Winter 2021 Anime: Bottom-tier Character Tomozaki

Synopsis

Fumiya Tomozaki is one of the best gamers who tops the leaderboard for a popular Japanese online game Attack Families. He also hates the real world and calls it “a game where there are no clear-cut rules for success, horribly balanced, and nothing makes sense”. However, he meets another top player of Attack Family with the avatar name “NONAME”, who turns out to be his sociable classmate Aoi Hinami. Hinami is offended by Tomozaki’s philosophy of life, saying Tomozaki should treat the game called “real life” seriously. She offers him a guide, a “walkthrough”, to be successful socially in real life.

Comments

My friend actually describes this anime as “how to be a riajuu” and she seems kind of right. It tells the story of Tomozaki, a high schooler who rejects social life because he thinks it’s never a “fair game”. Good looking or extroverted people will always have advantages, and there’s no way a lonely gamer like him will win. However, it turns out that one of his sociable classmates, Hinami, is also a gamer who ranked number 2 on Attack Family leaderboard. Then, Hinami offers tips and tricks to be successful socially in real life.

There are a lot of interesting things to discuss. Hinami’s point of view that there is a guide or “walkthrough” to win the social life in high school could incite a lot of discussions, Maybe Hinami’s into something here, because there’s an expectation on how you should interact socially. What I don’t share is Hinami’s belief that you have to be the “cool kid” or “riajuu” to win the “social game” in high school. And when Hinami gives Tomozaki the “quest” that he should get a girlfriend in a certain period of time, I’m afraid these kids will be trapped in the same mindset as the main character of Rent-A-Girlfriend where he thinks he needs a girlfriend to socially prove his worth.

I also like the fact that Bottom-tier Character Tomozaki treats the main character’s point of view about how to suck his social life in a more reflective manner, which differs from series like Oregairu who execute the scene in a more comical way.  Bottom-tier Character Tomozaki is recommended if you’re looking for romantic comedy fans that could incite discussions on how social life could lead to certain expectations.

Facts and Figures

Screenshots and Trailer

The Indonesian Anime Times