Netflix’s recently released anime series that has surprised fans with how good it is, Good Night World, follows the story of a fed-up family who finds comfort in each other’s online existence, not knowing that it is the same family they despise so much in real life.
Inspired by Uru Okabe’s shonen manga series of the same name, the Netflix adaptation was put out for fans recently, and the twelve episodes of the series have been a pleasant surprise for many.
Directed by Katsuya Kikuchi and written by Michiko Yokote, Good Night World stars Daisuke Hirose as Ichi, Nobunaga Shimazaki as Asuma Arima, Akio Otsuka as Shiro Akabane, Aya Endou as May, Aoi Yuuki as Pico, Ryouhei Kimura as Leon, Hiroki Nanami as Sasumata, and a few others as different characters in the show.
Released on October 12th, 2023, this twelve-episode series follows the story of four people from a dysfunctional family, all with issues of their own. It is to get away from their real-life problems. These four family members, including two brothers, their father, and their mother, all indulge in an online immersive game.
With the virtual reality game called Planet at their disposal, the four of them, without the knowledge of each other, of course, end up connecting with their gaming characters. Not knowing that it is the real-life Arima’s family, the four play the game together and even end up allying they call The Akabane family.
But soon, the immersive game seems to have completely seeped into their actual lives, causing their online identities to be in danger of getting revealed, and this revelation just might end up making or breaking their real-life family.
The series keeps you on the edge with its twists and thriller aspects. As the online family that the Arima’s found through the game gets closer and closer to the final level of the game to fight the Black Bird of Happiness, their family secrets start to come out, and things take a darker turn.
If we have managed to make you curious about the series, then continue reading till the end to know more about the Good Night World’s plot and its ending explained.
Good Night World’s Ending Explained
Planet is an online game that takes its players to fancy virtual worlds far away from reality. Not only this, but it also lets you interact with other players, form alliances with them, fight off different levels, and communicate with them the same way you would talk with actual people in your life.
The series introduces us to a family, the Arima’s, who despise each other’s extent so much that they have all resorted to taking comfort in the virtual reality game Planet, even forming connections with other players.
This family of four has a father, Kojiro or Shiro, who gets no respect from his family and has no authority in the real world but is the boss figure of the online family, the Akabane family. The mother in the family, May, has no interest in taking care of her actual family and even goes to lengths to ignore them, but has taken the role of a “healer” in the virtual game.
The Arima also has two sibling brothers, Taichiro or Ichi, the angry older one, who is nowhere as intelligent as his younger brother, Asuma or A, who is peaceful and happy. Not finding any sense of happiness and warmth from each other, this family seems to have let the world of AI into their lives, giving control of their lives to it as well.
We are told that the family had gone through a lot, more than just differences in personalities; the family ended up being pulled completely apart because of the sudden death of Ichi’s sister, Aya. Her death, instead of bringing the family to rely on each other for comfort, had them resigning to their respective rooms and detaching from the family.
The Virtual Life
When inside the Planet world, the four family members, who did not know that they were each other’s actual family, found comfort, warmth, and a sense of belonging with each other. This bond was so strong that they decided to form a permanent alliance on the game, going by the name Akabane family.
A twist that only the audience and one of the Arima family members is aware of is that the game Planet was developed by Arima Kojiro, the genius father who had put the Akabane members in the game as the representation of the actual Arima family.
At the start of the game, Ichi had formed a bond with another character, Pico, but after finding his virtual family in the game, he and Pico not only separated, but the former also became a pirate chief.
Pico, after getting its strong guild, returns to fight off the Akabane family, also a strong alliance, to get back and recruit Ichi, win the game, and take away all of the prize money. Another player in the game, Leon, had found similar warmth and friendship with another character called Sasumate.
The Clash of Two Worlds
According to Kojiro’s rules of the AIs used in the game, all of them had to be killed for the final boss, Blackbird, to die and the game to end. Things turn eerie when Asuma’s character, A, gets hurt in the game during a battle, but somehow, the hurt breaks the boundary of the virtual world and ends up injuring him in real life as well.
This sets the wheels in Ichi’s head into motion, and he realizes that the game may have seeped into real life. Kojiro’s Blackbird was his strongest AI creation, and though it seemed calm at first, it was extremely unstable and dangerous in reality.
After realizing that the game is not just a game anymore, Kojiro decides to put an end to it all by sending his game character, Shiro, out on a hunt to get all AI characters, including Pico, and to finally kill Blackbird.
But things are not that easy because one of the gamers, Leon, who had found a great friend in Sasumate, also an AI, did not want his only friend to die. So, while Shiro was trying to get all of the AIs, Leon and Sasumate did everything in their power to bring such chaos to the game that it would be impossible for the Akabane family to do anything at all.
Truths Revealed
Finally, nearing the end, through a series of events, we find that Sasumate is the all-powerful AI, Blackbird, who had hurt A. To make things worse, it also revealed to the entire family the deeds of their father, Koijro, whom they had come to admire, telling them how he had killed Pico and others brutally in front of them.
Thirteen days later, we see Kojiro hand over a recorded message to Asuma, who was asked to pass it on to his older brother, and after doing so, he went on to confront Blackbird by pulling it into a digital cyberspace, where the latter would inevitably die.
It is here Blackbird finally reveals that even though he was created to be this being with a higher purpose, he found himself developing an identity crisis that pushed him to go against Kojiro.
Kojiro also confesses that he created Blackbird with his dead daughter in mind and that he wanted a sentient AI being as a way of remembering his daughter, Aya. We see the recorded message reach Ichi, who has been given access to “uninstall the failsafe program,” which would kill both Blackbird and his father, ending the game.
Ichi tries to save his father, not wanting him to meet Aya first, and the two reconcile, but Blackbird takes on dead Aya’s personality, thus triggering them both, leading to Kojiro and Blackbird vanishing into cyberspace.
Ending Explained
The two seem to have died, and thirteen days later, the world goes back to normal again. The end of the series is confusing as after a time skip of eight years, we see Ichi meet with Hinaka, the real-life version of the Pico, and the two seem to have not changed much. They meet and cry while holding each other.
But this is not the only world, as eight years later, Taichiro, Ichi’s real-life version, and Asuma, both grown up, are spotted discussing similarities between some Japanese countryside and the virtual place where they lived as a family.
This leaves us questioning if our characters ever managed to get away from the virtual world or if the virtual world just took over the real one. Was the world where the two brothers discussed the similarities between the two worlds, having grown up in eight years, the real one?
Another thing that adds to this doubt is the fact that the red dragon from the first episode appears once again in the final moments of the last episode. So, was it the virtual world after all? Or are the characters stuck in the Birdcage still?
The Planet world was destroyed, that is for sure, but that does not mean that the population went back to living in the real world. It could have been that their only hope for saving was moving to yet another artificial world, where they could try to get going with their lives.
If you wish to interpret the appearance of the red dragon in the final moments, we urge you to watch the series and decide. Good Night World may have ended with a vague ending, but nothing takes away from the fact that the series was such an intriguing watch!
