English Dub Review: Gamers! “Chiaki Hoshinori and Streetpass Communication”

What if you had a gamer friend who was an exact gender swapped copy of you?

Gamers! has reached level 3 of its series run and we’re having introduced the last of the main 5 and a whole heaping pile of teenage drama misunderstandings. The misunderstanding is a classic plot device for any romantic comedy, where one or both romantic parties see or hear something and take it in the completely wrong direction as they don’t know the context. It’s story writing 101 for romantic comedy writing so that story tellers can add dramatic tension to events. Gamers! starts off light on this dramatic writing though as today Uehara pushes Keito to talk to the other resident loner gamer Chiaki Hoshinori. Uehara pushes him like this so that Keito can become more comfortable with talking to girls so that he can be comfy with talking with Karen who ironically enough in the series’ first major misunderstanding his already head over heels in love with Keito.

But before we can get our Karen focused episode, Chiaki makes her grand entrance and she is literally almost exactly like Keito. Same shy mannerisms, same obsession with gaming and same awkward social skills. As the show states, they are similar in so many ways but them being all buddy buddy from their first encounter would hamstring the show away from all that teenage romance conflict that audiences come to this show for. So, connecting back to their gaming obsession they disagree ever so slightly on some of the philosophy of games and thus now they hate each other. It’s rather silly and Uehara mirrors the audiences’ own frustration at the arbitrary egos these two are showing off but oddly enough this still works.

Many other rom-coms in the past would ham-string themselves within the misunderstanding trope, having the main characters loathe each other over one tiny thing. Gamers! has done this exact same ham-string but put it through a different lens. While it is true romance can be built on similarities the real show of dedication to others is shown when accepting one’s differences and characterizing both Keito and Chiaki as big ego driven gamers with big opinions exhibits their social immaturity perfectly but has been written where they can still be around each other and be civil. It’s refreshing to allow much more civil discourse run their relationship rather than the comedic extreme of tsundere characters which would be the typical archetype that Chiaki is filling.

Gamers! is the sort of story that takes misunderstandings and piles them on top of one another vigorously until everyone is misunderstanding everyone else. As while Keito and Chiaki hate each other, Uehara is playing cupid with them to get them together which Aguri sees as Uehara falling for Chiaki, and Karen sees Keito and Chiaki together and assumes they are already boyfriend and girlfriend. It’s a mish mash of teenage awkwardness, love struck near sightedness and no one actually talking to one another about their actual feelings. But that sort of character flaw can be forgiven if the characters are likeable and from Keito’s honest disposition, Uehara’s fun but demented need to play matchmaker, Chiaki’s cute need to be liked by everyone, Aguri’s sweet and shattering heart, and Karen’s dopey love struck betrayed heart for Keito, I think the cast has the flaws and pros to make them all well rounded and fun.

More teenage drama will be soon to come I am sure and more honest ideaology from our lead gamer too. Gamers has all the trademarks of a rom com that I would say would be eye roll worthy especially with the misunderstanding after misunderstanding it lays on itself. However, thanks to the show’s characters and inclusion of the more indepth ideology of gamers it makes the show a sweet treat from beginning to end. Now onto Level 4 where we are finally focusing on my favourite character, Karen Tendou.