I had decent enough expectations for this anime, since gaming is by far my biggest passion and this series has a relatively high score by MAL standards.
The lesson, as always, is "have no expectations whatsoever". Let's get to it.
[For the sake of it I'll be covering S1 along with the Extra Stage stuff. There's nothing to spoil as the story is phoned-in from the very first episode, go ahead without any fear.]
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I won't go on to rate every single aspect of the anime, since it's largely pointless: I'll focus instead on its two biggest failures: characters and "story".
Characters first. Well, it's like the authors watched Hinamatsuri and Kaguya-sama and thought "oh, which are the least likable traits of the female protagonists? Yes, let's just join them together!". The "protagonist" (or co-protagonist) is Akira Oono (hereon referred to as just Oono), and she has 3 traits: she never talks, she has a difficult family situation and she likes videogames. I really struggle to call eye-rolling things such as these as "traits" but that's pretty much the whole of it (and add your usual "very violent" and "eats like a hippo" traits, the Japanese are nothing if not consistent with those two). And here lies the biggest problem. She's not a compelling character. Nor is she an interesting character. The fact that she never talks (not because she can't, just "cos muh artistic visiuuunnn") doesn't make her endearing in the slightest, to me. The fact that she has a very strict "home-teacher" and her parents don't care about her situation and BLAHBLAHBLAAAAHHHH yeah I'm sorry but can we get over this stupid "cute rich girl with meanie weanie parents"? As I mentioned before, somehow it was supposed to make Kaguya relatable when she just looked like a rich obnoxious brat with no common sense to speak of. Oono isn't as bad as Kaguya from that point of view, but the whole "wah rich girl sad background" is so sodding clichéed it's just unbearable. I'm supposed to feel sorry for this kid who never utters a single word and hey, I bloody don't. Give her an actual character next time because looking pretty and making various facial expressions isn't a sufficient replacement for one.
The other co-protagonist is Yaguchi, another pile of clichées. His thing is that he's obsessed with videogames. I thought I'd find him at the very least relatable, since I've been gaming well over half my life but christ almighty, there's a very fine difference between "normal" obsession and whatever this kid has. Games are the only thing on his mind and I'm not even being facetious here, he can't think of anything else, it's genuinely mind-boggling. I've known many people who were really obsessed with games but even the worst hikikomori would look at this brat and be like "woah mate, give gaming a rest for a while". Everything he does, it's for gaming. You don't have to wonder about his motivations, he always does something "cos vidyas". Other than that he's the usual braindead Japanese teen who couldn't find his own arsehole if someone else stuck his head in it, the classic "oh, is that love" "oh, are these feelings" BS that's been done ad nauseam in much subtler and better ways.
While I get to the third character I might as well talk about the story. There really isn't one. This anime was clearly made thinking "we must make something about games and that sweet nostalgia, shoe-in some characters and a semblance of a plot and we got game guys" and boy, does it show. Within the first two episodes, without knowing anything of the anime itself I was already wondering where the third wheel was at. And there she comes, spurned love aka third wheel aka best girl who's as dumb as a stump, Koharu Hidaka. I feel sorry for her character, she's not really much more developed than any of the others but falling in love with a complete useless nobody like Yaguchi must really royally suck. There, I've told you all about her already, she's the needed impediment between the Oono-Yaguchi """"love"""" story, she's there to fulfill her role and does so admirably too, but that's that.
There's a smattering of other minor mostly useless people, like the old kind driver (and his incredibly hilarious running gag of running over Yaguchi with his car LOLOL), supporting character and unsurprising nobody Miyao, arrogant comic relief Doi, sympathetic do-it-all perfect mother Yaguchi-san, irritating perverted twat Onizuka and mischievous laissez-faire Oono onee-sama.
I'd talk more about the story but there really isn't one. It's just various boring "conflicts" that pace what otherwise would be a full-on gaming commercial for the 80s and 90s. No doubt people who lived in that era will appreciate it because somehow recognising something that made us happy ("oh hey, I DID THAT TOO BRUH") equals to the thing mentioning it as being good, too. But yes, the story. Yaguchi meets Oono at an arcade, she's better than him (he never beats her) and he gets obsessed with showing her her place while she clearly wants to show him something else entirely. There are various pauses in this...relationship, such as when she's sent to Europe for what, two years as a primary school student (who doesn't do that after all, ah these rich peeps, I swear) at which point the third wheel, Hidaka, gets to know Yaguchi and obviously falls in love with someone who not only hasn't yet discovered what his wee-wee does, since it's not gaming-related, but has barely any care for any other person other than himself. Who wouldn't fall in love with such a compelling person, AMIRITEGUYS?!? After that, just insert various problems of poor rich kid Oono who's come back from Europe (or wherever she'd been sent to in order to advance the plot) which end up with her running away from home (yes, I know, shocking development) and eventually her tyrannical home-teacher changing her mind without any reason to (literally nothing new had happened, the plot decided that the same reasons she'd refused for years were now good enough to accept because the season had to end) and everyone getting their happy little ending because that's really how life works.
I'm honestly surprised myself at how pathetically poor this anime is. There really isn't much else to prop it up either; art and animation are borderline dreadful, among the worst (and laziest) I've watched in a while. Not the worst because crapfests like Asura and Kemurikusa exist but that's not really saying much. Voice acting is fine for the most part, other than Yaguchi being miscast horribly because not only they told Amasaki to give his most irritating voice possible, but a primary school kid should always sound like an over-30 something who's smoking a packet a day. Obviously. I won't even talk of the crime of using Suzushiro, who was a wonderful Uruka Takemoto, just in order to have her mumble some sounds here and there in 16 episodes. Music's fine and the ED is decent too, so I guess there's that.
Oh, final point on how sodding blunt this thing is. In fact, it's about as subtle as a bull in a china shop, with its highest moment coming when whoever (maybe it was the onee-sama) says "videogames are so nice, they bring people together and help everyone" or some **** like that. Like, what kind of ****ing writing is that? What's next? "Breathing is good, stealing is bad"? Christ, none of the writers of this anime ever heard the sentence "show don't tell", or they heard it and applied it in the worst ways imaginable.
And that's it. If you lived in those gaming years and you spent your life in the arcades (as if anyone who did that wouldn't be living under a bridge now) and/or if you're one of those all-knowing hipsters who natter on how gaming was better in the olden days then, hey, you'll probably love this. Anyone else though, unless you really want some cheap *everything* with a videogames theme and aren't allergic to clichées, I'd stay away from this one without a second thought.
