From the Bookshelf: Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki Lv.6

After reading two translated volumes from the “light novel” series Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki in close succession, I went pretty much straight on to its anime adaptation. While watching it, perhaps willing to think “it’s good enough,” another novel in the series arrived. I set that book aside if not out of sight “to avoid direct comparisons,” although on finishing the anime I found myself plugging through a number of other translated novels as if “saving the best for later.” When they were out of the way at last and I picked up that sixth novel, I did indeed read it much faster than I’d managed with those other series. Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki’s tale of “high school self-improvement through ‘game-like’ challenges, with plenty of cute anime girls around,” might well be as distant from any of my own life experiences as the “generic fantasies” it had first stood in distinction from, but its translation (credited in tiny type on the copyright page to Winifred Bird) seems to make a real difference for me. Even with that considerable advantage, though, the sixth volume does push back towards a tricker part of its main character’s “self-improvement.”
( The hardest game of all? )