OVA
Description
Mai Minase is a high school student living in Kanazawa, Ishikawa Prefecture, and serves as the central figure in the first chapter of the story. She is approximately sixteen to seventeen years old and has brown, neck-length hair and blue eyes. Her life takes an unexpected turn when she agrees to play the online game The World at the request of her boyfriend, Tomonari Kasumi. He brought her to a specific area within the game, where they both collapsed and were later found unconscious. Although Mai awakened in a hospital shortly after the incident, Tomonari remained in a deep coma, an event that becomes the driving force behind her subsequent actions.
In the wake of this trauma, Mai is a subject of rumors, particularly because she is the only known victim of this phenomenon to regain consciousness without outside intervention. She possesses a unique sensitivity, able to perceive a specific auditory tone, which she later identifies as the note A in C major, whenever there is a significant disturbance within The World. This sound, familiar to her from tuning her violin, is what she believes allowed her to break free from the game's influence and was the first thing she produced upon waking. Her ability to hear this tone again at critical moments, such as when The World's effects spread to the Yokohama region, becomes an invaluable asset.
Initially distrustful of a former CC Corp employee named Junichiro Tokuoka, who approaches her to investigate the comas, Mai eventually joins forces with him. Together, they work to uncover what CC Corp is hiding and how to save the other victims, including Tomonari. Her motivations are deeply personal, driven by a desire to understand what happened to her boyfriend and to find a way to wake him up. Her investigation leads her and Tokuoka to break into their school's game study clubroom to recreate the conditions of the incident, a risky move that demonstrates her growing determination. During this reenactment, when Tokuoka is also affected by the game's power, it is Mai who acts decisively, destroying the computer monitor and dragging him outside to safety.
Mai has a strong background in music, being a skilled violinist. This is not merely a hobby, as her mother is consistent in pushing her to pursue it professionally, though Mai herself prefers to play it as a personal passion. Her love for the violin, along with her knowledge of Richard Wagner's operatic cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen, was inherited from her grandfather, to whom she was deeply attached. This knowledge proves relevant, as Tomonari took his in-game name, Sieg, as a contraction of the hero Siegfried from that cycle, and he had expressed a desire to surpass a famous player named Balmung. The connection between her musical ability and the mysterious tones that signal a disturbance in The World makes her uniquely suited to the investigation.
Over the course of the story, Mai develops from a confused and traumatized student into a proactive and courageous young woman. Her key relationships include her comatose boyfriend, Tomonari, whose fate she refuses to accept, and her partnership with Tokuoka, which evolves from suspicion to a strong alliance. She also becomes connected to other friends of Tomonari from The World, such as the players known as Yukichin and Kyo, who become part of the larger effort to solve the mystery. Her unique auditory ability remains her most notable trait, culminating in a moment where she uses it to correctly time a critical server replacement, helping to resolve the central conflict and allowing the ultimate artificial intelligence known as Aura to be born. By the end, Mai is part of a group that successfully gathers evidence against CC Corp, finds a resolution to the coma incidents, and celebrates their hard-won victory.
In the wake of this trauma, Mai is a subject of rumors, particularly because she is the only known victim of this phenomenon to regain consciousness without outside intervention. She possesses a unique sensitivity, able to perceive a specific auditory tone, which she later identifies as the note A in C major, whenever there is a significant disturbance within The World. This sound, familiar to her from tuning her violin, is what she believes allowed her to break free from the game's influence and was the first thing she produced upon waking. Her ability to hear this tone again at critical moments, such as when The World's effects spread to the Yokohama region, becomes an invaluable asset.
Initially distrustful of a former CC Corp employee named Junichiro Tokuoka, who approaches her to investigate the comas, Mai eventually joins forces with him. Together, they work to uncover what CC Corp is hiding and how to save the other victims, including Tomonari. Her motivations are deeply personal, driven by a desire to understand what happened to her boyfriend and to find a way to wake him up. Her investigation leads her and Tokuoka to break into their school's game study clubroom to recreate the conditions of the incident, a risky move that demonstrates her growing determination. During this reenactment, when Tokuoka is also affected by the game's power, it is Mai who acts decisively, destroying the computer monitor and dragging him outside to safety.
Mai has a strong background in music, being a skilled violinist. This is not merely a hobby, as her mother is consistent in pushing her to pursue it professionally, though Mai herself prefers to play it as a personal passion. Her love for the violin, along with her knowledge of Richard Wagner's operatic cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen, was inherited from her grandfather, to whom she was deeply attached. This knowledge proves relevant, as Tomonari took his in-game name, Sieg, as a contraction of the hero Siegfried from that cycle, and he had expressed a desire to surpass a famous player named Balmung. The connection between her musical ability and the mysterious tones that signal a disturbance in The World makes her uniquely suited to the investigation.
Over the course of the story, Mai develops from a confused and traumatized student into a proactive and courageous young woman. Her key relationships include her comatose boyfriend, Tomonari, whose fate she refuses to accept, and her partnership with Tokuoka, which evolves from suspicion to a strong alliance. She also becomes connected to other friends of Tomonari from The World, such as the players known as Yukichin and Kyo, who become part of the larger effort to solve the mystery. Her unique auditory ability remains her most notable trait, culminating in a moment where she uses it to correctly time a critical server replacement, helping to resolve the central conflict and allowing the ultimate artificial intelligence known as Aura to be born. By the end, Mai is part of a group that successfully gathers evidence against CC Corp, finds a resolution to the coma incidents, and celebrates their hard-won victory.