When Crunchyroll first announced the Summer 2017 lineup I had no doubt in my mind that Gamers would make it into my watch list for the season. Just from looking at the title and the image I knew it would be right up my street. While I did enjoy this anime for what it was and I did finish it (I usually drop anime after the first couple of episodes if I’m not interested) it wasn’t what I expected. The title “Gamers” suggested to me that anime would be about gamers and yes technically it was but I thought there would be a lot of elements of the show to do with ACTUAL gaming. Turns out there wasn’t a massive amount on this subject.
Picture sourced from Google Images
The story is of Amano Keita an avid gamer who meets Tendo Karen who happens to also be a big gamer. She persuades him to try the games club she belongs to in their school but he ends up disliking it due to the fact he doesn’t play games to win but to have fun. This premise suggested to me that the anime would be based around Karen trying to persuade Keita to join the club but this idea was dismissed shortly after the show started. The anime took a more romantic turn and the characters all started to fall for one another. I found this to be confusing as it doesn’t fit in with the title of the anime and I feel it misleads the viewer as it isn’t the main point of the anime. Now I do love romance in anime but I found the situations in this show to be well sometimes just down right annoying. Like yelling at my computer screen annoying! I feel that the show ended up using these very silly misunderstandings to lead the episode and its development and I think a lot of the awkward situations could have been easily avoided if the characters had just sat down and talked about it. Maybe they were using these awkward situations and misunderstandings to show how difficult love can be sometimes?
As I said previously there isn’t a huge part of this anime dedicated to do with actual gaming. Instead they used it in a way to connect the characters together in the fact that they all had a similar hobby. For example Uehara is skilled at arcade games, Karen is the president of their schools Game Club and Chiaki creates her own games. It’s basically gamers trapped in awkward love triangles. The last episode ACTUALLY focused around the idea of gaming discussing the concept of DLC’s (which stands for Downloadable Content) and the characters opinions and ideas on it. I found this to be a really interesting topic BUT they chose to have the entire final episode dedicated to talking about gaming instead of resolving the storyline! I think they probably did this to hint at a second season especially with them discussing the idea of DLC’s which are usually extra content added to games later down the line but I wish they had just resolved the situation in that episode instead of possibly dragging it out for another season. I think if they had covered topics like DLC’s throughout the anime it would have made for a very interesting watch instead of cramming it in at the end.
The art style and characters were definitely my favourite parts about this show. The art style was very cute, fun and often colourful which are qualities that always draw me in when checking out new anime. I also really loved the character design of the show and I think features like their big, bright eyes really stood out. My favourite character was most definitely Uehara as he was a sweet and comedic character that I often felt myself drawn to as I enjoyed his personality and his reactions to situations. Also some of his facial expressions (example below) were comedy gold and often made me laugh out loud!
Picture sourced from Google Images
Overall I think this is an enjoyable anime for what it is. I recommend this anime to anyone who wants something cute or fun to watch and not have to worry about important plot lines or twists.
Overall: 6/10
Until next time thanks for reading and I hope you’re having a great day!
Keep up to date with me on:
A Nerdy Perspective 