English Dub Review: Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki “The best games make reconnaissance fun”

Overview

As summer ends, the second term begins with Fumiya Tomozaki’s first task (courtesy of Aoi Hinami) is getting the popular girl Erika Konno motivated for the school sports tournament.


Our Take

Fumiya Tomozaki’s self-improvement classes further continue into the second term, and despite some uneasy revelations from the previous season, Aoi remains committed to helping Tomozaki improve in the form of videogame objectives. This time around, she transforms his self-improvement journey into a series of videogame objectives, avoiding the pitfalls of Season 1’s second half.

With Aoi’s current task primarily consists of breaking down Tomozaki’s self-improvement into RPG objectives to gather information against Erika Konno, aiming to persuade her to participate in the sports festival. Tomozaki embarks on an “RPG quest,” consulting various people he has encountered since Season One for solutions. The challenge arises from Erika’s use of peer pressure to achieve her goals, a tactic that doesn’t align with the class theme. Undeterred, Tomozaki is determined to find a solution…

Overall, this was quite a good start to season 2. With how much he’s learned in the way of social skills, it’s safe to say that Fumiya is somewhat of a completely different person. I also liked that the proceedings kinda threw me right into the plot almost without a recap of sorts, though we do get a proper explanation of a bit of his progress. Other than that, this episode effectively establishes Erika as a formidable antagonist, particularly through her manipulation of the class. And the “volunteer” scene further emphasized this. But as the story unfolds, I’m left hoping that Tomozaki’s solution to get certain individuals involved should be interesting to watch.