English Dub Review: Gamers! “Karen Tendo and Slump Days”

What makes a video game fun for you? The competition for the fun of it? Gamers! gives their answer.

Spoilers Below

Finally, ever since episode 2 as the new dorkier and flustered Karen started to appear I have been waiting for an episode to expand on how exactly falling in love with Keito ruined Karen’s life. Like the teenage drama avalanche of episode 3, saying ruining her life is an over exaggeration. However, the show’s depiction of her decline from perfect high school sweetheart is very engaging.

The episode starts with a day to day comparison of before and after Karen fell in love with Keito. The before day depicts a girl under a self-imposed daily regimen. Early jog, early homework, arrive at school, talk to friends, help the teachers and decline in person all the boys who send her confessions. At first glance, this can be viewed as just the daily life of the typical high school popular girl, nothing deeper than that archetype. However, especially with the inclusion of her thoughts on how she goes to every boy who confesses to her and honestly turns them down shows a very honest and respectful girl. We’re always shown the cliché of the popular girl getting the show locker filled with love letters but not too often have we gazed at the girl’s perspective and how she feels rejecting these guys. It allows the audience to really connect with Karen because even when she is rejecting these boys you understand Karen’s honest thought process behind rejecting each one in person. It’s the actions of a girl who sees herself not as some superior being at high school but just a regular high school girl. That characterization is commendable.

But Karen’s life was still going pretty perfect so contrasting that regular perfect high school girl with the disorganized love struck doofus she becomes is both funny and heart-warming. Karen becomes such a ray of light for the show as she represents in the subtlest fashion in my book that anyone can be a gamer and in the end, it’s not that big of a deal. She was the popular kid in school who also plays video games, it wasn’t a defining trait of her like it has become for Keito and Chiaki but just a part of her daily life she uses to compete for fun and relax. It’s one of the most human implementations of gaming into the characters’ lives in the show and that is why I adore the episode so much.

It’s an episode of the balance of gaming and real life, how one can feel guilty over losing track of oneself in the confusion of daily life. Karen and Keito played off well with one another in their true first encounter. As Karen’s old gaming lifestyle is thrown into question by Keito’s pure gaming love. Finally, just Karen herself has endeared herself to me as a character I can identify with and I feel many others can too. Despite her being Mr. Perfect and despite losing her mojo after falling for Keito she always strived to bring a light to everyone’s lives around her, always remained positive and determined, and it’s that positive energy that makes me admire every one of her appearances. Keito acting as her theological foil just added more to her character arc and conflict that made it even more dramatically satisfying. That is why episode 3 or level 3 of Gamers! gets a perfect score for me it encapsulated everything the show accomplishes. It was the perfectly sweet teenage romance anime that paid homage and respect to the gaming culture, humanizing it, and displaying the simple joy gaming can bring.