I'll admit I was hooked in for the first few episodes of the series, they were very appealing and interesting for me as an avid gaming fan. But it all fell apart midway.
I went into the show completely blind not knowing what to expect, and the first episode was great. It had very nice gaming culture references from CSGO and even Guilty Gear! It made the MC, Keita, a very relatable character that just wants to plays game for fun instead of playing it competitively like the gaming club does.
The second episode was wonderful as well, especially with its wonderfully animated introduction sequence and the nest full of gaming culture references in it. This episode focused more on Uehara's character and his transition from being a loner gamer nerd to a typical cool and handsome stud. There is one part where Uehara and Keita are in the arcade and playing Persona 4 Arena, a fighting game, where Uehara basically is able to read Keita's movements and basically body him due to his 'noob' tells/tendencies in the game. That part was the hook, line and sinker for me in this anime and I was even more excited in watching the third episode for the series.
At this point I had thought that the plot would be focusing on Uehara and Keita's journey in the gaming club, but this was not the case.
Episodes 3 and 4 rolled along, and now I had this bad premonition that this anime was actually not what I thought it was.
Episodes 5 and 6 came out and I just felt crushed. It was at this point where I realised that they would be focusing on the misunderstandings of the relationships between the characters and that just completely turned off this anime for me. The selling point of the anime for me, about how it was gaming, was now almost completely gone and I had just lost interest in continuing to watch the series.
It could have been such an interesting concept for an anime, focusing on the inner workings of competitive gaming and gamers. It had untapped potential and they just threw it all away in favour of an overly clichéd misunderstanding-riddled romcom.
And god, the characters. The character development between the main characters was just completely thrown into the garbage, it felt like the characters' personalities from the first few episode had completely flipped and they were now all completely naive and oblivious.
Don't get me wrong, there are people who would like this type of anime, but this just isn't my cup of tea, I just didn't like how they just suddenly steered away from gaming almost completely and instead focused solely on the misunderstandings of the relationships between the characters.
At least, the artstyle of the anime is decent, nothing flashy but still okay, and I do love the music as well as the wonderful opening of the series.
It's very disappointing to see how this anime turned out, it could have been one of my favourite animes of this year. It feels that the title of the series 'Gamers!' was just stuck there just to draw in gamers into watching this anime, and it definitely did, I just wished they at least would have tried to made the focal point of the series to be gaming instead.
