Gamers

Summary: >

Amano is a gamer, so when he gets an offer to join a gaming club from Karen (the school idol of sorts) he finds it hard to explain why he'd turn her down. Karen won't give up due to her personal interests. In addition three others at the school end up caught in an increasingly complex web of romance and misunderstandings.

Thoughts: >

I didn't have high expectations of Gamers. The premise of a guy involved with the prettiest girl in school who is a closet gaming nerd is the plot basis for about a quarter of anime made every year for the last decade. However Gamers goes off this track (mostly) fairly quick, making this anime more enjoyable than its basic formula would suggest.

What boosts this anime above similar shows are the characters and interactions. It starts with Amano, a typical male anime protagonist, lacking depth in personality, but it's candid about how much he's like an generic anime protagonist; making it into a sort of joke. At first it seems Karen is the school beauty keen on having another member join her club, but she's grown to have a crush on Amano, leading to her awkward and very weird tendencies to leak through her perfect image - which is very cute and amusing.

Uehara is a good looking and semi popular guy who was a nerd a few years ago. He reformed his image, but inside he's still a nerd. At first he becomes involved to spur (what he considers) amusing drama between the aforesaid two, but becomes swept up in the drama himself. Uehara's girlfriend Aguri was my favorite character though. She projects the image of a cute somewhat air headed girl but is in fact quite sharp. She was wallflower a few years ago, but adopted a stylish image to nab Uehara. She gets caught up with everything too. Even with mounting (incorrect) evidence her boyfriend is two timing, Aguri remains steadfast in her dedication, but struggles to keep her faith in him. A third girl rounds out the group, as a timid geeky girl who is seemingly Amano's soul mate, but oddly no one else except Uehara realizes it.

The core of Gamers is a love pentagon due to a number of misunderstandings, with each character having a different part of the whole picture, then coming very different and wrong conclusions. There isn't much else going on, but it's so much fun I didn't mind at all. Towards the end there is a drag on the anime, as it succumbs to more typical tired anime romance stuff. Which frustrated me, as NOT doing that is what hooked me on Gamers in the first place. Also Karen is increasingly sidelined as the story progresses, which sucks because she's one of the show's best features.

While it's still in the middle of it's story, it's hard to say where the future of Gamers will go. It didn't end on a high note, but I enjoyed it a lot as a whole. The core idea is fun but could run out of steam (if it perhaps hasn't already). I'm not liking the slant towards typical anime romance, but hopefully it won't go there. Currently Gamers is a solid comedy, probably worth checking out.

Screen Caps: >