| Overview |
Moriko Morioka (盛岡森子 Morioka Moriko) is the main protagonist of the story. She is a 30-year-old single female. After graduating college, she worked in the sales department for the company when she was 24 years old, then later, she decided to quit and become a NEET. She spends her days in a net game in search for the satisfaction that otherwise she can't obtain in real life.
Her net game character is Hayashi.
Appearance[]
Moriko is a 30-year-old female of medium height with waist-length bluish-purple hair that is seen tied up in various episodes and eyes that match, but in a lighter shade. Her skin is a bit pale, she has a distinctive mole near her mouth and her body is an average build.
She does not seem to know or even care about her looks outside her job, and after quitting Moriko's appearance became unkempt, her hair being long and at times unkept; she has bags under her eyes as well as eyebrows that haven't been tended too.
However, after setting up plans to meet Homare Koiwai for drinks in episode 5, she seeks advice from Lily on how she should dress and her hair, during which Lily and Kanbe get into a disagreement on if short or long hair is better before Moriko finally chose medium-length hair.
In the manga, she is noted to be very attractive and beautiful among her formerly male co-workers or public.
Personality[]
Moriko is an introverted and quiet person. The little she likes to speak, she does it in an excessively polite manner but in her head, she analyzes situations and talks to herself with heaps of energy. She has marked low self-esteem, even though other people generally note her for her looks and the quality of its work, her opinion about herself tends to be negative.
She is extremely shy, therefore she avoids human contact as much as possible, that has caused her to be inexperienced in social activities and thus, she tends to think people are hard judging her actions so she constantly feels regrets about her decisions, even if that's not true. Whenever she embarrasses herself, Moriko is seen lint rolling the dust off her floor. As she always avoids human contact she is not so used to be well treated, and so she has become really sensitive, and the minimal sign of attention from other people gratifies her to the point of letting tears of joy.
She suffered a disorder or phobia called "Atelophobia" which is the fear of not being good enough or a disappointment and "Alexithymia" which describes a person who has a difficult time expressing their feelings to others.
Background[]
It is stated that her reason to become a neet is to become a pro MMO player. Sadly, this was not considered in the anime. In the manga, it is also revealed that her reason for quitting her old job at the trading company is because she took a 3 person workload and broke her mental health. She began to avoid any interactions to the outside world and is afraid of going back to reality which caused her to be in a slump for days or months until she discovered Fruits De Mer. She quit her job right after she was in-line for her promotion because of the company manual she made which is seen to be viewed as a great achievement for the company.
It has yet to be confirmed if she has any relatives, but there is no sign of family or friends in her life. The only person known of her past is her ex-colleague Homare Koiwai and even he was unknown to her as they only communicated by phone. Before she met him in the convenience store. Her liking of online games did not start with her quitting her job, in the years she worked she was a responsible employee, and worked hard during the week, even late at night, but she played online games on weekends.
She used to play a character named "Yuki" from NanterSG, with this character she met "Harth", another dedicated online player, who became inseparable with her, becoming a kind of romantic interest to her, even though she never even knew his real name. One day she left the game, in order to fulfil every remnant task before quitting her job, this took her months and she never managed to play again as Yuuki, losing contact with her beloved partner.
Plot[]
About 6 months after she left the game, Moriko managed to quit her job, and the next day she started into a new game called Fruits De Mer, where she decided to play as a male character, creating him as a handsome guy who by an unknown reason she named "Hayashi".
The new game was quite challenging and difficult for a beginner, and after failing the first mission once and again Hayashi was found by a cute girl named "Lily" who offered help and guidance, making her gear up correctly and finally defeating her first goal, from this point on they became inseparable. The kind and soft Lily became attached to Hayashi and introduced him to her guild @House Party where he was well received.
Moriko seems to inadvertently start to develop feelings towards her, expressing confusion since Lily is a female and she is already a thirty-something; Even so, she can not help but feel excited about every detail that Lily does to her. On one occasion, after having played together until dawn with Lily, she became ill, feeling forced to go out to look for medicines she leaves her home, suddenly she had an accident with someone in the street, she lost consciousness and woke up in a hospital, where her first sight upon waking was an asleep handsome young man beside her bed. The man presented himself as Yuuta Sakurai and offered to pay for her Hospital expenses as he caused the accident, she accepts it and they separated after he gave her his phone number and email. Moriko was deeply impressed by the man.
During the next days, Yuuta contacted her to know her development, and after she was healthy he offered to take her out to dinner as a celebration for her recovery, her shyness made her deny the invitation, even when she really wanted, and when she felt the guy was awesome. Some days after, she encountered a young clerk who works at the store where she goes constantly visits who is also a Fruits de Mer player. And in one visit to the store she finds a well-dressed man who starts talking to her, this man reveals himself as Koiwai, her ex-colleague, both feel amazed to meet again, and the encounter ends up in Moriko accepting a going out to drink. Se does not know how to do nor what to dress her guildmates gave her advice, that ended up in a change of look.
The date failed since Moriko confused the day and went out a day prior, but luckily this confusion ended in the re-encounter of her with Yuuta Sakurai, who surprisingly was a friend of Koiwai, they had a great time together and started to get closer.
As of the latest chapter, Yuuta confessed his feelings to her and it finally reached her after years of being together as both online and offline friends. She reciprocates his feelings and he propose to her at the Theme Park. They took pictures together with her wearing the ring he bought with Koiwai's suggestion. She and Yuuta got engaged and eventually married with 2 kids, a son and daughter. Both, Sakurai and Moriko lived happily as a newlywed and still enjoys playing MMO together (as shown in recent update from the author).
Etymology[]
- The name Moriko means "forest" (森) (mori) and "child" (子) (ko).
- Moriko's surname Morioka means "boom, prosper, copulate" (盛) (mori) and "ridge, hill" (岡) (oka).
Trivia[]
- Moriko's star sign is Cancer.
- Moriko likes cute stuff but doesn't show it much to other people except Yuuta Sakurai.
- Moriko used to buy foods instead of cooking it until Sakurai cooked for the both of them (as seen in Episode 10).
- Moriko has invested in her computer gear more than anything else, she started using an old noisy CPU and she then got a gamer mouse and Keyboard before she ended up having a gamer PC.
- Her favorite convenience store meal is BBQ Katsudon with egg.
- She has 0 experience in real life events or social activities such as dating or any other related events due to her nature of being afraid of society.
- Moriko and Yuuta got married on her birthday on July 20th (As stated by the author)