Tag: light novel

Watched Gamers! episodes 1-6

Gamers! is one of those shows where you think about dropping it after every episode, but you decide to watch one more before dropping it, then one more, then one more… I’m already up to episode 6.

Plot summary from Wikipedia: Keita Amano is a lonesome boy who enjoys playing video games but lacks any friends. One day, he is approached by the beautiful Karen Tendou about joining the school’s Gaming Club, but Keita ultimately rejects her offer as he is not into competitive gaming. This rejection sets off a trigger of events in the lives of Keita and his fellow students in matters of both video games and romance.

The anime title isn’t really all that accurate. It’s about people who all tend to like games to a certain extent, but the real point of the show is wacky romantic hijinks where A likes B who likes C who likes him back but thinks B really likes D who does like B but also likes A, and round and round and round it goes.

It’s almost hilarious how many unlikely misunderstandings Gamers can fit into one episode, with people walking in on the most unlikely situations or hearing only part of a conversation and getting completely the wrong idea, and on and on and on. If you like romantic triangles and love decahedrons, Gamers is definitely the show for you.

If you like games, on the other hand… I was drawn to Gamers because I saw a screenshot of a parody of Granblue Fantasy that Keita and his friend like to play. I thought it would be that kind of show where you’re always catching references and parodies to popular video games. And there’s an element of that, but it more or less disappears after the first two episodes in favor for romantic misunderstanding after romantic misunderstanding. The show is called Gamers, not Games, I guess.

The reason I’ve been feeling like dropping it from the start is that a romance show lives and dies by its characters. If you like them, you’re solid. If not… TBH they’re all really annoying, especially Keita’s everyday otaku shtick and Karen’s lovestruck teen gimmick. I’ve been sick of them from the start.

What keeps me coming back, however, is the way the show keeps throwing out curveballs when you expect them to go straight. I fully expected lonely Keita to jump at the chance to make friends via the gaming club, but he turned them down. For fully understandable reasons, but it was a surprise nevertheless. Then when Chiaki and Keita finally met, I was certain they would end up as an item, but they ended up hating each other – or claiming to, anyway. And then at the end of episode 6…. @___@

In short, Gamers is full of surprises so I won’t drop it no matter how much the characters piss me off. I’m looking forward to seeing how the show changes based on the events of episode 6. Please don’t reset to the status quo, please don’t reset to the status quo… I will post a final review when the show is done.

Thoughts on Tsuujou Kougeki ga Zentai Kougeki de Nikai Kougeki no Okasan wa Suki desu ka?

I’ve only read the free sample pages of Tsuujou Kougeki ga Zentai Kougeki de Nikai Kougeki no Okasan wa Suki desu ka? provided by Fantasia Books and don’t intend to read any more, but that was enough to form a general opinion. The intention of the free sample is to help the reader decide if they want to read any further, after all, and 70 or so pages of a book is a pretty substantial freebie. This post will contain a few spoilers, so read chapter one and two if you haven’t already.

On to the meat. We all know other world/isekai light novels are all the rage these days. Every other LN features a hero ending up in another world somehow where he somehow becomes overpowered and a chick magnet and all the other otaku fantasy wish fulfillment tropes that the genre is so well-known for. Other world stories are so common these days that’s it’s hard for new books to make a dent – unless they either subvert or deconstruct the genre (getting increasingly common these days) or add some kind of spin or gimmick.

Enter Tsuujou Kougeki – Do You Like Moms Whose Normal Attacks Hit the Whole Enemy Party Twice? The twist here is that the main hero Masato does not go into the game world alone but is accompanied by his doting mom Mamako and it is Mamako, not Masato, who becomes the overpowered hero. It’s pretty funny how he gets so worked up and excited about being the Chosen One… then his mom just walks up and snags the two most powerful weapons in the game. Not only that, but the in-game guidebook suggests there might be other such overpowered mother-son pairs in the MMMMMORPG game. It would be interesting to meet them and see how things go.

So the unexpected swerve is an intriguing one, enough to get even a light novel avoider like me to read it. The problem is, it’s not quite what I expected. I should have smelled a rat when I saw the cutesy, fanservicey picture of Mamako on the cover. What I was expecting was a normal mom, late 30ish early 40ish soccer mom with the dignity and gravitas to match. Putting a regular, realistic everyday person into these kinds of situations is always much funnier and more interesting to me anyway.

Mamako is just annoying. Ditzy, clingy, manipulative, always ready to use tears to control her son if nothing will work. Doesn’t know jack about what’s going on, won’t share what little she does know, won’t listen to common sense advice but charges ahead without a thought in the world. Is this really a woman in her late 30s? How did she survive long enough to breed? The worst part is her fake crying to weasel her way into or out of situations. That’s just plain dirty. The excessive focus on her young appearance and on Masato’s brief moments of attraction to her are just pig-disgusting icing on a pig-disgusting cake.

Masato is no paragon of virtue either. He’s whiny and too cranky and rude towards his mother. I’m sure we can all remember times when we were a little sharper with our moms than we had meant to be, but to snap and snarl at her all chapter long is just… ick. And all that whining and crying just because his mom has better weapons instead of creating a build and learning skills to make the best of what he has. I blame Mamako for bringing him up wrong, that’s what. Plus he’s 15 years old, what can I say?

I didn’t read enough to get to know the loli merchant and the tsundere sage better, but I doubt they’ll be any better than the already-low level established. The tsundere in particular killed my desire to read any more. You know she’s just going to argue with Masato and beat him up all the time but she’s still going to “win” his affection over any better girls in the series anyway. Just thinking about it gives me a headache.

TL;DR – The premise was interesting, but the ditzy personality of the mom and the whiny, cranky personality of her son ruined the whole thing for me. If they make an anime I might try an episode or two, but the interest I had in Tsuujou Kougeki is gone and probably isn’t ever coming back.