Gamers! is a 12 episode anime based upon the light novel series. It follows high school student Keita, who is a stereotypical male gamer. He keeps to himself playing games at his desk during lunch and has no friends at school. He’s not particular awesome at gaming either, so when the most beautiful girl in school, Karen, speaks to him and asks him to join the gaming club, it’s like his dream has come true. You would expect that he would be falling over himself to join.
Obviously, since it is a club, it isn’t only Keita and Karen, which the former quickly and painfully learns. There are other club members and at first glance, they clarify it’s not gaming for fun, but rather competitive gaming. They’re successful too, having won enough prize money to buy a lot of things for the club. However, this scenario is all a misdirection and things quickly change from the first episode into the next. Instead of focusing on the club, it is instead more like your typical high school romance drama that has a heavy gaming theme. Needless to say, it’s also pandering to the gamers themselves, showing what could theoretically happen, but probably won’t, in reality.
Apart from the misdirection of the gaming club subplot, the first episode is quite good in setting up the plot of the rest of the season. There’s quite a bit of in-your-face foreshadowing that’s hilarious at same time as being useful. It cheerfully shows off which characters will interact with each other in the future and quickly showcases their personalities so you can instantly gather what type of person they are.
The anime hinges on the fact that Karen has a crush on Keita, and vice versa of course, but it’s not explained why. It’s confusing exactly what Karen finds in Keita that makes him so attractive, and how it causes her to fall in such a daze from love. It’s literally described in the anime as Karen falling from grace. From the very beginning, she’s obsessing over Keita and it’s an unhealthy obsession which is played for laughs but also quite worrying at other times.
The other main characters including Tasuku and Aguri, who are a couple. Tsuku was a former gamer but has now upgraded himself to be one of the popular guys. Aguri is similar, while being an airhead as well as sweet, innocent, and totally in love with Tasuku. To be honest, the pair is pretty cute together. The last character is Chiaki who is another heavy gamer. She feels like a shallow character at first but becomes much better as the season progresses. She gets so much character development that it ends up being more so than Karen, so the latter becomes the weakest character in the anime.
It takes a while for the anime to completely finish setting things up. Along the way, it manages to create a series of misunderstandings, such that the characters are in a pseudo love-pentagon, depicting it in a hilarious way. It comes to a crescendo in the middle of the season, with an excellent scenario and an excellent “resolution” of sorts. It’s deliberately messy but having most of the characters rapid firing their thoughts aloud, trying to manipulate each other for their own purpose, was brilliant. It was topped out with a grand finale that knocked it out from the park with its unexpected surprise.
After the peak that was the middle of the season, the tension, and the fun, dies down a bit afterwards though but still ends up being a fun rom com. While the misunderstandings and humor continue, it can feel like the plot has stopped progressing. The characters keep reverting back to suspecting each other. Their misunderstandings is basically the plot, so it never gets bad enough that they would break up, but also never clear it enough to go past this phase. We never find out why Karen loves Keita, and now we have other love interests to contend with. It begs the question on who should be the canon pair? It’s ultimately a tough choice.
Ultimately, due to its content, the ending is weak as it just ends without much resolution. It’s another normal episode and just finishes with the ending theme without so much as a goodbye. However, it was definitely a fun journey. A further plus is how the anime has a lot of references to gaming, manga and anime. There are plenty of punny names and lookalike consoles and other gaming gear. The artwork a the end of episode looks great, although of course, the anime pushes a decent amount of fan service.
Overall, Gamers! had seemed generic at first but has demonstrated that it can be really fun. It misdirects you with its first episode but is hilarious in how it sets up the plot and then proceeds to have a love pentagon that works surprisingly well. While some of the misunderstandings are cliched and you’d have to be stupid to think that way, it works well in the context of the anime. It’s filled with sweet and innocent moments. The characters are likeable enough such that at the end, you cannot decide on who should pair up with Keita.
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