so much and feeling guilty about neglecting Mika.
Turns out, people actually HAVE seen Mika in-game. And not Mika’s character – Mika HERSELF.
They spot Mika and move in to rescue her, but it’s ultimately Aika who saves Mika. Meanwhile, Risa gets captured by Darkers, but Itsuki turns around and goes Berserk Mode on the Darkers, temporarily changing into a different character (the blue-haired guy in the intro animation that was suspiciously absent until now). Aika gets overwhelmed by Darkers but is saved by…
Holy crap. We have Quna. We had Patty earlier, too. Now where the fuck is LISA?!
Mika appears at school the next day, but with no recollection of being trapped in the game. However, Itsuki suspects something really did happen between her and the game since she has a hand injury she sustained in-game.
To be honest, so far I’m not hating PSO2. It’s… still pretty lacking in a LOT of aspects, but it’s just barely good enough for me to not be embarrassed to watch it.