SHOW'S INTRO SONG & VIDEO
The whole opening is "sung" by our anime's main heroines (Chiaki, Tendou, and Aguri more on them later) and features possibly the coolest references ever. In order of video games we have: Resident Evil 7, Parodius, Smash Bros, PUBG, Primal X Heart, Pop'n Music, Dragon Quest 3, Street Fighter 2, then finally an awesome battle scene by a lot of different animators with all the characters decked out in Dragon Quest 3 armor OR you could take it as any generic RPG. ALL of these games are shown in the opening with the characters of the show taking the places of the various video games characters and I have to say is one of the coolest intros ever, totally had me hooked.
The song itself is pretty catchy too and I really like when the intro song is catchy because I always watch the intros, unlike other people I know, so if it is a bad opening song it takes away from things. Basically if it makes it into my anime openings theme playlist on my iPod then it is a catchy, worthy tune to listen to and that's how I feel about the opening video and song for Gamers!
CHARACTERS
He is technically our "main protagonist" but the way the show works out it is spread so evenly amongst all 5 main characters that it seems like there's no true main character. However, the whole show starts around Amano and the relationships he builds with the other characters in the show. Amano is a gamer to the core, he loves games and everything about them, but when we are introduced to him at the beginning of the episode he's just a quiet guy that likes to play games on his phone. He plays a freeware game with his best and only friend "Mono" even though they've never met, he is just happy to have someone to play games with.
He is relatively quiet and kind of clueless, shy, has no real friends, he doesn't seem as initially dense as other protagonists from light novels, and is also generally all around an awkward guy. He's that stereotypical otaku & gamer that the media portrays, the one that sits alone in their room and does nothing but game at all hours of the night and has no ambition in his life other than his games. From what we come to learn about him, he's a particularly average student so he has no high aspirations in that regard but isn't a complete and total NEET like say, Kazuma from Konosuba. Throughout the series his awkwardness slightly improves but that's because his social skills do, he finds friends in Tasuku, Aguri, and as much as he won't admit Chiaki as well and he somehow ends up the envy of everyone when Tendou agrees to date him. He's both a dream situation for a shut-in gamer and a good example of a just regular person and that's what makes Amano a good protagonist.
She is the head of the Gamer Club at the school, the most popular and beautiful girl at the school, and for some reason totally obsessed with Amano one of the quietest kids at school, who is frequently picked on. It definitely didn't start that way and she initially invited Amano to the club just to gain members but he turned her down and well no one has ever turned down Tendou Karen for anything ever and it has her curious as to why she was rejected. Her rejection begins her obsession and what people say is her downfall as the schools #1 is when she agrees to date Amano. At least that's what some people think but for her, Amano, the other 3 main characters, and us we know it's just getting started.
Tendou is THAT girl and if you don't get what I mean then you didn't go to high school ever, we all had THAT girl somewhere in our schools. The girl who was the embodiment of confidence and grace, the girl who kissed up to teachers, the girl who was perfect, the girl who got asked out on dates by every guy and she turned down 99% of them but there was always just that 1% that one dude succeeded (though it was never a kid like Amano, it was always some loser). I know I did that's for sure. Tendou is all of these things but we also see as the show progresses that she is kind to all of Amano's friends, she's is an insanely jealous girlfriend, completely accepting of all of Amano's faults, still a great person just in a different way now and a lot of that is Amano's doing. She becomes less of the stuck up Tendou Karen queen and more of just Tendou Karen the girl who likes to play games with her 3 friends and her boyfriend.
The cool guy in school, Aguri's boyfriend, and who's friends initially make fun of Amano until the two of them start to hang out together, then the two suddenly become best friends and you never see his jerk friends again. Tasuku is a quite a unique case because we learn one thing about him and it's the reason he becomes friends so quickly with Amano, the year before in middle school Tasuku WAS Amano and by that I mean when he looks at Amano he sees himself or at least his old self. We see in flashbacks that Uehara was a massive nerd who went to arcades all alone, played games by himself for fun, had no friends at school, was quiet and shy, he WAS Amano before he decided to turn things around. He spruces up his appearance, starts to act cooler, pays less attention to games even though he's still good at them and loves them, and gets a girlfriend: Aguri.
Uehara is a great character because while he might be a little bit more bold than the others in the show, his old tendencies as a super nerd still always show through. He's a guy that you want as your best friend because he spends the entire series working out the relationship problems between Amano and Tendou/Chiaki, he spends more time on that then he does with Aguri which does lead to some issues but that's not for now. Just knowing that you have a friend who puts you first is something that makes him great, he's funny in a sarcastic and dry sense, and seems to be the ONLY one who understands how stupid all of the other characters are for not seeing how they fit into their love situations. The pretty boy with the heart of gold.
The girl with seaweed hair, initially, was a girl that Tasuku said to Amano "if you're going to talk to Tendou you need to talk to women, she's a shy otaku like you, go talk to her" he says to him, and that's initially what we see when we meet Chiaki. A girl who does nothing but her school work and play games on her handheld console and mobile phone at school and obviously games at home. Then we are introduced to the short haired, knockout version of Chiaki who after one mention from Uehara about how he things she should cut it that she does, girls are easily swayed by pretty boys after all. The other thing we find out is that even though they "hate" each other over dumb things, Chiaki is "Nobe" or "Mono" that person that Amano spends all his time with online, the one who developed that game the two play with each other all the time. This comes in to play later to be sure.
Chiaki is shy and has no social skills because she had no plans on even associating with people until Uehara kind of forced Amano to "talk to her". She does come out of her shell a smidgen when she sees how much she has in common with Amano at first, before their first fight anyway, one thing that does stick out about Chiaki is her speech impediment when she talks she has this tendency to repeat certain words to herself it comes off as a quirk of hers and adds to her personality. Chiaki does overcome the hatred barrier for Amano but more will be discussed later.
Who's last name we never find out apparently now that I think about it.
She is introduced as Uehara's airhead of a girlfriend in the very first episode, a girl obsessed with plush kittens from a claw game (which there is a cute reason we find out about), and a carefree person. Aguri is the bright spot in all of the characters because while she does have a few issues she remains consistently the bubbly, carefree, enthusiastic character we meet from the beginning. Unlike Amano, Uehara, Tendou, and Chiaki she is not a gamer though which makes her the odd girl out as far as topics go but being the odd girl out she is able to bring a certain amount of levity to the gamers worlds. She does become oddly attached to Amano which worries Uehara but the two honestly do one thing for each other, help each other with their problems when they have talks at a local restaurant. What Aguri says about Amanocchi (as she calls him) to Uehara later on makes sense, she's like her kid brother and while he is annoying she wants to see him succeed and he wants to see her succeed.
Having Aguri also brings a huge comedic levity to every situation and it is helpful to have that levity in tense rom-com situations sometimes, her "I'm a tough girlfriend even though I'm a pushover face" is great. Aguri is just a character that while some might find annoying because of that bubbly and carefree personality, I find an absolute treat to watch on screen because we all need fun people in our lives and she provides that for all of them.
PLOT & STUFF
Honestly in this series if these 5 characters sat down and discussed things with each other then they wouldn't be in some of the situations they end up in but where would the fun (or the show) be in that. Amano is invited by Tendou Karen, the schools queen, to join the Gamer Club but after seeing how competitive they are and how it contrasts to his love and style of gaming he declines the invite. Which doesn't infuriate but more confuse Tendou who has never been rejected in her life and Amano continues to refuse her requests to join. After becoming friends with Tasuku, Amano is thrown into a friendship by extension with Aguri and also with Chiaki when he's forced to learn to talk to women. Amano accidentally asks Tendou out when all he means to do is talk about their friendship, she accepts. It's from this point onwards that not only do we have constant gamer related issues but things like dates happen as do the constant miscommunication errors between all the main characters. Basically during this whole anime each character thinks one person is dating another, Tendou thinks Amano has a thing for Chiaki, Uehara thinks at one point Amano and Aguri, Chiaki thinks Aguri and Amano and even Amano and Uehara at one point, Amano thinks Tendou and Uehara and Chiaki and Uehara. Honestly, it looks and sounds confusing but like I said if they sat down and talked about it they could've easily straightened it out. It's a problem but makes it fun too, it is the comedy part of the romantic comedy, it makes it an enjoyable watch.
It all starts here technically though, the true root of the problem:
It's a romantic comedy that's steeped in video game culture, like I mean steeped in it, when I first saw the name Gamers! I was like "okay it will have some gamer things and references and base it around a gamer guy, nothing new here". When I first watched it and saw what they did, it blew my mind. Sure the only games you initially see are a freeware game made by Chiaki or "Mono" and some claw games in an arcade which are status quo in Japan: mobile games and claw games at arcades of course but that's not what got me excited. It was when Amano and Uehara first became friends and it gave Amano the chance to play two player games at the arcade for the first time; now in the corner of my eye I saw the arcade cabinet they were going to sit at was for Persona 4: Ultimax and thought "sweet reference guys" but then it cut to ACTUAL GAMEPLAY for Persona 4: Ultimax of a fight between Amano who chose Yu Narukami the main character and Uehara chooses Teddy, then it goes through just how bad Amano actually is at the game he plays it like a kid and Uehara destroys him but I was like they used game footage. Then in that episode when Amano meets the Gamer Club he meets his fighting game-senpai who was playing Guilty Gear Xrd (not sure if it was Revalator or Rev 2) but still more gameplay footage. Then Amano has a Blazblue poster in his room and I'm thinking sooooooo many fighting games, all the sponsorship's guys, but it was just those little things that made it so cool from the start.
I like all 5 main characters and in a show where it focuses equally on all of them if you hate even one it makes things hard to watch sometimes and I like each for my own reasons because of my real life. I relate to a bit of Amano and a bit of Uehara personally, Tendou I've met people like that in the past, Chiaki is honestly like a girl that I wouldn't mind dating, and Aguri is like a kid sister that everyone wants to protect the one that always stands up for you even if you're stupid. Each one of these characters has their own quirks and things that make them unique and most of them are just interesting. Amano constantly worrying he's doing something wrong, Uehara trying to fix everyone's problems, Chiaki's repetition of herself, Aguri being a bubbly mess, and Tendou turning into a crazy girl are all just things that make me interested in them as people during the show.
Now I never expected to be upset during this show but at one point I was, I always preferred Chiaki over Tendou and still do, because of her true compatibility with Amano. They fight and fight about the dumbest things, about the use of "moe" in characters in RPG's, about story in games, and so forth, Chiaki even says in a picture I have that she "hopes he gets on a helicopter built by Capcom" now to a gamer you immediately know one thing, that means that helicopter is going to crash and burn, like every helicopter in every Capcom game, which is quite harsh to say about him. Then one day when they're all playing a board game, Tendou sees a mobile game that Amano is playing when Chiaki is away and when she comes back she hears him praise "Nobe" for making this fantastic game and how even though he's never met "Mono" he feels such an important connection with that person. He really cherishes the two people, who are one person, Chiaki. That's when Uehara says one sentence of narration that upsets me but I know it's true, "that was when I saw the face of a girl who found her first love only it was way too late," and it was because at that point more and more was it cemented that Tendou & Amano were working out. Uehara tries his best to support Chiaki into being the one for Amano because he's known forever that those two are star-crossed, made for each other for sure. It makes me sad to see a character I like get hurt and to not see it resolved either sucked.
During the last episode one of my other favourite things in the series happens and that is that all 5 of them go on a trip together and since I mentioned Aguri isn't a gamer she says several things on that trip that upset them. Though most are true statements for sure, all relevant to today's video game culture, just like they say in the show they try to as gamers just avoid discussing things like that because it's depressing. "Aren't games too overpriced ??", "Games aren't useful like clothes so why the price", "Games are just a way to bleep-bloop your life away", "Gamers don't look happy the whole time they're gaming though", and then my favourite part of the episode, "What is DLC ??" They then proceed into a huge conversation on DLC and how it works, including both boys saying the only costume DLC worth buying is swimsuit DLC, but Amano using Uehara's "sweet nothings" to Aguri as a way to say well would you pay an extra amount of Yen whenever you want for him to do them or do you want to wait. She breaks out her wallet immediately. They use comedy to break down the idea of DLC, free to play, pay to win, all of the different methods of post-overpriced games there are out there and it's done in a way where it hits home as a gamer, DLC stings.
The show ends on a high note with that funny episode and though the whole Amano and Chiaki thing not being resolved I really hope something good comes but I believe it's in a "light novels need to come out now so we don't surpass the source material". I loved everything about Gamers! and it was by far my favourite Summer 2017 anime and definitely one of my favourite video game related anime. I'm sure there are some things I loved about this show that I missed or forgot to write down but if you want to see what it's like and I highly recommend you do Gamers! is only 12 episodes long and it is done now so you can power watch the whole thing and we can discuss it together.
And just like this picture says...........