English Dub Review: Gamers! “Erogamer and Watching Mode/Gamers and Half their Life Game”

The gamers’ lives get more complicated as they have pervy gamers and the Game of Life to deal with today.

In the grand scheme of the series, this feels like the most important yet least important episode thus far in Gamers. It’s rather odd pacing wise as the series is now becoming split between episodes that have a 3-act structure and episodes like today that are more 11-minute vignettes. There is nothing wrong with that in theory but the writing is gonna need to be top notch to make it feel more natural and free-flowing within the narrative. If it is not then it is going to be as awkward as… well as Gamers has been with all its misunderstandings.

OVERVIEW

Erogamer and Watching Mode

We first start with a small vignette following a brand-new character, Konoha who is the titular Erogamer, in which means she is into playing erotic games. The anime definitely plays with the commonly held notion that guys are the stereotypical majority that are into erotica video games as Konoha barges into the story showing the truth, that girls can be just as excited for pervy games as any guy. But like those commonly held notions entail, Konoha is embarrassed for her love of these games so she hides them from friends and family, even donning a convincing old man disguise to buy them from the shop. It isn’t until Keita comes in with his friend that the episode opens up with a discussion of whether erogames have any thought put behind them.

Gamers and Half their Life Game

The second half of the episodes is the final semi-conclusion to a lot of the narrative misunderstandings that were bothering me the last few episodes. Keita and Uehara are just discussing vaguely those same misunderstandings when Chiaki comes in telling them about an old board game she found “Love Love Game of Half-Life,” a clear spoof on The Game of Life. Uehara concocts a plan to finally get all the tension between him, Aguri, Keita, Karen and Chiaki out in the open by having all five of them play a round of it to spark discussion about the misunderstandings. But as their awkwardness is constant they then partake in the tensest game of relationship revealing Game of Life ever.

The Erogamer and Watching Mode section of the story is interesting thematic wise but as a narrative story beat it could have been moved. Where it is placed at the moment frames the piece like a clip note story with very little connection to anything else until the final reveal at the end. I do find it nice that the writers wrote even erogamers like Konoha in a positive light. Sure, she was super excited at browsing all of the naughty games in the video store and cartoonishly goes to great lengths to get the really adult ones but in terms of character, they don’t downplay it like she’s wrong for liking them. Our regular gamer Keita is the one who legitimizes ero games, actually forming a discussion about them and not just brushing them away as some other elitist gamers could do. It’s a refreshingly positive spin on a subject often shamed due to its subject matter. It would only have been so much stronger if more of it was dedicated to that without it needing to be sandwiched against the next story.

Now Gamers and Half their Life Game is clearly the key component of the episode, displaying the most off the wall visualizations, dramatically ironic writing and a resolution to many of the major misunderstandings in vastly subdued ways. The main issue I have with the misunderstanding as a plot device is that communication between the two parties having the misunderstanding can end the trouble instantly. Gamers was becoming a bargain bin romantic comedy scenario to a ridiculously unrealistic degree and it was just irritating how all the characters were upset about other characters but never once tried to confront the other or display any negative attitude towards them. Even if the second party was just mildly rude to the one they were misunderstanding, that would have been something to latch onto narratively to drive the tension to the logical final reveal conclusion. Gamers was not doing that, in a sense, the writers wrote it realistically where all parties involved were bottling up their emotions and not confronting one another. However, the writers neglected to write the characters acting any differently while holding in all this negative tension to actually build up anything.

It becomes a paradox of realistic unrealism and it is frustrating to observe in a romantic comedy. In today’s episode though they used the Game of Life to act as the tension defuser to remedy that. The board’s spaces push everyone to the narrative parallels of themselves as if they were all characters within the game of life and it is great to see how a simple children’s board game can emotionally break each one of them especially Uehara and Karen. It’s an episode of subtle defusing of tension that really needed to happen to finally make all those misunderstandings feel justified again.

OUR TAKE

I’m very happy with how the episode came out despite its pacing feeling uneven from beginning to end. Despite that, each segment put all the characters into a positive light and tackled each of their subject matter with great care and insight. When this show is really good I can see a kind heart behind its actions, it’s only when the pacing and narrative structure fall into stiff and unnatural motions does the show really waver. Gamers is definitely back in form this week and it makes me proud to be a gamer watching the show.

SCORE
7/10