Otaku Girl

by Louis Bulaong

Imagine a world where you can live the life of your favorite fictional characters. Where you can become a real comic book superhero, anime protagonist, video game badass, and other great characters of fiction. Where you can gain actual superpowers, live in a fantastical world filled with villains and adventures, and have fun battling it out with other fellow geeks.

In the virtual reality world known as the Escapist Dream, all of this can be possible for a price – once you get in, you can never get out.

An American geek named Charlie, and a Japanese otaku named GI, would become trapped inside and forced to fight for survival, against rogue AIs and crazed players that had taken over the virtual reality world. Would their new-found powers and teamwork be enough?

For what they didn't know, behind this malfunctioning virtual reality world, hides an even darker evil. One who is all-powerful, sadistic, and possibly eldritch...

Genres: Fiction

442 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 22, 2021

About the author

Louis Bulaong is an avid writer of the online speculative pulp, and the author behind the critically-acclaimed cult hit Escapist Dream and Otaku Girl.

Reviews

[Adam Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Otaku Girl by Louis Bulaong is just as good as its predecessor, Escapist Dream. For those who didn't enjoy Ernest Cline's Ready Player Two, this book will put a smile on your face.

Taking place in the same virtual reality world - the Escapist Dream - where people can role-play and use the powers of their favourite fictional characters. It focuses on a new character, a Japanese otaku named only as "GI", who got trapped inside the Escapist Dream together with other geeks after it once again malfunctioned. The protagonist of the first novel, Charlie Anderson, returns to save these geeks. As a pop culture novel, This novel is filled with pop cultural references from various media and fandoms (from superheroes, anime; video games; literature). But unlike the first novel, which focuses on Western comics and films, the book focuses instead on Japanese manga and anime, emphasising internet culture and memes.

There were many heavy moments of surrealism and long, in-depth passages about criticisms on cyberbullying and cancel culture. What was just as great as the previous book was that almost all the main characters are broken and flawed. There are no cunning geniuses or talented killers in this story. This novel is about many untrained geeks forced to survive in a hostile world who make a lot of mistakes throughout the book. The main character, GI, got her name (which means "Great Idiot") because of a mistake she made that led to their only chance of getting out failing.

The humour and writing were better than the last one. It had a lot more creativity and imagination, including creating the weirdest characters derived from actual internet memes was the best thing ever! 

[Mark Ramos · Rating 5 out of 5]

When the sequel came out I immediately bought it. I didn't know that a part 2 was in the works knowing that there's so little you can do with a pop culture premise (Ernest Cline tried to do that and he ended up with the abomination that is Ready Player Two).

This book was good. It's certainly better written than the first one. The humor was funny and the memes get me. Louis Bulaong has a very vivid and imaginative mind to create some of the weirdest characters I've met this year.

[AccoJumbo · Rating 5 out of 5]

The reference humor is hard to balance and it has to find a specific public. I'm not into anime but I really enjoyed the other geeks stuffs. Also loved the characters and the VR environment.
The prose flow very well, it's short and easy to read!