English Dub Season Review: Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki Season One

Overview

Based on the Japanese light novel series written by Yūki Yaku and illustrated by Fly. Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki Fittingly introduces our titular character Fumiya Tomozaki as an established skilled gamer who is ranked #1 in TackFam (basically, this universe’s version of the popular fighting game Super Smash Bros). Tomozaki takes pride in his devotion to the game, and won’t accept baseless slander from sore losers who fail to put in the work he has. When we contrast this to the other half of the basis of the show: Tomozaki’s first interaction with the popular girl Aoi Hinami, we become aware of when the plot begins to actually pick up…

Under Aoi’s guidance, Tomozaki is directed down a path of social/self-improvement. This isn’t just basic advice, however. It’s a decisive strategic motion to make friends and create interest in oneself. Even though I was already sold after the first episode, the show continues forward when our male lead receives proper development, and a cast of side characters who are used to explore other plaguing mindsets. 

On the subject, the side characters themselves are thankfully not bloated/bland stereotypes. Usually, anime in a high school setting (or any 80’s-90’s comedy film) has a tendency to demonize “popular kids” and make them one-dimensional bullies solely for the main character to perceive as an obstacle. However, with the exception of one single character in one scene, that thankfully isn’t the case here. Yuzu, Mimimi, Takahiro, and Nakamura are all vulnerable & flawed people in different ways. And the way the show deconstructs & humanizes “popular characters” realistically works on a narrative level and is essential to Fumiya’s personal growth when it comes to emphasizing the importance of having and maintaining relationships. 

In a weird way this show also somewhat feels like a tutorial of sorts as Aoi encourages Fumiya to dip his toes into social interaction and learning what not to say/do and physical improvements in the form of little things for Fumiya to work on such as getting a haircut, learning proper decorum, hygiene & self-care for his appearance, etc. At first we the audience assumed that Aoi was simply doing this from the goodness of her own heart until you realize that Aoi’s methods of making Fumiya treat real-life social interactions like videogame goals/missions to personally accomplish can feel problematic and morally repugnant to toy with other people’s feelings just for the sake of achieving a goal and not because of a genuine desire for personal friendship. Without giving away the major twist near the end, things take a dramatic and intense direction when Fumiya begins to get comfortable in his new skin and begins to gain his own agency…

As both an anime and a teen drama it wasn’t perfect. But was nowhere as gimmicky as the synopsis made it out to be. The Animation is decent and colorful, and the English dub voice acting was passable in each of their performances. Learning such topical and social subjects through the lens of a teen gamer like Tomozaki arguably works as a character study to various subcultures in gaming even if it tries to be a teen drama. I don’t know what direction the story will take after the finale, but I hope to see if a Season 2 if it does happen just to see Tomozaki’s progress even further.