Top 10 Anime About Gaming

Fed up of her corporate life, 30 year old Moriko Morioka quits her job in hopes of finding something more fulfilling. Things don’t go quite as planned as she finds herself returning to her old interests and picking up a brand new MMORPG. After creating her ‘hot guy’ character she soon befriends a recovery mage named Lily who she just can’t help but find extremely cute. However, in reality Moriko has an unlikely encounter with a handsome high-ranking business man whom she may have met somewhere else before.

Confessing to someone on the internet can be a pretty risky affair, and Hideki Nishimura finds this out the hard way when his proposal to a female player is rejected because “she” is actually a “he”. Heart-broken, Hideki swears off online relationships for good… until fellow party member Ako manages to drag him into an online marriage after repeatedly asking him. Turns out Hideki made the right choice as he learns that all his party members are actually girls in real life. However, Ako seems to have a problem telling reality apart from the game and the group struggles to keep her delusions under control.

It’s rare that we get an anime about game development rather than just a group of heroes in the game world. Infatuated with the game “Fairies Story” ever since she was little, the recent high school graduate Aoba Suzukaze wastes no time in applying to the game’s development studio, Eagle Jump. Landing a job as a character designer, her luck doesn’t stop there and she learns that she’ll be working on the latest entry in her favourite series. But it’s not all fun and games as Aoba struggles with her colourful cast of coworkers and the crushing reality that is “crunch time”.

If the most beautiful girl in school walked up and asked you to join the Gaming club, would you say no? Well, Keita Amano would. Though he loves games as much as the next nerd, he rejects the offer when he finds out the club is more focused on competitive gaming rather than just having fun. Karen doesn’t take the rejection too well, not so much because of his reason but more so because she’s actually in love with the guy. Keita’s friend tries to knock some sense into him but he’d rather get into heated arguments about video games than learn a thing or two about girls. Good luck with that!

High school is rough for Haruyuki Arita who’s an easy target for bullies. However, he is unexpectedly rescued from his aggressors by vice president and number one pretty girl, Kuroyukihime. Even more unexpected is that she sought him out specifically for his gaming skills and introduces him to Brain Burst, a secret program that acts both as a brain enhancement and also an augmented multiplayer fighting game. Against his saviour’s advice, Haru logs onto the game and gets thrashed almost immediately. Though instead of getting scolded, Kuroyukihime takes him under her wing as she believes he’s just who she needs to take down the top players and get her revenge.

One of the main worries that comes with a society dependent on a virtual network is the damage that could be caused by a hacker. Summer Wars brings that worry to the forefront when Kenji Koiso, a mathematical genius and part-time moderator of the massive virtual reality world OZ, has his account hacked and used to cause devastating damage, all while he’s pretending to be his friend’s fiancé at her family get-together. Feeling some serious pressure, Kenji and his unlikely team resolve to face this mysterious hacker online and save both the virtual and the real world from total destruction.

The young wavemaster, Tsukasa, finds himself in a pretty bad situation after mysteriously waking up in the MMO, “The World” without any idea of how he got there. As if things couldn’t get any worse, he can’t log out and he’s been branded an illegal character by The Crimson Knights. Tsukasa does have one thing going for him, sort of; he’s protected by a guardian that attacks anything that threatens him—or just anything really. There are a few players that resolve to help him figure out what’s going on but he has no choice but to hide while he figures out just why he can’t log out.

When games receive new updates, they usually add a few new dungeons and ruin some character classes. Elder Tale does things a little different and manages to transport a bunch of players into the games world with seemingly no way back. One of these unlucky (or lucky?) players is Shiroe, someone with an infamous reputation for backhanded strategies. Together with his friends Naotsugu and Akatsuki, they try to figure out the rules of the world they thought they knew while dealing with rogue players and nasty dungeons that previously weren’t present in the game. It’s a good thing then that death has little-to-no consequences.

Like it or not, all of our favourite games eventually come to an end. Momoga sits in his guild hall as the popular MMO, “Yggdrasil” ticks down its final moments. However instead of being logged out, Momoga finds himself interacting with his guilds NPCs who have developed full personalities and a fierce loyalty to him. Severely confused, Momoga has to maintain his role as the giant skeleton leader of the dark guild so as to no raise any suspicion. This means repelling daring adventurers while also carefully gathering information on the world of Yggdrasil, which has changed in more ways than one.

A world where virtual reality has advanced so much that it feels like you’re really in the game is definitely an alluring premise—even if it leads to some dire consequences. This anime starts out with a bit of a shadow cast over the technology when a bunch of gamers find themselves stuck in the online world with no choice but to clear each floor or face their demise. On the flip side, the subsequent cyber-adventures of the infallible Kirito have him flying over the beautiful forest of ALfheim online, deflecting bullets in Gun Gale and even battling on the streets with AR, which certainly makes us wish that the future would hurry up already.