Fumiya “nanashi” Tomozaki is one of the best gamers in Japan, and he is the top player in Atafami, a popular fighting game in Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki. See, while he’s not at the bottom in games, he is in real life, and has already concluded that life is not worth making an effort in. That is, until he meets NO NAME, the second ranked player in Atafami, in real life. Little did Tomozaki know that NO NAME is Aoi Hinami, who is popular and approachable in school — so what gives? Well, after Aoi ends up challenging his lousy approach to real life, he ends up deciding that if you have to work hard to be good at games, maybe under Aoi’s tutelage and enough hard work, he’ll get better at life as well.
Note though, the two of them meeting in real life is actually quite confrontational — as someone who doesn’t interact with people and makes no effort to improve himself, Tomozaki is shaken up when he’s being called out by Aoi, who makes no effort to hide her disdain of him. This is at odds with how she acts in school — totally likable and easy to talk to – so it’s not surprising he was caught off guard. He soon learns that’s just another side of her. He also soon learns that she also puts in the effort to be good in real life and in games. And that’s why she asks him, with her help, to put in some effort in life as well.
Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki isn’t exactly shy about going over certain societal standards (like how does one determine the mood, striking up conversations, etc), but for the most part, it’s nothing totally heavy. The challenges Tomozaki has to take are heavy for him though — from making basic conversations to hanging out in a crowd to…finding himself a girl?!? The challenges are heavy indeed. In some aspects it is fairly funny. In other ways it’s kinda forgettable. It might’ve have helped if the cast of main characters was more balanced in appearances, but you have Tomozaki interacting with 5 other girls — Aoi, Minami, Hanabi, Yuzu, and Fuka. Each have their quirks (Fuka is into reading for example), but this is generally just leading into, once he actually acts sociable, which girl is he going to pick. So in that respect, it’s nothing new.
But the gaming aspect does interest me a bit, which is where most of this light novel’s success is at. It feels really engaging whenever either Tomozaki gets into the fighting game mechanics, understanding common newbie moves (or moves they don’t do), or even teaching someone how to play. I think that’ll be one of the more interesting draws moving forward, as I imagine there will be a few more games thrown in as the series progresses. However, I can only hope any other games that appear are used better towards its climax, as the ending to volume 1 is, well, cringey. It’s rare for me to want to skip over words, but I could not help but gloss over all of that, which began with Tomozaki beating a guy in Atafami at the start of this volume and ends as a mess…well, it likely messed with the students’ emotionally, but for me, I wanted to quickly stop reading it.
Despite the ending though, Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki has an interesting premise that looks to focus on ways to improve personally while also using gaming as its guide. I’m also curious to see if anything changes with Tomozaki and Aoi as the series goes on. But the stories and how the characters interact with each other will have to get a bit better moving forward.