English Dub Season Review: Gamers! Season One

Congratulations! You completed a good season! Now discover why Gamers is such a fun show!

Gamers has been flying its gamer lifestyle and knowledge with great pride since the pilot. Even in the Gamers opening theme, the visuals of the various games show a more in-depth knowledge of video games incorporating more obscure game titles. From hardcore to casual, Gamers caters to both and shows a true love of gaming and faithfully plays to an industry that has grown from a secret embarrassment to a full-blown billion-dollar industry. Not to mention since before Gamers the concept of the “gamer” has transformed as well. The old stereotype of just the overweight nerd living in their mother’s basement is becoming less of the norm and now a variety of gamer clichés have manifested for all to see. So, a manga and now anime adaptation of that subculture was inevitable and in my opinion, Gamers succeeds in beautifully capturing that subculture. Never once making it a source of mockery from the tired and played out basement dwelling stereotype and instead makes our five main gamer characters all distinct in how they view gaming and each other.

OVERVIEW (Spoilers Below)

Gamers! is the chaotic romantic comedy set around a group of gamers with our lead Amano Keita as the focus. Keita is your atypical lonely gamer, always with his nose pointed at any screen and very much blocks himself off from other people. That is until the most popular girl in school Tendou Karen approaches Keita and asks him to join the school’s video game club. In the club, the members play a large assortment of games from Call of Duty parodies to BlazBlue parodies and take part in competitions to win funds for the club and I would assume the school. This all seems like a dream come true for a socially inept weeny like Keita but his social awkwardness and dedication to playing games for his own enjoyment and not for competition makes him decline to join the club. From there he meets his budding group of gamer pals Uehara, Chiaki and Aguri and our loner gamer Keita grows as the group’s budding friendship blossoms into a beautiful bouquet of teenage awkward romance.

To really dissect this bouquet though, we have to start with the seed, Keita Amano played by Brandon McInnis. As stated Keita is the common loner gamer, just enjoys sticking his nose in the games to avoid any direct contact with others as that would make him vulnerable to others. I admire that characterization as his introversion isn’t the result of him being pompous, thinking he is above everyone and they don’t deserve to be friends with him. He wants friends, he wants to be seen as someone who can be respected but with the social skills of a gnat that doesn’t come easy. From that standpoint, Keita comes across very natural, however, I do find his love for video games to be almost too in depth. Now there’s nothing wrong with loving video games. I love video games so the very notion doesn’t make any sense to say in that context. By too in depth, I mean that Keita has memorized the most perfectly thought out speeches when it comes to every game related issue. He’s absolutely perfect each time and after a while, it becomes just a standard pattern.

Now the other three gamers, Uehara, Chiaki and Aguri all have wonderful personalities and bounce off one another so beautifully as romantic rivals and as partners in awkwardness. But I want to cut to the chase to bring up my favorite character out of the bunch, Karen Tendou played by Brittney Karbowski. She is so delightful. Karen becomes such a ray of light for the show as she represents in the subtlest fashion that anyone can be a gamer and in the end, it’s not that big of a deal. She is the popular kid in school who also plays video games, it wasn’t a defining trait of her like it was 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 which is why Karen and her adorkable attitude come across so human. The balancing act of all the romance subplots is what creates the real drive of the show with gaming acting as the framing device for it. It is because the characters are able to act off one another so well that even when the romances become very cliché with its misunderstanding plot devices you can still root for them. You can still want to see where their happy endings will lie.

OUR TAKE

It’s that light-hearted tone that makes this one of the best anime of the season for me. The animation by Pine captures the light-hearted tone the series is going for while also presenting the awkward and romantic moments in such cute over the top fashions that it tugs at your heartstrings. Gamers is a truly fateful series of actual gamers, incorporating realistic traits to our characters to make them relatable and in-depth gaming philosophy that would draw in the hardcore to see themselves within the show’s writing. It’s a feel-good show about playing some video games with close friends. If that sounds like a really fun time for you then I can fully recommend watching Gamers!