So I took a bit of a break from anime before watching this one. Prior to this I did maybe 20 shows in a row and needed a brief hiatus. After taking the break I did some scrolling and I thought the title of this one looked interesting. So this show stars Haga who is in a video game world as a debugger. His job is to look around the game to note and report bugs; however, none of the debuggers can log out and it’s been a year. Most of the debuggers went off to do their own thing and exploited their debugger mode. With that they can roam the world of the game as invincible gods, or so they think. Haga knows debug mode comes with serious risks and refuses to use it as he navigates the world of the game trying to find a way out but stops to look for every bug along the way.

So right away the story is really interesting. I’ve seen countless shows about video game worlds but none of them really dove heavily into bugs and glitches. This one however makes that the core theme of the entire story. So as the story progresses it makes a lot of references to very common problems found with glitched games and wow is this one buggy. At one point a player gets stuck and can’t move, another gets trapped outside of the established world of the game, in several instances players go through walls and you even have a town of NPCs stuck in the t pose. As someone who plays a lot of video games I’ve come across a lot of these bugs myself a time or two.

Haga goes from just an ordinary debugger to basically being tasked with stopping the rogue debuggers from continuing to break the game. So what’s interesting is Haga goes into each situation at a clear disadvantage not using debug mode and it’s honestly interesting to see a protagonist with a massive gap in abilities to his opponents in almost every situation.

The bugs themselves are interesting but what is the real highlight of their inclusion is the element of unpredictability. With most shows the methods that are used to solve problems usually fall under some kind of logic or clever idea. In other words there is some kind of method to the madness. That’s not really the case here as this game is so buggy it changes how the entire world works. For example at one point Haga and is group are chased by a bunch of monsters. Most shows usually involve some kind of way to distract the monsters or defeat them in order to get out of harms way. The solution here though was to spawn more monsters to tank the game’s frame rate till they can’t move fast enough to catch up. So solutions to a lot of the situations involve exploiting these bugs and glitches and because we as the viewer don’t know them near to the level that Haga does it often means the solution is a complete surprise.

Now for the characters. Honestly I wasn’t sure if I was going to like any of them at first because I didn’t get the best first impression out of any of them. I initially thought Haga was boring. The thing is as the season continued all of the characters grew on me and I began to like all of them. Using Haga as an example as he was introduced to more and more stuff to deal and interact with his most appealing characteristic started to shine which was his innovative mind. Because Haga refuses to use debug mode it means all of his solutions have to be possible for him to do within the game naturally. Since he is so dutiful about his role as a debugger he is very well versed with the game’s mechanics and watching him find solutions is entertaining. The rest of the characters are also interesting but especially the other debuggers. They don’t talk or act like your typical anime characters they actually talk like random video game fans and the difference is clear as day. This naturally makes the cast stand out from most shows a lot like the story.

So as a whole this is an interesting concept. Because the world of the show is a very buggy game the world is a complete unknown to the viewer and follows rules and mechanics we know nothing about. This uniqueness is seen time and time again throughout the season in a variety of ways making for a show with it’s own individual brand of entertainment. I absolutely loved this. The season ends with clearly more story to tell and I’m planning on continuing with the story to see what other bugs there are for Haga to find.