People are dumb. And they get even dumber when they fall in love. This is the core idea that makes pretty much every romantic comedy work. We might dress these shows up with sly genre deconstructions, or Kung Fu slapstick, or a needlessly complicated quantum-entangled backstory about first love, but at the end of the day they all have the same central thesis: It's really hard for people to sort out their own feelings and just be honest about what they feel, and that's hilarious. If you're making a romantic drama, replace the phrase "that's hilarious" with "that's tragic", and there you go. You can also mix the two as you see fit. (...And I've just explained Rumiko Takahashi's entire career.) I freakin' love romantic anime. Stuff like My Little Monster, Ouran High School Host Club, Oremonogatari, and Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun can easily get me smiling from ear to ear, and more dramatic series like Toradora!, Say I Love You., and Blue Spring Ride can easily get me right in the feels-- although I tend to sour on them pretty fast if they just spin their wheels for a whole season. Looking at you, Chuunibyou and Kimi ni Todoke. We've seen plenty of really good and delightfully trashy rom-coms over the past few seasons, but most of them have had twists to make them more interesting, be they fantasy elements, ludicrous NTR revenge plots, or... (*cough*, *cough*) ...incest. It feels like it's been a while since there's been a good, solid, conventional rom-com about regular people who don't want to bone their sisters, but this season we've gotten two: Gamers! and Tsuredure Children. Gamers!, a light novel adaptation from Studio Pine Jam, has managed to climb the charts and become Crunchyroll's most popular show of the season, aside from the currently airing big four shounen that are always going to be at the top of that list. On the surface, Gamers! really doesn't seem all that special, outside of the gimmick of being about a club for gamers. It's got everything you'd expect from a romance-focused club anime: a meek, self-conscious protagonist, a few girls who take an unusual interest in him, and a more confident best friend character. But the thing is, it's not a club anime. The first episode rejects the very concept of club anime, and the show manages to keep piling on the surprises from there on out, which is not an easy thing to accomplish in a genre this rooted in and ruled by formula: Two characters want the same thing, but something awkward or possibly zany happens to take them off those rails, and hijinks ensues as they try and sometimes fail to get back on track. Rob Schneider is Generic Romance Protagonist. On the surface, the show seems to adhere to this formula to a T, building most of its plot on a complicated web of romantic misunderstandings that get progressively more ludicrous with each passing episode. I mean, at one point, even one of the characters in the story has to make a chart to sort all of it out-- and they get it wrong. What sets the show apart, for me at least, is the degree of absurdity to which the miscommunication can escalate, and the fantastic character writing that makes even the silliest goof-up feel believable. We spend a lot of time with each of the five principal characters, getting to know how they think, and understanding how their particular foibles manifest in the dumb mistakes that drive the plot forward. In a lot of way, Tsuredure Children seems like the opposite of Gamers!. This short form four-koma adaptation has no complicated plot to speak of, nor does it give us much time with its characters. Instead, it places its focus on pivotal moments in a dozen small-and-simple love stories: Successful and failed confessions, first dates, first kisses, first other things, and even the moment that two characters fall in love. Tsuredure Children is, in essence, a rom-com without the bullshit. Or, I guess it would be more accurate to say that it's twelve different concurrent rom-coms, without the bullshit. It tries to cut to the heart of why people love these stories: the heartwarming moments of affection,
the heartbreaking near-misses, and the hilarious bumbling that leads into both. The show's structure allows it to explore many different aspects of relationships, from the tender beginnings that we see in almost every anime in the genre to stuff I've never seen touched on in another show, period. One of the funniest scenes in the show so far is about a couple awkwardly trying not to ruin their first time having sex, something that they both really want, but which they don't want to seem over-eager about. And, when they finally get over their own hangups, the guy's mom bursts into hilariously ruin the mood-- in a nice twist, because she's overly supportive. I don't think I've ever seen a more relatable portrayal of early-relationship sex in my life. Not that many shows even try, but still! Nobody knows what they're doing the first time, and Tsuredure Children manages to mine comic gold out of that awkwardness, instead of treating it in an overly serious manner like most media does. But the scene also manages to be genuinely touching. After the mom bursts in, the girl reassures her boyfriend that it's okay, and they keep going at it because they know that they both want it, and they know they love each other. And when the mom pops in again for one last gag and does actually ruin it, the tone is still more, "Hey, get out of here, we're busy!" rather than, "Everything is ruined forever." (Although we later find out that they do stop for that night.) I don't know. The whole interaction just reminded me a lot of my own first time, in a really funny way. It's tricky to be both funny and emotionally moving at the same time, but a good rom-com should be able to manage that, and relatability is the key to making it work. If we can relate to the characters, we can see the logic behind their actions, which makes it funnier when things conform to our expectations, and when they subvert them. And, if we can relate to the characters, that also makes us cheer for their successes and cry with them in failure. Gamers! really gets that. It has a very thorough understanding of what makes its characters tick, how people work in general, and how nerds think in particular. The show's two nerdiest characters, Chiaki and Keita are essentially mirror images of each other. They like the same games, they're even unknowingly online friends in one social game, and Chiaki is one of Keita's favorite Indie developers, but because Keita likes moe and Chiaki doesn't, they become mortal enemies, which is something I think all nerds have experienced at one point or another: hating someone who, on paper, should be your best friend or even your soulmate. I mean, trekkies go to war over Shatner vs. Picard. Anime fans can make mortal enemies by liking the wrong show! Back in high school, I personally had a budding relationship fall apart because we both spent half the first date arguing about the Star Wars prequels. For the record, she was the one that liked them, so I was totally in the right there. That inability to see past something superficial to the genuinely great person underneath is so painfully human. We see it in everything from sports rivalries to religious and political disagreements. But something even more human than that, and the thing that drives all of Gamers!'s best plot turns forward, is self-doubt. I think every one of us, at one point or another, has felt like we're not good enough for the person we like, both because we put that person up on a pedestal, and because we tend to devalue ourselves. When you've got a crush on someone, the thought that they might like you back is near impossible. I mean, I'm in a relationship right now, and I still feel like I'm totally unworthy of her. Every character in Gamers! experiences this, in one way or another. Keita is open about his love of video games, but he feels like that's just annoying to most people, so he doesn't bother even trying to make friends or talk to anyone else. Other people have to force him into it. Best girl Karen Tendō cultivates her image as a school idol and perfect student, in part to mask her own insecurities, although he has nothing on Tasaku, who basically rebuilt himself as a "cool kid" because he thought his dorky middle-school self was too lame to ever get a girlfriend. Ironically, his current girlfriend, Aguri, only likes him because he was such a huge dork in middle school, like her, and he was nice to her. And she ended up changing her entire look because she thought she wouldn't be good enough for him otherwise. Chiaki did much the same thing right after she was introduced, although she mainly seems to be interested in Tasaku because he's hot, and he talks to her. Self-doubt doesn't just inform who these characters are, though, it's also the defining factor in how they interact. Keita, of course, is convinced that he's nothing to Tendō, even though she has the biggest crush in the world on him, and, for her part, she thinks that he's annoyed by her when in fact, he's just so insecure that he feels like he's inconveniencing her and wasting her time whenever she talks to him. Aguri and Tasaku are both convinced that the other is cheating on them because they view themselves as inferior partners compared to other people they could be dating. Tasaku thinks Audrey is into Keita because he's more like the young dorky version of himself that she fell for, and Aguri thinks that he's into Chiaki, and maybe Tendō, because they're both total hotties, and he spends a lot of time talking to them. Even though his main motivation is to hook Keita up with one of those girls, partly because he wants to see his dorky friend succeed and he's a good bro, but mostly so that he'll stop spending so much time with Aguri, who is only hanging out with Keita because he cheers her on in her relationship with Tasaku, and provides emotional support. Tsuredure Children hits on this idea of self-doubt as well; a texting exchange from Episode 5 is painfully true to life, as both the girl and the boy involved second-guess every last thing that they write, but it also touches on many different thematic aspects of relationships, which makes sense, since it's an anthology story. For Gamers!, meanwhile, self-doubt is the core theme. Specifically, as Aguri puts it, the anime is about the idea that love isn't something you do for a reason; it just happens to you. Trying to work through it with logic or play
it like a game, like gamers are inclined to do, only makes you second-guess yourself, and distances you from the people you care about. This idea also handily explains why none of these characters work up the gumption to just talk to each other about their feelings. Not only are they not particularly in touch with them to begin with, they're also petrified that asking or talking about their relationships will bring about the worst possible outcome. Fears that they've built up in their own heads through overthinking, and not just talking to each other. Because Gamers! goes out of its way to ensure that the lack of communication is justified by the characters, we root for them to get over their flaws and be happy, rather than just being frustrated with them. It helps that the show plays it all very tongue-in-cheek as well. We're entertained by the times that the characters mess up, or narrowly miss learning something that would solve all their problems, rather than being infuriated. We laugh, like we do at Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun, instead of beating our heads against the wall, like we do watching the second season of Kimi Ni Todoke, or freaking Chuunibyou, where
WHY DON'T THEY JUST KISS ALREADY!? Which, I think, points to a strength that good rom-coms have over dramas: It's a lot easier to keep a joke running than it is to maintain more serious romantic tension for a long time. I don't think I've ever seen a serious love story in anime that works for more than one season, at least not without something else going on, like the politics of Shirayuki-Hime, or the economics of Spice and Wolf. But the goofy stuff has a much longer shelf life. The absurdity of the love triangles in Ranma, the overwhelming denseness of Nozaki-Kun, the charming antics of the Ouran High School hosts? these remain endlessly entertaining, even satisfying to watch, despite never reaching a proper conclusion. Of course, jokes can get stale fast, too, if you keep repeating them. Nisekoi's cast is all pretty one-note, and bandaging it with a new character every few episodes doesn't really help after a while. But both Gamers! and Tsuredure Children have thus far staved off stagnation and remained unpredictable. That's especially impressive for Gamers!, considering that the show is constantly spoiling itself, telling us how things will go wrong for characters to heighten the dramatic irony of everything that they attempt to do. We can usually see mistakes coming a mile away, as characters overthink themselves into corners, but the show always manages to throw a curveball our way whenever we think we've got things fully figured out. The series also gives all of its characters serious forward momentum, mostly in the form of making their lives tangibly worse, but sometimes with an unexpected improvement to reward them being bold. And already, we've seen a few of them start to change and grow. Every good rom-com can fall into the bad habit of maintaining the status quo for the sake of consistent humor, but every time gamers threatens to get stale, it changes something. In Episode 6, it changed damn near everything while paying off a hilariously awkward event that was teased way back at the start of episode 1! But I'll talk about that scene, and the series's impeccable direction in general, in a later video. By comparison, it's pretty easy to understand how Tsuredure Children manages to keep things fresh. The show seems like it can get by forever on variety alone. While watching Tsuredure Children, I've said to myself quite a few times, "Wow, I've never seen that before," both in regards to the premise behind each couple's weird relationship and the kinds of interactions the show chooses to portray. If they wanted to, mangaka Toshiya Wakabayashi could probably turn any one of these concepts into a really creative and endearing long-form love story, but instead they take the best parts of each one and mix them all together. You never know what to expect from the next scene, except that it's guaranteed to be entertaining. The show kind of feels like a compilation of the stories that couples will laugh about when they're older, if you know what I mean. In a way, it almost feels like Tsuredure Children is cheating because it doesn't need to worry about carrying a plot forward, and it can simply focus on delivering emotional payoff after emotional payoff, with a lot of laughs mixed in. It's a great rom-com, but in ways that few other things can really replicate. Gamers!, though, really nails every thing that you need to make a series like this work. It spreads out its emotional payoffs, but it makes the struggle to get to them both entertaining and relatable. It makes it easy to understand why characters are the way they are, and why they like each other, without just spelling everything out for us. The direction plays a big role in that. It knows when to play to the strengths of the Generic Rom-Com formula, and when to break the mold and do something unexpected. And it keeps everything consistent by centering most of its plot around a single, broad, and relatable model for human behavior, one that meshes very nicely with its gamer identity. Which, by the way, it really nails. I don't think that I've seen an otaku-focused show in years that is this accurate to how otaku think. Gamers! and Tsuredure Children are both available on Crunchyroll, if you're interested in watching them, and you can watch both of them for free with a 14-day free trial if you sign up at crunchyroll.com/basement. If you're already watching them and you're interested in reading the source material, unfortunately the light novels for Gamers! aren't available in English just yet. But BOOK☆WALKER does have Tsuredure Children's equally hilarious manga available in ebook form, and they just put it on sale for 620¥. So, if you use the promo code "basement" at checkout before September 4th, you can get a 600¥ discount on that and snag the first volume for just 20¥. That is a steal! And I can tell you, it's just as fun to read as it is to watch, and having the manga on your phone is a great way to cheer yourself up if you need a quick laughs on the go or something. Let me know in the comments below what your favorite rom-com anime is, and while you're down there, I'd really appreciate it if you could hit subscribe, and follow up the combo by clicking the notification bell and like button and maybe subscribing to my Patreon for massive damage. I don't know if any of that makes sense, but all of the Arc System Works' product placement in Gamers! has my brain wired into fighting-game mode. If you're interested in hearing more about Gamers!, stay tuned for a What's in an OP? covering all the references that the show makes, which will be right up here, or click down here for the seasonal Weebcast to hear more in-depth impressions about these and every other show of the season, from myself, Explanation Point, Pedantic Romantic, and Rising Superstream Liam. And if this is the last I hear of you today, then I'm Geoff Thew, professional shitbag, signing out from my mother's basement. And I love you. (*cough*) Okay. Cool coolcool
