English Dub Review: Gamers! “Aguri and Communication Error”

Teenage drama levels are critical. Gamers! is hitting their communication error max.

Spoilers Below!

To communicate one’s thoughts and emotions to another can quite easily be one of the most difficult aspects of our human endeavor. It is near impossible for everyone to think exactly the same as one another and some don’t have the patience or empathy to tolerate trying to communicate with others. The teenage high school drama is the epitome of that social awkwardness manifested. You will never see as much use of the misunderstanding trope as you will in a teenage high school romance story. Due to the easily usable narrative devices of stereotypes of teenagers being over emotional or being arrogant, thinking they know it all, it just all boils together to become a mess of teenage angst. And this week that is all what Gamers! is about.

In this week’s episode, we cut back to the ending of episode 3 where Aguri sees misunderstanding number 1, Uehara wrapping his arm around Chiaki like they were on a date. Though in actuality Uehara was discovering misunderstanding number 2, that Chiaki and Amano, while at the moment despising each other, have been playing the same game together for so long as friends without even knowing it. With both misunderstandings rolling, Uehara sets up a gamer’s meet up of all the main characters to help foster relationships as the self-appointed cupid of the group but that just leads to mountains more of misunderstandings to the point where not even the main characters know what is going on.

The misunderstanding is one of the most classic writing tropes in all of the fiction. What better way to form character drama than to take advantage of a characters’ tendency to view events under a limited context before jumping to conclusions. We have all done it and we have all been made to feel silly to overlook the nuances of situations. But there comes a time in fiction where the misunderstanding becomes not just a trope but a crutch for the story to manufacture drama.

It’s a hodgepodge of teenage squabbling and angst culminating in the question needing to be asked, why aren’t they just straight with each other? Why can’t they talk? How quick could things be resolved if Aguri approached Uehara about Chiaki? If Uehara told Amano and Chiaki the truth about their friendship? If Karen and Amano were more up front about their feelings for one another? Well obviously, they can’t talk or half of the sub plots would be over in an instant.

That is the point though. Everything is getting to a point where it feels artificial that everyone is keeping their feelings bottled up. Bottling up one’s feelings is a completely natural thing humans do all the time, I am guilty of this myself, but the show is now making its audience the awkward third wheel during a couple argument. You are trying to enjoy what you were doing but the argument is so unnatural you can’t take it seriously. The title is sadly very fitting as this was a communication error and it results in the emotion and character I loved in the previous episodes coming out completely flat.

SCORE
5/10