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krpalmerNoticing another translated volume of Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki in the publisher’s lists of upcoming manga and “light novels” I keep track of these days did indeed grab my attention. While I do have to admit I didn’t rush to read the book once I’d received it, when I did get around to it I think I was once again reading with more interest and drive than with some of the other translated novels I’ve got through of late.
One thing I might not have thought about all that much to begin with was the time that had passed since reading the previous volume. When this one began with Aoi Hinami, the “perfect heroine of the school,” cracking to the point of shrieking and raging at her friends over a video testimonial from her mother, I suppose I just sort of accepted this as a sudden change. At the same time, though, I guess I was grappling with the thought that it had been a while in the story itself since the loss (far more significant than “losing a game”) that seemed to have been the starting point for her beginning to improve herself only for whatever that improved self contained to become an enigma. The question became “so why flip out now?”
The other characters, anyway, are trying to answer more or less the same question, complicated by being divided into different classes as they enter their third and final year of high school. I have to admit to noting who wasn’t in the same class as the first-person narrator Tomozaki and supposing they’d “completed their character arcs” or something. Hinami is in a different class again, but is beginning to skip school altogether anyway. This does lead to Minami getting a chance to help out (or, indeed, shine); a bit later on, she has a different chance at that.
Kikuchi has been making her own efforts to sort out Hinami, but in struggling to understand the other girl a story she’s been writing that just happens to have its main character modelled on Hinami is in jeopardy. Tomozaki makes efforts to search out Hinami, and after running into her younger sister Haruka does make contact with his goal, who now looks worse for wear. This leads to a flashback (and a shift into third-person narration) that seemed to make things fit together at last. Hinami’s mother had had a sort of power-of-positive-thinking approach to life that strove to see bad events as a chance for something to happen good. When this doesn’t quite mesh with Hinami’s other younger sister Nagisa choosing to stand up for someone being bullied only to become a target (which brought to mind a previous arc in the novels) and get ground down to a final point, that becomes a first breaking point. It seemed to work.
Tomozaki’s best efforts to talk Hinami out of her funk don’t work. He resorts to the video game that brought them together in the first place, but as it turns out dropping out from the rest of life has improved her skills there. Her victory at last isn’t pretty, but it seems enough to complete her transformation into the bitter dropout Tomozaki had been at the beginning of this story. All of this has strained Kikuchi and Tomozaki’s relationship again, which brought back those certain impressions some people would insist “the first romantic option to show up in a story has to win! They’re alike, don’t you see?” Then, though, Kikuchi does manage to continue the story that had been in jeopardy before, and that gets through to Tomozaki, at least. I have to admit to coming to wonder if “your one skill at video games...” had always been something of a distraction from “a story about a storyteller who solves problems...”, but what seems to lie ahead does seem interesting to me. Yuki Yaku’s afterword insists the next volume won’t take as long to show up (while mentioning the second anime adaptation). I’ll just have to wait and see there.
One thing I might not have thought about all that much to begin with was the time that had passed since reading the previous volume. When this one began with Aoi Hinami, the “perfect heroine of the school,” cracking to the point of shrieking and raging at her friends over a video testimonial from her mother, I suppose I just sort of accepted this as a sudden change. At the same time, though, I guess I was grappling with the thought that it had been a while in the story itself since the loss (far more significant than “losing a game”) that seemed to have been the starting point for her beginning to improve herself only for whatever that improved self contained to become an enigma. The question became “so why flip out now?”
The other characters, anyway, are trying to answer more or less the same question, complicated by being divided into different classes as they enter their third and final year of high school. I have to admit to noting who wasn’t in the same class as the first-person narrator Tomozaki and supposing they’d “completed their character arcs” or something. Hinami is in a different class again, but is beginning to skip school altogether anyway. This does lead to Minami getting a chance to help out (or, indeed, shine); a bit later on, she has a different chance at that.
Kikuchi has been making her own efforts to sort out Hinami, but in struggling to understand the other girl a story she’s been writing that just happens to have its main character modelled on Hinami is in jeopardy. Tomozaki makes efforts to search out Hinami, and after running into her younger sister Haruka does make contact with his goal, who now looks worse for wear. This leads to a flashback (and a shift into third-person narration) that seemed to make things fit together at last. Hinami’s mother had had a sort of power-of-positive-thinking approach to life that strove to see bad events as a chance for something to happen good. When this doesn’t quite mesh with Hinami’s other younger sister Nagisa choosing to stand up for someone being bullied only to become a target (which brought to mind a previous arc in the novels) and get ground down to a final point, that becomes a first breaking point. It seemed to work.
Tomozaki’s best efforts to talk Hinami out of her funk don’t work. He resorts to the video game that brought them together in the first place, but as it turns out dropping out from the rest of life has improved her skills there. Her victory at last isn’t pretty, but it seems enough to complete her transformation into the bitter dropout Tomozaki had been at the beginning of this story. All of this has strained Kikuchi and Tomozaki’s relationship again, which brought back those certain impressions some people would insist “the first romantic option to show up in a story has to win! They’re alike, don’t you see?” Then, though, Kikuchi does manage to continue the story that had been in jeopardy before, and that gets through to Tomozaki, at least. I have to admit to coming to wonder if “your one skill at video games...” had always been something of a distraction from “a story about a storyteller who solves problems...”, but what seems to lie ahead does seem interesting to me. Yuki Yaku’s afterword insists the next volume won’t take as long to show up (while mentioning the second anime adaptation). I’ll just have to wait and see there.