During the 2017 summer season, Gamers! was an anime of interest. It didn’t take long before I heard people joke about how it should have been called “Misunderstandings!” instead. If only I knew how right they were, I probably wouldn’t have finished the show feeling so conflicted.
Based on the light novel of the same name, Gamers! revolves around high school student Keita Amano and his obsession with games. He gets invited by the school’s idol, Karen Tendou, to join her gaming club. After visiting the club and playing games for several hours, Keita decides that the club isn’t for him. He explains that while they take gaming competitively, he would rather play games for the sake of having fun. This causes Karen to quickly fall madly in love with him, with Keita falling in love as well; though any relationship between the two won’t come until the latter half of the series.
After Keita declines to join the gaming club, Tasuku Uehara tries to set him up with Chiaki Hoshinomori, another girl gamer. Keita also meets Aguri, the girlfriend of Tasuku, who he builds a relationship with as they support each other in their love affairs. With the characters set, the romantic comedy love story about lonely gamers finally starts!
So, I have a lot of gripes about this anime. There’s very little logic between how the characters act. Their personalities are somewhat inconsistent and will change to fit the scenarios they’re in. They seem to lack common sense and act on their own stupidity instead. One instance is when Aguri is at a restaurant with Keita. She’s talking about her relationship with Tasuku and is worried that he may be cheating on her. Just outside the window, they see Tasuku across the street walking with Chiaki. Aguri doesn’t try to confirm the reason Tasuku and Chiaki were walking together, instead, she assumes he’s cheating. There are many more misunderstandings that occur after this, and they all keep building up. Building up as if preparing for a grand climax; except the climax was me wanting to flip my desk!
With each misunderstanding came a tease. The viewers keep getting teased as you think one misunderstanding may get resolved, or that the characters will use common sense. There’s just so many problems with these characters not being logical in any way that I’m left more frustrated each episode. I was hoping for a resolution to all the misunderstandings, so when I got to the final episode you’ll understand my frustration when I learned that there was nothing! Nothing but more misunderstandings. I kept wishing for it to stop having the characters assume things and instead just have them communicate instead.
The best girl doesn’t win, and the main gag of the show is overused after the first few episodes. I didn’t think you could have so many misunderstandings in a series. There are a few comedic moments that I did enjoy, but the illogical characters quickly retract any positive feelings I have for the series. I do appreciate, however, the many jabs at the gaming industry mainly mentioned by Aguri. Also, I felt I should mention that it is weird how in the anime and light novel, Aguri doesn’t have a surname. She also talks in the third person. This didn’t really bother me, but I felt it was interesting.
I enjoyed the Gamers! for a while, but overall I disliked it’s characters and story. If you enjoy romcoms then this show might be for you. Maybe.
