Overgeared ‒ Episode 5
That task is easier said than done, and in a way, you could almost sympathize with Grid's plight. If you're among those lucky enough to land a “fun” job like content creation, e-Sports, or writing down opinions about Japanese cartoons, the act of actually convincing people in your life that it's an actual profession and not an excuse to avoid the responsibilities of a traditional job can be a tall order. I sometimes have trouble getting all that across to my own folks with aspects of this gig, so watching Grid get told by his parents to stick to reality and work the day job he hates was the closest I've come to feeling sorry for him. The key here is close because while Grid's desire to do a job he actually likes would be easy enough to get behind, it's pretty obvious that he's motivated by a desire to coast by on an easy life rather than out of any actual passion to be a pro. Plus, when his efforts to convince his parents fail, his next best solution is to outright lie to them by pretending to have gotten an office job, so Grid remains as slimy a person as ever.
It's a little painful to watch, but not enough to keep this episode from being funny. Even when Grid thinks he's winning, he really isn't, and when he shifts to selling all the gear he crafts, he thinks he's stumbled onto the perfect way to get rich. However, he fails to account for one key factor: He's still trapped under the mechanics of a video game. Satisfy might not be a gatcha, but that doesn't make its success rates for crafting any higher, so he's stuck bashing his head against the game's RNG, and it's pretty hilarious.
Even when Grid does actually succeed at crafting some legendary weapons, his big payday isn't really all that big. It turns out that developers have been planning to increase the appearance rate for such items, and according to them, it'll increase the demand enough that anyone selling them later down the line will make way more money than he did. That explanation runs opposite to how supply and demand generally works, but for the purposes of throwing Grid under the bus yet again, it's an acceptable enough punchline that I can overlook the reasoning.
What I'm a little more mixed on is the next revelation. Grid's family has suddenly gone into massive debt. With all of them being on the verge of losing their home, Grid's payouts from the game are suddenly the best chance they have of crawling out of debt, and I don't know how I feel about this. As fun as it is watching Grid run around as a selfish heel, he can only stay but so unlikeable before he stops being entertaining, so in that respect I can understand the desire to give him a more sympathetic reason to make money. However, considering that Grid probably would have kept up his lie for a while longer had this situation not turned him into the family breadwinner, it does feel like a case of the show wanting to have its cake and eat it too. For the moment, I'm at least glad that Grid having a more altruistic goal hasn't made him less comically selfish (making sure his dad knows exactly how much to pay him back someday is so vile it circles back around to being hysterical). Still, we'll have to see how the rest of the show handles this development to determine if it adds to its humor or drags it closer towards a more by-the-numbers power fantasy.
Rating:
Overgeared is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.
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