Characters / Gamers! (2015)

Characters in Gamers! (2015).

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Keita Amano

Keita Amano

Voiced by: Megumi Han (Japanese), Brandon McInnis (English)

A friendless second-year high school student who has nothing but his games.

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• Accidental Kiss: Unlike the anime, the novel version of the Kizuna Dungeon incident ends with Keita and Aguri about to kiss because in the dark he mistook her for Karen, and vice versa she thought she was going to kiss Tasuku.
• Almost Kiss: In volume 6, he and Aguri insist that their lips didn't actually meet when they mistook each other for their own significant others during the haunted house in the previous volume's cliffhanger.
• Angry Collar Grab: What he does to Uehara and later to Kaburagi when they each push his Berserk Button.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: In volume 8, he recaps for Aguri the last few plot twists and reveals that she wasn't previously aware of, namely Chiaki's confession and how it led to Karen breaking up with him the last of which—that he learned Chiaki is MONO and Nobe—is comparatively minor but ends up being the last straw that makes her Spit Take in his face.
• Berserk Button: At least twice, he snaps into a rage upon hearing someone insult a girl he cherishes.
  • After Uehara's "The Reason You Suck" Speech to him at the bridge, Amano takes the personal insults standing but draws the line at Uehara trash talking Karen and the Game Club, prompting him to threaten Uehara's life until he takes back what he said about Karen.
  • In volume 7, Amano takes it lying down when the Jerkass classmates he's grouped with for a school field trip are bullying him, but when Kaburagi tries to mock Uehara for having a whore of a girlfriend, Amano (who voiced his own complaints about Aguri both before and after this) takes offense on Aguri's behalf and lashes out against them.
  • Presumably, this is why he's so offended by Chiaki's dislike of moe characters.
• Birds of a Feather: To an unbelievable degree with Chiaki. They have the same belief on games, same taste in games and even same playing styles. They also have the same belief over internet friends, same tendencies for the nicknames they use online and he's even a huge fan of her games. That said, they refuse to agree to disagree when it comes to their stances of Moe. Despite the fact that they have almost everything else in common, that one thing causes them to outwardly claim to hate each other.
• Boyfriend Bluff:
  • During his first date with Karen, they run into Chiaki at the pool and she tries to pass Keita off as her boyfriend to scare off unwanted attention (the novel version implies that they're just asking directions and she assumed the worst, while her concerns are more founded in the anime version). She's grateful for his presence, but they immediately get into an argument about her giving his elbow a Thanks for the Mammary while he's in the middle of an actual date with someone who Chiaki wrongly believes is also a fake girlfriend.
  • Aguri asks him to play her fake boyfriend in volume 9. Initially, it's so they can participate in an ice cream eating contest at their usual restaurant. After they fail the challenge, they have what ends up being the last restaurant meeting in a long while, as Keita wants to keep his distance from other girls until Karen's ultimatum to pick either her or Chiaki on White Day is done, which interferes with Aguri's next request to reprise the fake boyfriend role when her relatives visit.
• Cannot Spit It Out: While he's rather upfront about his feelings for Karen and doesn't deny his feelings for Chiaki once he has a Green-Eyed Epiphany, Main gets him to admit that he had a case of this for Aguri, as the thought of dating her had crossed his mind before but he always suppressed it by telling himself they're Better as Friends.
• Chick Magnet: Tendo, and, eventually, Chiaki and Konoha Hoshinomori, end up falling for him over the course of the series. There's also a lot of Ship Tease in the DLC between him and Ayumu Kiriya. The nature of Main's feelings for him are ambiguous, but she definitely tells him that she loves him and her vulnerable moment with him after revealing her Freudian Excuse implies there's some sincerity to those words. And by the last couple of volumes even Aguri has admitted that she considers Keita to be good boyfriend material, even if they'll never make anything of it.
• Cloudcuckoolander: In the novels, he tends to describe things by using very weird analogies and comparisons that initially only make sense to him. Tasuku and Aguri usually complain about him making no sense when he does this, and it's yet another source of grief for Karen when she misinterprets what he means in the worst way. Chiaki is the only one who instantly gets what he's trying to say.
• Combat Pragmatist: In the rare occasions where he gets to play a game against someone else, he prefers to take advantage of his opponent's comparative inexperience if it's a game he's already played with his brother before, and he's not above using bugs and exploits to make a turnabout. It works enough to disorient Misumi's protagonist-level Instant Expert learning curve, and put him on equal footing with Main when he challenges her to the point that the last round against her legitimately could have ended in his victory if she weren't just a little quicker than him to hit the button.
• Commonality Connection: While most of Keita's friends sans Aguri share his interest in games, Chiaki is especially similar to him in terms of how they play and think about games, which lets them bond so quickly that they are on a First-Name Basis by the day they meet.
• Compliment Backfire: When trying to find a way to compliment Chiaki, the best he comes up with is calling her moe. From his perspective, this is high praise, but she just feels insulted and disgusted.
• Covert Pervert: While he isn't nearly as much of one as Konoha is, he is no stranger to playing fanservice-packed dating sims and eroge.
• Deadpan Snarker:
  • If sufficiently comfortable with the person in front of him.
    Aguri: It took me a lot of work to get to where I am now, from when I was a total wallflower.
    Amano: Here, where you boyfriend cheats on you left and right. Got it.
    Aguri: [pulls his cheek]
    Amano: Ow, ow, ow!
  • When Aguri wondered aloud if all gamers are in fact masochists like Challenge Gamer Tendo, Amano helpfully points out with a completely straight face that nobody's as masochistic as her. His girlfriend wasn't amused.
    Tendo: [Luminescent Blush] Amano-kun! It really doesn't sound like a joke when your boyfriend says you're super masochistic!
• Dump Them All: He admits that he feels guilty about how deeply he's fallen in love with Chiaki after her confession despite still holding a torch for Karen, and believes he's so unworthy that his best course of action would be to distance himself from all potential love interests, who he thinks deserve much better than him. However, Konoha gets him to admit this—and by extension his feelings for Chiaki—while Chiaki is listening behind him.
• Embarrassing Cover Up: By proxy. When Konoha said to Amano and Chiaki that she would use a "I don't have time for a relationship" explanation to turn down an unwanted suitor, he unthinkingly comments that hentai games probably do eat a lot of her time. Realizing his mistake, Amano is forced to twist his own words to divert Chiaki's attention from her sister and convince her that he's the avid eroge gamer instead. From the disgusted glower Chiaki gave him, it's safe to say his fast-talking was a complete success.
• Even the Guys Want Him: Downplayed in that neither of the guys who "want" him are particularly interested romantically (though Eiichi is fond enough of him for Karen to get suspicious), but Uehara and Misumi get strangely competitive over who Keita is most Mistaken for Gay with when they first meet. Plus, there's Kōsei's Big Brother Worship reason for shipping him with Chiaki.
• First-Name Basis: Addresses Chiaki by her given name not long after they first meet, which goes to show how familiar the two became.
• A Friend in Need:
  • When Aguri sees Tasuku Mistaken for Cheating and calls Keita for help, he immediately drops everything he was doing to hasten to her side. Everyone else is surprised to see him there, as he instructed all of them not to interrupt him while he buys a game from a series he's very attached to, but Keita simply expresses that Aguri's wellbeing is obviously more important than buying a game.
  • In the light novels, he once again prioritizes his friends over his games by hurrying to Tasuku when he's led to believe Tasuku's having troubles, only this time it's a Batman Gambit by Aguri to prove that he values all his friends and that they shouldn't feel insecure about the above example.
• Friendless Background: Amano admits he has no friends at the school in the first episode. Although it doesn't seem to negatively affect his life, he does want to make more friends if possible. Ironically, rejecting the ready-made friend group in the gaming club resulted in him making lots of friends and getting the club's president as his girlfriend.
• Friendly Rivalry: Although he and Chiaki would rather not acknowledge the "friendly" part, at least at first. Even after their hostilities soften and Chiaki admits she's in love with him, they still maintain that they are rivals to one another. By the end of the series, their rivalry has officially ended and they are now some ostensibly platonic version of Sickeningly Sweethearts.
• Green-Eyed Epiphany: At the end of volume 8, albeit via a hypothetical scenario rather than the presence of a romantic rival, Konoha gets him to realize that he loves Chiaki by comparing his pleased response at the idea of Aguri kissing Tasuku to his discomfort at the thought of Chiaki being with anyone other than himself.
• Guilty Pleasure: He fully admits that Nobe's games aren't really that good and his enjoyment of them is irrational, but he's a dedicated fan regardless and can appreciate when Nobe puts out work that is a labor of love even if the final product is of low quality.
• Has a Type: As shown by his love of a Visual Novel that prominently features them, and his crush on Tendo, he has a thing for blondes.
• Heroic Self-Deprecation: Amano fully realizes how average he is, thus has trouble believing that any girl could like him and he doesn't see himself as a person worthy of being by Karen's side, or Chiaki's for that matter.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: Vitriolic Best Buds though they may be, he's developed into this with Uehara.
• Hypocritical Heartwarming: He spends a portion of the field trip calling Aguri a demon and complaining about her, casually saying it's okay for him to curse her out in front of Uehara. However, when his group mates who had been walking all over him the whole trip try to bully Uehara by insulting Aguri, Keita immediately goes for an Angry Collar Grab/Death Glare combo to defend her honor.
• I Can't Believe a Guy Like You Would Notice Me:
  • Keita's utter lack of self-esteem is a major part of why he's Oblivious to Love regarding Karen's blatant stalking of him. This sense of worthlessness is so ingrained in him that even after she accepts when he accidentally asks her out, he's pretty convinced that she just spoke in the heat of the moment like he did (not untrue) and is only using him to hide an affair with Tasuku (definitely not the case).
  • From volume 6 onwards, this mindset begins to weigh so heavily on him that he considers trying to Dump Them All, seeing himself as unworthy of the affection of both Karen and Chiaki when he can't have feelings for only one of them.
• I Don't Want to Ruin Our Friendship: Every time he ever saw Aguri in a romantic light, he ignored the thought and committed to maintaining their Platonic Life-Partners friendship and being her and Tasuku's Romantic Wingman.
• Indirect Kiss:
  • In Volume 6, he accidentally sips out of Aguri's teacup (ironically while they're meeting to discuss how to explain their Almost Kiss from the previous volume to their significant others), though she assures him that his lips didn't touch the same spot on the cup as hers did.
  • In the DLC, he offers Ayumu a can of coffee he already sipped from. Ao goes into Clingy Jealous Girl mode and stops Ayumu from taking a sip, making up a half-baked excuse about how it's okay for her and Ayumu to do it because they're the same gender.
  • Main coerces Keita into another indirect kiss with Aguri during Volume 10, when she extorts them into continuing their Boyfriend Bluff in front of her and Uehara. Keita ends up eating a fry that had partially been in Aguri's mouth, and Main makes sure to remind them all that Aguri's saliva was on what he just ate.
• Innocently Insensitive: As Uehara notes, Amano has a real talent for pushing Tendō's buttons and breaking her heart without realizing it. For example, when he believes he's overheard Uehara give a love confession to Chiaki that she needs to turn down, he calls up Tendō because of her experience with rejecting confessions, but words it in a way that makes her think he's about to dump her.
• Insecure Love Interest: To Tendo.
  • He thinks too little of himself to even consider that she might like him romantically, and even after he starts dating her, he's pretty quick to believe that she might be interested in someone else.
  • After Chiaki's confession to him, his low self-esteem plagues him once again, to the point that he thinks she and Karen would be better off without him, a guy who can't commit his heart to just one girl.
• It's All My Fault: In volume 7, he believes himself to be responsible for the growing distance between himself and Karen, even though he's the one making every effort to reach out to her and she's the one who's too afraid to discuss Chiaki's love confession to him.
• It Was a Gift: The penultimate chapter of Volume 10 has Mii talking about how Keita spent hours chasing her around his house trying to get back a chocolate Valentine's gift she stole from him. Aguri figures out that this trope was in play and tries to discern clues about who the gift might have come from, believing that it might be a clue to figuring out who between Karen and Chiaki is most likely to come out on top in the love triangle if Keita was that determined to get it back. The end of the chapter reveals (to the reader but not to Aguri) that it came from neither of them; he was trying to get back the friendship chocolate that Aguri herself had given him.
• Like an Old Married Couple:
  • Chiaki and Amano are constantly bickering. Karen is quick to recognize how much their fighting looks like this trope.
  • He's just as prone to bickering with Aguri, though theirs is usually a much more playful and obviously friendly sort than the barbs he exchanges with Chiaki. Karen, Chiaki, and Tasuku all think it's way too cute to be appropriate for the platonic Odd Friendship that they claim they have. By the end of the series, they've taken to describing their dynamic as "Like an Old Divorced Couple" who were never married in the first place.
  • Volume 12 shows that he and Karen have comfortably gotten into a dynamic like this upon getting back together, with them cheerfully arguing about what kind of gamer they'll raise their child to be. Aguri lampshades how this is in stark contrast to his new friendlier behavior with Chiaki, who accepted his request to be Just Friends and their relationship now comes off as Sickeningly Sweethearts.
• Like Brother and Sister: With Aguri according to her, and he seems to agree with it, to the point of actively resisting whenever his thoughts about her stray into romantic territory.
• Love Confession: Uehara sets up a public gathering for Amano to ask Tendo to be his friend, but instead he recites a video game line and asks her out. Naturally, it stuns the bejeepers out of everyone listening.
• Love Revelation Epiphany: In the novels, he slowly starts to realize that his feelings for Chiaki are romantic after her love confession to him.
• Master of None: Ironically, while he primarily identifies himself via gaming, it's pointed out several times he's not actually good at any of the ones we see him playing. This is because he likes to try almost every game, but doesn't stick with any of them long enough to get truly good at them. Fittingly enough, the show's opening sequence shows him failing in the mish-mash of Shout Outs to games of varying genres except for the RPG one.
• Master of the Mixed Message: Even more so than Tasuku. Despite having a huge crush on Karen, most of his interactions with her end up giving her the impression that he's disinterested in her and/or more attracted to other girls, even after they start dating. With Chiaki, they're both too stubborn about their minor disagreements to admit that they're Birds of a Feather. And then there's his dynamic with Aguri, which is supposed to be Platonic Life-Partners but just about everyone perceives it as a lovey-dovey couple engaged in thinly-veiled flirting. This is exemplified in Volume 12, where he and Karen have developed a Like an Old Married Couple dynamic upon resuming their relationship, while he and Chiaki now seem like Sickeningly Sweethearts after they agreed to remain Just Friends.
• Matchmaker Crush: Volume 11 reveals that he has considered Aguri in a romantic light before, but always dismissed those thoughts by resolving to be a Romantic Wingman for her and Tasuku.
• Meaningful Name: Appropriate for the protagonist of a gaming-centric series to have the same name as the protagonist of a video game. Specifically, his is the Japanese name of Nate Adams from Yo Kai Watch, only differing with the kanji for "ama".
• Mistaken for Cheating: Even though he declines Chiaki's Love Confession to him and they agree to remain Just Friends, Karen overhears a few vaguely worded parts of their subsequent conversation that lead her to assume that he'll be entering a relationship with Chiaki while keeping Karen in the dark, and her reluctance to face them about it prevents them from clearing things up to her.
• Mistaken for Gay: Both Chiaki and Aguri thought he had a thing for Uehara. Additionally, Keita assumed Uehara was asking him out when the latter first offered to play arcade games with him.
• Mistaken for Romance: With Aguri. Chiaki initially misunderstands and assumes he's in denial about having ever dated her to begin with. All subsequent attempts to explain that they aren't an item meet mixed responses. Tasuku and Karen ultimately believe them but still think the friendship is a little too chummy. Konoha points out during the Christmas party that their repeated denials of it aren't convincing, and she doesn't buy it until she sees how sincere they are about being each other's Romantic Wingman. Ironically, when they attempt to exploit this with a Boyfriend Bluff, not only is Main not fooled, she manages to deduce that the perception of Keita and Aguri's friendship as romantic may not be so mistaken after all.
• Nice Guy: He's always kind and humble… except when arguing to Chiaki, who he will gladly insult when their disagreements get heated.
• No Social Skills: Becomes flustered when Tendo approaches him in a gaming store, and additionally lampshades that his behavior makes him pass off as a creepy otaku. He also tends to say things that Tendo will misunderstand, even when their relationship has gotten to the point where he should know better than to ask her about "how to reject someone."
• The Not-Love Interest: He and Aguri are this to such an intense degree that it worries their actual love interests. Eventually, Uehara suspends his relationship with Aguri until he can treasure her as much as Keita does. Even Main admits to being jealous of how much he loves Aguri after declaring her own love to him.
• Not So Weak: He's usually a meek and reserved loner, but as Uehara can attest to, Amano can be downright scary when you trash talk a girl he values.
• Oblivious to Love:
  • He doesn't realize Tendo has a massive crush on him. After he defends the game club and causes Tendo to fall in love with him, Uehara asks him in the next episode about his progress with her. He replies that he hasn't seen her around, which confuses Uehara because she's literally stalking him at this point. Even worse when he runs into Tendo randomly and she directly orders him to accompany her on a "walk" that's obviously a date, despite her claiming it's not a date.
  • On the other hand, while he's oblivious to love directed at himself, he's pretty astute about Chiaki's obvious crush on Uehara and even pokes fun at her for it. He becomes oblivious again when she shifts her affections to target him, but by that point she's hiding it behind a tsundere façade that he can't distinguish from the genuine hostility she used to have against him.
• Odd Friendship: Of all his friends, Aguri is the only one with whom he did not bond over a shared interest in games, yet she's arguably the one who's closest to him. Tasuku gets concerned that their lack of common ground could potentially indicate chemistry between them as an Odd Couple.
• Online Alias: Tsucchie and Yama-san. The former for playing mobile games, and the latter for posting game reviews on the internet. In the DLC, he unwittingly goes by the name Jiraiya when he plays video games in Ayumu Kiriya's videos.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Amano more than any other character is most notorious for his obsession with games and taking video gaming as Serious Business, if not in a conventional way every time. However, one call from a distressed Aguri is all it takes for him to drop everything and rush to her side, even though he previously instructed all of them to not interrupt him while he buys the latest installment in his favorite RPG franchise ever. This display of prioritizing Aguri over his beloved games causes their love interests to raise eyebrows in suspicion.
• Otaku: When it comes to games, it's hard to get him to stop harping on about them.
• Platonic Declaration of Love: Keita and Aguri have shared several of these.
  • He and Aguri jokingly exchange love confessions to each other in volume 8. This being Gamers!, it's witnessed by Karen and Konoha and mistaken for being as romantic as it pretends to be. However, by this point everyone is so used to the misunderstandings that they avert Poor Communication Kills for once and only need thirty minutes to explain themselves calmly.
  • Keita gives her a more serious one in Volume 11 to start and cap off his "No More Holding Back" Speech after learning about Karen's challenge to Main for Keita's ownership. Being The Tease, Aguri lampshades that he's basically giving her a love confession, and he doesn't deny it. His later conversation with Main implies that the confession might not have been entirely platonic.
  • Volume 12 takes it to the point where they're practically vowing matrimony to each other with rings while talking about making out naked, yet it wouldn't be cheating on their actual lovers because they're just friends. It earns them bewildered reactions from surrounding bystanders.
• Platonic Life-Partners: With Aguri. Due to their support with each other's love lives, they've become pretty close to the point that even though he's willing to blow off Tendo (and the rest of his friends) to buy a limited edition video game, he's willing to abandon that if Aguri needs him. He's been actively enforcing this trope by stopping himself whenever he might consider the possibility of starting a romantic relationship with her.
• Post-Final Boss: In the novels, Eiichi's Day in the Limelight ends not with his victory at the Total Video Game Tournament, but with a friendly match against Amano following the tournament. While Keita is an average opponent compared to the prodigies Misumi defeated in the tournament and only stands a chance by exploiting bugs, he's also the one who leaves the biggest impression on Misumi when all is said and done.
• Ridiculously Average Guy: He's exactly middle-of-the-road in almost everything.
• Romantic Wingman: Him and Aguri being these to each other is the crux of their Odd Friendship, much to the ironic consternation of their real love interests.
• Rubber Face: Aguri has been known to pull on his cheeks or ears when she's mad at him or blaming him for something going wrong.
• Secret-Keeper: Konoha strong-arms him into keeping quiet about the fact that she's an avid fan of eroge, especially from Chiaki.
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: The sensitive guy to Tasuku's manly man.
• Serious Business: Typically towards anything involving games. Their differences in opinion on moe is why he and Chiaki are so hostile to each other despite having so much in common otherwise, and he gets quite upset when told that the social skills practice he gets from dating sims have no bearing in reality.
• Shipper on Deck: He supports Uehara and Aguri's relationship, and is hellbent on making sure he doesn't cheat on her. Amano's dedicated efforts to maintaining Uehara and Aguri's relationship is the foundation of his own friendship with Aguri, as well as the reason he refuses to entertain the notion of a Matchmaker Crush on her changing that friendship into something else.
• Silent Snarker: Especially in the English dub:
  Amano: One plus one equals… love?
  Aguri: Damn right!
  Amano: [thinking] I know what stats she Min Max.
• Skewed Priorities: Subverted. Gaming is such a core part of his identity that the friends he makes expect him to prioritize getting his favorite game over spending time with them, which he initially seems to do. However, when Aguri seems to be in distress, he rushes to her side without a second thought, surprising everyone else who thought he'd be too preoccupied with his errand to pay them any mind. The light novels follow up on this moment with Aguri pulling a Batman Gambit to prove that Amano would pick any of his friends over games if ever in that situation again.
• Stock Light-Novel Everyman: Subverted. While Amano has an unremarkable appearance, and the Unwanted Harem, he lacks the other characteristics. He has no talent in anything (even the games he loves), and even his moral character isn't anything write home about. The show parodies this by demonstrating that Misumi is really the person who fits this trope, thus freeing Amano's story to go into a completely unpredictable direction.
• "Stop Having Fun" Guys: A subversion in that he doesn't join the game club because the purpose of the club is being ultra-competitive. However, to Tendo's confusion he can also be competitive, because he doesn't think games are fun if you literally don't try. He's just not so single-minded as them to focus on a single game and would rather play a variety of games even if it means he never gets particularly good at them.
• Strange Minds Think Alike: Keita and Chiaki share uncannily similar thought processes with each other, not only in how they play video games, but also in how they navigate social interactions and how they feel about Karen. She's also the only one who gets his weird analogies. In the DLC, Ayumu finds it especially unsettling how much Keita and Chiaki are alike. In Volume 11, Main's assessment of Keita directly compares him and Chiaki when she tells him that his unspoken attraction to Aguri is basically his version of the crush Chiaki used to have on Tasuku.
• Stupid Sexy Friend: As much as he tries to deny it, Main gets him to admit that he is quite conscious of Aguri as an attractive girl, even though he's already decided to never consider her as a potential love interest. Volume 12 shows that he has to stop himself whenever her flirty teasing of him gets provocative to the point of imagining the two of them naked together.
• Sympathy for the Devil: For all the trouble she's caused him, Keita still feels some pity for Main after she tells him her Freudian Excuse in a moment of vulnerability.
• Thanks for the Mammary: Two different situations, though in the first case the girl in question is the Accidental Pervert rather than him, and in the second case it's alluded to but doesn't actually happen.
  • When he and Karen run into Chiaki at the pool on their date, the latter hides behind him to do a Boyfriend Bluff and fend off unwanted attention. It takes her a while to realize that she's been hugging his arm in a way that takes his elbow to second base.
  • At the end of volume 5's first chapter, he playfully chases Aguri around the Game Club's room, during which she warns him that if he makes a wrong move he might touch her breast. The fact that they casually joke about this with each other serves to reignite their love interests' insecurities about the intimacy of Keita and Aguri's friendship, right after Aguri quelled those fears by pulling a Batman Gambit to prove that Keita views them all as his True Companions and not just her.
  • After Main gets him to confide in her about the barriers he puts between himself and Aguri so their Platonic Life-Partners friendship can stay platonic, she invites him to cry in her chest. He doesn't take the bait, but he does rest his head on her shoulder for a few seconds of comfort before leaving to give his answers to Karen and Chiaki about who he picks.
• This Is Gonna Suck: Before she even tells him what she wants, Keita correctly predicts that the favor Aguri asks of him in the last chapter of Volume 9 will be an unpleasant experience and is very reluctant to get involved, but does accept regardless and hangs in there for as long as he can handle. Indeed, Main's behavior proves to be too much for him and he goes Screw This, I'm Outta Here after getting fed up with it, though he turns around and changes his mind after Main claims "ownership" of Aguri's Loverbear gift to Tasuku as a Kick the Dog moment.
• Too Much Alike: When he and Chiaki agree with each other, they're Birds of a Feather, but when they disagree, they go HARD. Additionally, even the similarities turn into an obstacle in their relationship when Konoha ropes them into a date with each other and they find they can't think of anything new besides gaming to talk about that can maintain a conversation.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: With most of his friends.
  • Uehara and him get along but Uehara has a tendency of playfully mocking him.
  • He and Chiaki are very similar, but feud over their stances on Moe.
  • To some extent his relationship with Aguri can move into this when either one of them gets frustrated; Aguri sometimes blames Amano for her problems, and both of them have been known to snark at each other, but they're obviously close. In the novels, they've been shown to have playful arguments that often end with them both bursting out in laughter.
  • Konoha often teases him in a more sexual way than the others, but it's because of the deep trust she has in him. And for all the complaining he does about it, he does genuinely care for her.
  • By the end of the series, his relationship with Karen has progressed to the point that they are now comfortable arguing with each other about games, and more specifically what kind of gamer they want to raise their child to be.
• What Does She See in Him?: The whole school (and Konoha) seems to think this of him and Tendo. After she accepts his confession, the phrase gets said outright. Chiaki says the same thing about him when she thinks he's dating Aguri, though it's because she's biased against him.
• What You Are in the Dark:
  • The thing that turned Tendo's growing interest in him into an outright crush was his vehement defense of her and her club during an argument with Uehara in Episode 2. Neither guy knew Tendo was around at the time and they weren't at school, so the fact Amano stood up for her when he had nothing to gain from it really made an impression on her.
  • Similarly, Chiaki's attraction to him grew when he starts speaking fondly about his online friend "Mono" and his favorite indie developer "Nobe" in front of her at the end of episode 8 - not realizing that both of those handles belonged to Chiaki herself.
  • Konoha's crush on Keita reaches a full-blown Love Epiphany when he admits to her without knowing that Chiaki is listening to them that he feels guilty about being in love with both Karen and Chiaki and is considering trying to Dump Them All so they can move on to be happier with someone other than him.
• With This Ring: He "proposes" to Aguri with a ring made from the paper wrapping of a straw when they're vowing to stay together forever (platonically). In return, she gives him a fried onion ring.

Karen Tendo

Karen Tendo

Voiced by: Hisako Kanemoto (Japanese, TV anime), Risa Taneda (Japanese, 2015 commercial), Brittney Karbowski (English)

The prettiest, most popular girl in Keita's school, and president of the gaming club.

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• The Ace: Was considered to be one, and episode four shows off what her daily routine consisted of before meeting Keita, and then turning into a Broken Ace after meeting and falling in love with him.
• Brutal Honesty: Although she hides her crush on Amano and her love for gaming, she has a policy of rejecting her many, many suitors face-to-face. While she's always polite yet honest, after she falls in love with Amano, the polite part wears off and her rejections become quite brutal. At one point she starts to tear down one poor sap so badly Misumi (who watched from a window) has to pull her aside to tell her she was taking it too far (and that losing her grip wasn't helping her land Amano, either).
• Cannot Spit It Out: Averted in that she never seems to realize that she's in love with Amano and not just thinking about him constantly for some platonic reason. When he asks her out, her affirmative response takes all of half of a second. In volume 7, she cannot bring herself to face Keita about Chiaki's love confession to him, preventing him from clearing up the misunderstanding.
• Challenge Gamer: A through and through example, which was a factor in Amano's decision to not join the Game Club. Later on, her passionate spiel about enjoying being tortured by cruelly difficult games sounded to Aguri — the non-gamer of the group — like Tendō was opening up to them about being an actual masochist, which Aguri of course lampshades.
• Chocolate of Romance: She tries to sculpt a miniature Keita statue out of chocolate for Valentine's Day. It somehow comes out smelling like books.
• Class Princess: She's got many friends, is one of the prettiest girls at school and has a nice personality. Keita says she's treated like a deity at school.
• Climax Boss: While the anime has Karen absent from Eiichi's Day in the Limelight because the main cast are busy with their own trip, the novel version has her participate in the Total Video Game Tournament as the penultimate opponent he needs to defeat in order to win, coming right after his stepsister and right before the Final Boss.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: For Keita.
  • Anytime Amano shows any interest in a girl that's not her, she becomes depressed or angry. Karen is particularly wary of Chiaki hanging around with Amano because of the obvious chemistry between them, even before Chiaki develops feelings for him. Oddly enough, once Chiaki actually does admit to Karen that she confessed to Keita, Karen's more concerned about how she's been unintentionally breaking her friend's heart, which ultimately leads to her breaking up with him because I Want My Beloved to Be Happy.
  • She also goes into a funk when Chiaki misinterprets him leaving with Aguri as Aguri being his girlfriend, and when he demonstrates that he cares more about Aguri than video games not long after Karen herself expresses gratitude that she can be as important to Amano as games.
  • Karen is also preemptively jealous, as in she tries to keep Amano from getting into situations that will make her jealous before they can happen. For example, when Chiaki asked their help to look for her little sister in the Beach Episode because she was worried that a girl as cute as her would get hit on by pushy guys if left alone, Karen half-excused, half-scared Keita away from helping because Chiaki's description of her sister alone was enough of a reason for Karen to not want her and Amano to meet.
  • In the first DLC, she and Chiaki share the same nervous reaction when Keita tells them about his regular visits to Ayumu Kiriya's apartment, especially when his initial wording of the relationship makes it sound like he's been having threesomes with two university students.
• Closet Geek: She hides her interest in video games unless she finds someone she wants to invite to the club.
• Competition Freak: Karen is an extremely competitive woman, and while Keita admires it in her, it's also something that puts him off from joining her club. She is competitive not just in video games, but in everything, as shown when she turns the love triangle between them and Chiaki into a Friendly Rivalry.
• Covert Pervert:
  • Episode 4 showed that she had an Erotic Dream with Amano, in contrast with her Ms. Perfect act at school.
  • The same episode has her showing obvious disappointment when Amano considered not buying a Dating Sim whose main selling points were a full cast of blonde Love Interests — including one who looked almost exactly like Tendo herself — and lots of Wardrobe Malfunction and Jiggle Physics.
  • The creepy way she giggled to herself when Uehara advised her to create an "indisputable fact" of her romantic relationship with Amano sure didn't sound she was considering something on the level of simply holding hands with the guy. The latter being exactly the progress she actually got — and was quite happy with — in the anime version of their Double Date with Uehara and Aguri.
  • Episode 12/Chapter 5 of Volume 4 reveals that she undresses Amano with her eyes.
• Dude Magnet: She gets love letters and turns down confessions on a daily basis. This presumably occurs less often after she falls for Amano and getting a reputation for being heartlessly brutal in her rejections.
• Erotic Dream: Episode 4 opens up with her having one about Amano.
• Exhausted Eye Bags: She has eyebags and veins in her eyes after she pulls a three all-nighter playing a Super Mario game.
• First Girl Wins: Karen is the first girl the audience is introduced to, and she is the one who remains with Amano in the end.
• Freudian Slip:
  • For Episode 4:
    Tendo: [to herself] What the heck. I can't believe I let [Amano] get into my heart like this. [realization hits] [Luminescent Blush] Head! Into my head like this. That's what I meant to say, I definitely didn't mean heart.
  • In Episode 12 she accidentally blurts out that she often undresses her boyfriend with her eyes when listing activities that should be judged by their entertainment value and not their usefulness.
• Friendly Rivalry: As of volume 8, she has one with Chiaki, as she is now fully aware that Chiaki has feelings for Keita and Karen decided to break up with him so she and Chiaki could contend for his heart on equal footing.
• Gamer Chick: She restarted the game club, after all. The short story collection reveals that her interest in games was influenced by another gamer chick calling herself the Masked Gamer, who insisted that Karen call her that and not her real name, Mafuyu Shīna.
• Gosh Dang It to Heck!: The English dub's approach for her too-polite-for-her-age speech patterns in the original Japanese.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: She's blond and is incredibly kind.
• Hypocritical Humor: She was the one who proposed the Gamers' Meet-Up retreat, and created the rule that no flirting is allowed for its duration. And yet, the moment Amano pays her the tiniest compliment, she's swooning all over him. Also, during the sleepover, she nonchalantly parks her futon right next to Amano's, only get dragged away, and then admonishes Aguri and Uehara for doing the same thing.
• Innocently Insensitive: Once she falls in love with Keita, she starts neglecting other people's feelings without realizing it, starting with how brutal she starts becoming with the daily rejections of her suitors. Upon getting into a relationship with him, she has no idea that her openly treasuring that relationship is causing heartache for Chiaki, who had a Belated Love Epiphany for him. Eventually, she realizes how much she's been preoccupied with how she feels over everyone else once Chiaki admits what really happened after she confessed to Keita, and the guilt of having been self-centered while Chiaki was concerned for everyone's feelings is a factor in Karen's decision to break up with Keita.
• Insecure Love Interest: She ironically has little self-confidence in herself regarding her relationship with Amano, despite being a Proud Beauty and confident in every other aspect of her life. This is because Amano is so strange and eccentric compared to her usual suitors that it's hard for her to understand him or predict what he's going to do next. She adores him, but they have trouble bonding in a meaningful manner besides their mutual love for games, making her afraid that he'll reject her at any time. This is exacerbated by the fact that Tendo can't help but notice how Amano has a much easier time being just himself with Chiaki and Aguri than around her.
• Internal Reveal: One chapter in volume 2 centers around Keita's attempts to acquire the last copy of a sold out game so he can give it to Karen as a gift, only to end up letting a man named Satoshi Miyamoto keep it instead so he can give it to his daughter. Karen doesn't find out how her father got his hands on a copy until volume 9, when Keita mentions it to Chiaki while Karen, Konoha, and Kōsei are being Date Peepers following them.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: In the novels, realizations brought about by various events lead her to suspend her relationship with Amano, partly because of Kōsei's "The Reason You Suck" Speech to her, partly because she thinks Hoshinomori deserves a fair chance at winning his heart and she finds it unbearable to think that she's hurting her friend and potentially depriving Keita of a relationship with someone more compatible with him.
• Lethal Chef: Downplayed. Her attempts to prepare homemade chocolate for Valentine's Day in Volume 10 go horribly wrong at first, but she somehow manages the task of creating a scaled chocolate statue of Keita… which inexplicably smells like an old library book for some reason.
• Mass "Oh, Crap!": In volume 8, she and Chiaki share one while discussing Karen's reasons for breaking up with Keita and she realizes that dumping him is more likely to drive him and Aguri closer together than it is to put Chiaki on an even playing field with Karen.
• My God, What Have I Done?: She has several instances of this in volumes 7 and 8, regarding how her relationship with Amano has affected Chiaki.
  • She spends much of volume 7 too afraid to confront Keita about the confession Chiaki gave him, preventing him from letting her know that he and Chiaki agreed to remain no more than friends. During the field trip, after Chiaki admits this to her, Karen is taken aback to realize that she was content to stay in a relationship with Keita because she wanted him even though it was founded on a series of misunderstandings, and that her complacency with this caused major heartache for Chiaki after her Belated Love Epiphany.
  • Furthermore, when she hears Chiaki's reasoning for admitting all this to her, she realizes that her priority throughout her relationship with Amano has been focused almost entirely on how he makes her feel, without regard to anyone else's feelings. Compared to her, Chiaki cared about everyone's feelings, including Karen's, and the guilt from this is a contributing factor in her decision to break up with Keita and give him a chance to explore a potentially more compatible relationship with Chiaki.
  • Finally, when Chiaki is absent from school on sick leave, Karen is quick to suspect that this might be a cover for her staying home to deal with the heartbreak of witnessing the kiss Karen and Keita shared before she broke up with him. As it turns out, Chiaki really is just sick.
• Non-Uniform Uniform: She wears a blue vest under her blazer, which she continues using during the summer months.
• Not Good with Rejection: She has tons of practice rejecting men who confess their feelings to her, and as the most popular girl in school, she has never really encountered someone who's told her no to anything. When Amano thus turns down her invitation to join the Game Club, her confident demeanor is irrevocably shattered, and she follows him around in hopes of convincing him to change his mind. After her crush on Amano is solidified, she freaks out on any occasion where she thinks he's going to reject her feelings, even pointing out to herself how ironic it is that someone who's turned down hundreds of Love Confessions in the past is so afraid of the same happening to her.
• Not So Above It All: Tendo is the School Idol who receives confessions from boys almost every day, and is considered to be nigh unapproachable and perfect. However, once she falls in love with Amano, she's reduced to a jibbering mess who can't get her homework done, does peculiar things at school, and lies awake at night thinking up scenarios in which she can interact (or more) with Amano.
• Oblivious to Love: She fails to realize that her crush on Amano is mutual, though she can hardly be faulted for it when not only is he no more obvious about his feelings for her than any of the other guys who crush on her, but him being a Master of the Mixed Message leads to most evidence of his crush coming off to her as signs of disinterest in her or greater interest in other girls.
• The Ojou: She has a reputation as one, but her breakdown undermines this. She's otherwise considered the most beautiful, unapproachable girl in the school.
• Parody Sue: She's a blond, athletic, and smart girl that heads a gaming club. She would be every guy's dream which the show lampshades when we get a glimpse of her daily life in episode 4. One rejection by Keita Amano though, and she's a Broken Ace trying to maintain her image, since she really did not see such a dismissal ever coming for a character like her.
• Properly Paranoid: Karen is so much of a Clingy Jealous Girl that she's wary of people her crush hasn't even met yet. That said, her woman's intuition tends to be right on the money so often that she should bet on horses or something. For specific examples:
  • She doesn't like the Like an Old Married Couple thing that Amano and Chiaki have going on no matter how vocally they express their dislike for the other. Later on Chiaki ends up actually falling for Amano when she figures out he's two of her best online friends.
  • Karen doesn't want Amano to meet Chiaki's sister, if only because how cute the younger girl is described to be. Later on, a panicking Chiaki makes Amano think that her sister is actually Nobe and Mono, forcing Konoha to play along. This and Amano becoming the latter's Secret-Keeper after accidentally discovering her love for adult games turned him into someone whom the outwardly well-behaved girl could and would vent her frustrations at, a freedom to act that would evolve into something more serious after a while.
  • She's also rather leery of Amano's fondness of his mobage pal Mono, despite the fact he or she could be anything from a little kid to a senior citizen. Given that Mono is actually Chiaki (and falls in love with Amano once she discovers his usernames), Karen's jealousy seems to be almost clairvoyant in hindsight.
  • Volume 11 reveals that despite their insistence otherwise, Keita and Aguri really did have romantic feelings for each other, even if they never acted on those feelings due to I Don't Want to Ruin Our Friendship and being more interested in other people, so Karen's suspicions about that relationship weren't completely unfounded after all.
• Punny Name: Karen Tendo. This also refers to the fact that she's a Gamer Chick. Even more obvious in the dub where the naming order is reversed. For bonus points, her father's stage name as an actor is Satoshi Miyamoto, as shown in volume 2.
• Rubber Face: She pulls on Chiaki's cheeks in this manner in volume 7 to make her stop biting her own tongue, which Chiaki decided on as a form of self-inflicted punishment to atone for her confession to Keita.
• School Idol: For Amano's school but the first episode reveals she's going to lose this status soon. Apparently, she was also this at previous schools since Konoha was told that she'd never have gotten chosen as the Student Council President if Tendo had gone to the same school^note Keep in mind that Konoha attends Hekiyou, where the student council members are literally chosen by a popularity contest.
• Serious Business: Treats games in this fashion, and plays very competitively against other players. This caused Amano to turn down her invitation to join the Gamers Club, but at the same time he tells her he likes this aspect of her as well.
• Single-Target Sexuality: Once she falls in love with Amano, she has eyes only for him. When Uehara is Mistaken for Cheating, she affirms that Amano is the only guy for her to clear up Aguri's misunderstanding.
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man: She goes from interested in Amano to hopelessly in love with him after she overhears him defend her and the game club when Uehara says the club is stupid.
• Smitten Teenage Girl: Ever since her encounter with Amano, she can't get by a single hour without thinking about him. After a while, that includes sleeping hours as well.
• Somebody Doesn't Love Raymond: Her initial obsession with Amano is rooted in his unexpected declination of her invitation to join the Game Club. It soon gives way to infatuation once she learns that he really does respect her and the club. In this instance, Keita actually does love Karen, but she's never encountered someone who could say no to her as easily as he does, and it's mostly due to being Not Good with Rejection that she ever feels hated by him.
• Sour Prudes: Subverted. She stresses that "things have to be done in order in a relationship" to Amano right after they start dating. This is less about a staunch belief in propriety, and a lot more about how little she trusts herself to behave were Amano to be more assertive.
• Spell My Name With An S: Some might spell her surname Tendou or Tendō, but in official materials it’s given as Tendo.
• Stalker with a Crush: After Amano turned down her invitation to join the gaming club, she spied on him after school, ostensibly to somehow convince him to change his mind and to agree to join the club. After she falls in love with him she stops trying to get him to join the club, but continues stalking him at school and making all sorts of excuses for why she's randomly passing by Class 2-F. Most of the time Amano doesn't notice she's following him around but Uehara can see it plain as day.
• Training from Hell: In Volume 11, she subjects Chiaki to an intense training regimen as preparation for the two of them and Niina challenging Main in a fighting game match for Keita's ownership.
• Unknowingly in Love: It takes her a while to realize she's absolutely head-over-heels in love with Keita, to the point it starts to seriously affect her life as she spends practically all day, every day talking about and thinking about Amano to the detriment of her ordered life. However, she chalks it up to his words about "playing games for fun" messing with her head and convinces herself that if she beats him in a game, it will fix her preoccupation with him. That said, while she might be oblivious, it also takes her maybe half of a second to accept Amano's confession.
• Unknown Rival: To Konoha, who was always in her shadow at middle school, even before Konoha fell in love with the guy who turned out to be Karen's boyfriend.
• The World Is Just Awesome: In the anime, after her relationship with Amano finds some more stability, she mentions how she's been starting to see life in this light.
• Worst. Whatever. Ever!: After Misumi turns his defense of Keita's Accidental Kiss with Aguri into an Ace Attorney pastiche, Karen's internal narrative gives their trial the name "Dumbest Turnabout Ever".

Chiaki Hoshinomori

Chiaki Hoshinomori

Voiced by: Manaka Iwami (Japanese), Marissa Lenti (English)

A wallflower gamer who opens up when she gains friends. She's actually a freeware game designer under the handle "Nobe".

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• Affectionate Nickname: "Kelp-head", because of how curly and wavy her hair is, though it's initially used by Keita as an insult rather than affectionately.
• Anywhere but Their Lips: In volume 8, she gives Keita a kiss on the cheek at the end of their date.
• Ascended Fangirl: She's a fan of the game streamer Torabasami, and ends up getting invited to play games with Torabasami on stream in the second DLC when Ayumu starts looking for a new streaming partner to replace Keita. Chiaki is especially fond of Torabasami's partner Jiraiya, partially because Jiraiya reminds her of Keita.
• Author Appeal: In-Universe, she seems to have a strange fascination with fish and so the premises and plot twists in her games often involve catching or turning into one.
• Belated Love Epiphany: By the time Chiaki learns about Keita being Tsucchie and Yama, he's already in a relationship with Karen, an unfortunate turn that Tasuku lampshades. One of Karen's I Want My Beloved to Be Happy reasons for breaking up with Keita is that she thinks it's unfair that Chiaki didn't have a chance with him until it was too late.
• Berserk Button: Don't badmouth Yama-san in front of her. As protective of her little sister as she is, Chiaki didn't hesitate for a second to bop her on the head because of this in episode 9, nevermind Konoha was just nodding along what Chiaki just said.
• Birds of a Feather: To an unbelievable degree with Amano. They have the same belief on games, same taste in games, and even same playing styles. They also have the same belief over internet friends, same tendencies for the nicknames they use online and he's even a huge fan of her games. That said, they refuse to agree to disagree when it comes to their stances of Moe.
• Blatant Lies: Claims that her little sister is Nobe and MONO's real identity. Amano falls for it. She repeats the same lie in DLC 2 to Ayumu when the latter gets suspicious about how Chiaki’s odd reluctance to play one of Nobe’s games on stream and familiarity with it despite its recent release.
• Boyfriend Bluff: This is what she thinks is going on when Keita asks out Karen, believing he's in a loveless relationship with Aguri (they're actually Platonic Life-Partners) and this is his way of getting out of it without standing up to Aguri directly. As such, she thinks nothing of trying to pass Amano off as her own fake boyfriend to fend off unwanted attention when she runs into them at the pool on their first date.
• Cannot Spit It Out: After developing feelings for Amano, she refuses to admit her own feelings to herself or tell him that she's MONO and Nobe. She does come around to acknowledging her feelings for him, and in the novels she finally confesses both her love to Keita and her true online identities after the latter becomes impossible to deny to him.
• Character Tics: Saying things twice for emphasis and fidgeting.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: She does not like it when Uehara compliments other girls. After she falls for Amano, she's just as suspicious as his girlfriend is when they see how intimate his friendship with Aguri is.
  • In the first DLC, she and Karen share the same nervous reaction when Keita tells them about his regular visits to Ayumu Kiriya's apartment, especially when his initial wording of the relationship makes it sound like he's been having threesomes with two university students.
  • Volume 10 has multiple instances of other girls getting too close to Keita in front of Chiaki, culminating in her trying to even the odds by giving him a Forceful Kiss. Noteworthy examples include Main shamelessly being affectionate towards him to troll her and Konoha flirting with him right in front of her following an Anguished Declaration of Love, which is heavily implied to be a tactic for spurring Chiaki herself to take more assertive action.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Chiaki has some atypical ideas of what delights her. Her games usually include some weird twists to them, and in Episode 12 she describes her favorite DLC as an epilogue where the heroine turns into a fish for no reason at all. She's also the only one who can understand the weird analogies Keita uses to describe things.
• Comical Overreacting: When she and Amano don't see eye to eye for the first time on what is important in making a game great, we get a visual of them being frozen solid in blocks of ice.
• Commonality Connection: Chiaki and Keita have almost identical approaches to video gaming and game culture, from how they play to minute details like how they decide their usernames. Even though their stubborn refusal to see eye-to-eye on the minor disagreements leads to them declaring each other rivals, they still bonded over their similarities quickly enough to be on a First-Name Basis within hours of meeting each other.
• Creepy Loner Girl: When she's introduced, Chiaki is an asocial Gamer Girl with disheveled "seaweed" hair who most of her classmates consider rather awkward and creepy. That is, until Amano challenges himself to befriend her. After he does, the two of them become very close friends and she demonstrates a very cute and friendly personality in his presence. She also cuts her hair later on, making her look much cuter.
• Dark Horse Victory: Despite being the least skilled player of the four competitors, she ends up being the final victor in the fighting game match with Karen, Niina, and Main to decide who owns Keita.
• Distaff Counterpart: Other than her stance on Moe, as Uehara puts it, she's basically Amano in a skirt.

• Dude Magnet: After She Cleans Up Nicely, she becomes very popular with dudes. Unlike Karen, she isn't used to the attention and freezes up if a guy gets too pushy when asking her out. This is the reason why she went for an impromptu Boyfriend Bluff in the Beach Episode by clinging to Amano's arm despite hating his guts the rest of the time.
• Establishing Character Moment: She is first seen all hunched over in her chair playing an RPG, wiggling her earphone cord between her toes.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: Chiaki is encouraged to trim her unruly hair, she bobs it down to a much less homely style that shows off more of her face. From that moment on, she becomes a little less introverted.
• First-Name Basis: She and Keita start calling each other by their given names by the end of the first day they meet, which shows how quickly the two hit it off.
• Forceful Kiss: At the end of volume 10, she gives one to Keita right in front of Karen after being inspired by Main's words and Konoha's confession. The prologue of Volume 11 shows that despite his lingering feelings for Karen, Keita can't bring himself to reject Chiaki and he reciprocates her kiss.
• For Want Of A Nail: According to the third DLC installment, she would have ended up dating Keita if his attempt to formally ask Karen to be his friend gone as intended instead of asking her out by accident.
• Friendly Rivalry:
  • With Keita, though initially both are loathe to acknowledge the "friendly" part even though they obviously get along very well in most regards. The "rivals" part becomes such an identifying aspect of their relationship that they continue to describe each other as such even after Chiaki confesses her love to him.
  • By volume 8, Karen's put aside her Clingy Jealous Girl possessiveness of Amano to compete with Chiaki fairly for him, making her friendship with Karen into this. Aguri thinks the three of them should drop the rivalries and all just date each other.
• Gamer Chick: Chiaki is a fairly typical gamer girl.
• Genre Savvy: She recognizes that her situation with Amano/Yama-san is just like a female protagonist in a story falling for the guy she hates after getting a glimpse of his Hidden Heart of Gold. She calls it a cheap storytelling trick even as she realizes how helpless she is when life pulls the same fast one on her.
• Genre Shift: An In-Universe example. A lot of her video games involve this which is the reason not a lot of people like them. She also really likes the idea of DLC content dramatically pulling a genre shift, specifically turning the protagonist and his love interest into fish.
• Heroic BSoD: Suffers through one at the theme park in episode 11. Forced to go by her sister Konoha, Chiaki doesn't seem very happy seeing Keita and Karen together, even though the two barely seem to be enjoying it themselves. Konoha later forces her sister and Keita to leave a haunted dungeon, tries to give them some time alone and let Chiaki sort out her feelings.
• Heroic Self-Deprecation: Just like Keita, Chiaki has an extremely low opinion of herself and thinks she's not worthy of the friends she has. She has no idea that Karen considers her Obliviously Beautiful, and when Konoha mutters under her breath that she envies Chiaki in certain aspects, Chiaki almost offhandedly replies that she considers Konoha the superior of the two Hoshinomori sisters.
• Hikikomori: Downplayed. It's implied Chiaki doesn't get out much aside from attending school by the way she's let her appearance get scruffy, her unfamiliarity around other people, and her hobby of spending many hours online developing her own games and viewing critiques.
• Hopeless Suitor: Falls in love with Keita after he's already dating Karen. Tasuku can't help but to do a facepalm as he realizes she'll be stuck in this category. She's not quite as hopeless in the novels, where his inner narration does show signs of him being attracted to her and eventually has a Love Revelation Epiphany after her confession.
• Innocent Fanservice Girl: She is very bashful about wearing a bikini to the public pool. When she first emerges onto the poolside showing a lot more skin than she's comfortable with, she's shaking like a leaf. It's when she ends up attracting some unwanted Male Gaze that she gets really flustered. And when she tries a Boyfriend Bluff with Keita to scare off the unwanted attention, she fails to realize that she's hugging his elbow in a way that causes Thanks for the Mammary.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: In the anime, she decides not to declare her feelings for Amano just yet after seeing how comfortable he is becoming around his love, Tendo.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: The jerk part is reserved for Amano but despite their differences, she was still worried that he might be conned by Aguri and Uehara.
• Laser-Guided Karma: In the novels, Uehara points out that she has no one to blame but herself for missing out on opportunities to win Amano's heart, because Chiaki refuses to come clean to him about her online aliases and sends Konoha in her place for him and MONO/Nobe to hang out IRL, which ends up leading to Konoha's feelings for Keita growing as well.
• Like an Old Married Couple: Chiaki and Amano are constantly bickering, and their friends are quick to see this as a sign of chemistry between them, especially Karen.
• Love Hurts: When she genuinely falls in love with Keita, she becomes depressed in her room, knowing that he's already dating Karen. And during episode 10, when Karen, unaware of Chiaki's feelings, talks to her and Tasuku about how in love she is with Keita, the look on Chiaki's face tells that she realizes she's a Hopeless Suitor, and she tries to encourage Karen to continue her relationship with him.
• Loves My Alter Ego: It frustrates Tasuku to no end that she speaks so fondly of her online buddies Tsucchie and Yama while simultaneously complaining about how much she supposedly hates Keita, who Tasuku knows is the real person behind both of those usernames. Naturally, Chiaki quickly develops strong romantic feelings for Keita once she discovers this after hearing him speak just as fondly about her own online aliases. The second DLC volume adds another alter ego to it, with Chiaki admitting to being a fan of Torabasami’s new streaming partner Jiraiya specifically because Jiraiya reminds her so much of the guy she loves, without realizing that Jiraiya is Keita.
• Mass "Oh, Crap!": In volume 8, she and Karen share one while discussing Karen's reasons for breaking up with Keita and realizing that Karen dumping him is more likely to drive him and Aguri even closer together than they already are than it is to put Chiaki on an even playing field with Karen.
• Messy Hair: She starts out with an unkempt "seaweed" hairstyle. After Tasuku comments that she would look better with short hair, she soon cuts it to give it a much more neat look.
• Nerds Are Sexy: Although she becomes one of the cutest girls in her school after changing her look, she's still the same nerd who programs her own video games and doesn't get out much.
• Obliviously Beautiful: When she and Karen both isolate themselves in the same corner of the bath during the field trip, she assumes Karen is there because her beauty attracts unwanted attention, while Chiaki herself is there because she's a natural loner. Hearing this from her makes Karen internally lampshade how unaware Chiaki is of the fact that other girls in the class envy her figure.
• Rubber Face: In volume 7, her cheeks get pulled like this by Karen to stop her from biting off her own tongue, which she chose as her self-inflicted atonement after admitting to Karen that she confessed to Keita.
• She Cleans Up Nicely: As a result of cutting her hair short so it won't cover her face, wearing a shorter skirt and probably wearing a better fitting bra (if the Male Gaze she's got afterwards is any indication), Chiaki grabs the attention of nearly every boy in school who thought she was an attractive transfer student that appeared out of nowhere. The makeover was so effective that only Keita recognized her at a glance, and that's including her parents and sister who went all "Who are you?" on her at the sight.
• Shrinking Violet: She has a few shades of one, but her shyness stems from a lack of social interactions. She starts coming out of her shell after people take notice of her, but even then she largely prefers solitude.
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man: Although she and Keita are prone to bickering, she starts falling for him once she discovers that he treasures his friendships with her online alter egos.
• Strange Minds Think Alike: Chiaki and Keita share uncannily similar thought processes with each other, not only in how they play video games, but also in how they navigate social interactions and even how they feel about Karen. She's also the only one who gets his weird analogies.
• Tareme Eyes: Has Moe-looking eyes, despite her distaste of Moe in video games.
• Thanks for the Mammary: When she runs into Keita and Karen at the pool on their date, she hides behind the former to do a Boyfriend Bluff and fend off unwanted attention. It takes her a while to realize that she's been hugging his arm in a way that takes his elbow to second base, much to Karen's displeasure.
• Too Much Alike: When she and Keita agree with each other, they're Birds of a Feather, but when they disagree, they go HARD. Additionally, even the similarities turn into an obstacle in their relationship when Konoha ropes them into a date with each other and they find they can't think of anything new besides gaming to talk about that can maintain a conversation.
• Tsundere: More of situational example than a character trait. After realizing that her Sitcom Arch-Nemesis is two of her best online friends, the only thing Chiaki knows for sure is that she's got no idea what to feel about him anymore. She tries to hold onto her usual hostility around the guy, but the more she starts to recognize "Yama-san" in Amano, the harder it is for her to keep the act up.
• Unrequited Love Switcheroo: What she thinks happened between her and Uehara. The reality is that he was never interested in her romantically and his supposed love confession to her after she's gotten over him was actually a Romantic Wingman declaration to support her feelings for Amano.
• Verbal Tic: In the Japanese version, she has a tendency to repeat the first word she says. Best exemplified by ''this'' Youtube video.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: With Amano. The two agree on almost everything about games, but when they do disagree, they argue about it forever.

Tasuku Uehara

Tasuku Uehara

Voiced by: Toshiyuki Toyonaga (Japanese), Clifford Chapin (English)

A smooth-operating faux tough guy and former video game geek with a plotting mind. He's dating Aguri.

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• Adaptation Dye-Job: His skin and hair are noticeably darker in the anime.
• Ambiguously Bi: He's completely dedicated to Aguri, and the comments he makes about Chiaki and Karen that get Mistaken for Cheating show that he's not blind to other girls' physical attractiveness. That said, the novels have him think Stupid Sexy Flanders in the Kizuna Dungeon when he believes Keita is feeling him up (it's actually Konoha thinking she's molesting Keita), and he later shows competitiveness to Misumi over who Amano gets Mistaken for Gay with.
• Beautiful All Along: Although he was a glasses-wearing nerd in middle school, he gave himself a makeover before showing up to high school and became a popular hot guy.
• Butt-Monkey: He tends to drive the plot by constantly scheming to mess with his friends' lives, often for his own benefit. Unfortunately for him, most of his schemes either backfire on him, or deepen the existing misunderstanding.
• Closet Geek: He used to be a gamer himself, but put that behind him as part of his Significant Wardrobe Shift. Amano reignites his interest in games later on, though.
• Covert Pervert: When the topic of favorite DLC comes up in episode 12. He seriously and openly states he likes DLC that have swimsuits for his favorite female characters.
• Crazy Jealous Guy:
  • For Aguri. He does not react well when it looks like Amano and Aguri like each other. And even after the misunderstandings are cleared up, he's still insecure about how much chemistry Amano and Aguri have together.
  • A Played for Laughs Ambiguously Bi instance of this pops up in volume 6, for Amano of all people. Upon meeting Misumi face-to-face, Tasuku expresses that he'd rather not lose the number 1 spot to Misumi in regards to who Amano's Mistaken for Gay BL partner is.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Easily defeats Keita in a match of Persona 4: Arena Ultimax.
• Genre Savvy: He generally understands and lampshades the tropes, situations, and settings that surround their group. Even for the one about clearing up misunderstandings before they go wild, but his attempts to actually clear them up don't go as well as he'd like.
• The Glasses Gotta Go: As of high school, Uehara no longer wears glasses.
• Green-Eyed Epiphany: Along with the Love Revelation Epiphany mentioned below, he also becomes much more attentive of his feelings for Aguri when he notices that she's been spending less time with him to hang out with Keita.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: Vitriolic Best Buds though they may be, he's developed into this with Amano. Heck, it's to the point where Uehara gets competitive with Misumi over his status as Amano's Mistaken for Gay BL partner.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Thanks in large part to his shenanigans and some words that were interpreted wrong, his attempt to screw with Keita's love life ends up causing trouble in his own relationship with Aguri. As a result, Aguri and Keita often assume he's cheating on her, such as when he's seen with Chiaki a few times. The girls finally call him out on it in episode 10, though at least the misunderstanding he caused is mostly resolved.
• Insecure Love Interest: Even though Aguri pretty much only has eyes for him, it doesn't take much for him to suspect that she's cheating on him with Keita, reasoning that Keita is very similar to the nerd Uehara used to be when Aguri fell for him. Even after the misunderstandings are cleared up, his insecurities remain and are exacerbated by the discovery that Aguri and Keita have tons of chemistry together even though they say their Odd Friendship is platonic. By the end of volume 7, he decides to suspend his relationship with Aguri until her romantic bond with him can hold a candle to her platonic bond with Keita. From then on, he makes an effort to grow out of this, and by volume 11, he's become secure enough that Aguri admitting she did have feelings for Keita after all doesn't stop them from getting back together and sharing their First Kiss.
• In-Series Nickname: In the novels, Niina tends to call him Fake Umehara.
• It Amused Me: Wants to put Keita in a Love Triangle with Karen and Chiaki because he wants to see some entertaining drama out of it. Unfortunately for him, this sets off a Love Dodecahedron (which is largely due to everyone's individual misunderstandings) which includes both Aguri and himself.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: In the novels, he breaks up with Aguri because he feels unworthy to be her boyfriend, noting that he only accepted her confession because he was shallow and that Amano was far more quick to defend her honor when some bullies insulted her. He wants to be a worthwhile boyfriend to Aguri instead of the horndog he was when they started dating.
• Know-Nothing Know-It-All: Uehara fancies himself something of a Social Expert. His schemes to play wing-man for Amano crash and burn both due to how much he underestimates how socially inept the rest of the main cast are, and because of his own habit of sending the wrong signals.
• Laser-Guided Karma: His attempts to troll Amano, Tendo, and Hoshinomori by setting them up in a love triangle with each other lead directly to the misunderstandings where he's thought to be cheating with them on Aguri.
• Love Revelation Epiphany: Although he had already been dating Aguri for six months by the time the story starts, he doesn't really start valuing her feelings for him until after learning that she fell for him not because of his makeover to become popular, but because of the kindness he showed her in middle school before he was a Closet Geek.
• Master of the Mixed Message: The reason Aguri thinks he's cheating on her with Karen and/or Chiaki is because his efforts to matchmake them both with Keita come off as flirting from an outside perspective, and Chiaki is certainly picking up those signals.
• Meaningful Name: Tasuku (祐) means help or assist, in line with how most of his actions throughout the series are an attempt to aid his friends. First there's him trying to assist Keita's love life and social life by encouraging him to befriend Chiaki and work up the social skills to talk to Karen. Next there's him deciding to support Chiaki's feelings for Keita after her Belated Love Epiphany. Then there's him helping Karen affirm her relationship with Keita when they worry about how close he's gotten to Aguri.
• Mistaken for Cheating: Due to many misunderstandings, Aguri thinks he's cheating on her with Chiaki and Tendo. At the same time, he thinks Aguri is cheating on him with Amano.
• Mistaken for Gay: With Keita, by other students and even Keita himself for a brief moment.
  • Chiaki thought he and Amano were a couple when she saw them holding hands, he quickly corrects on it. Aguri is also quick to assume that his new friendship with Amano is something more, although this is eventually overshadowed by her own bond with Keita.
  • Amusingly, he eventually becomes competitive over his reputation for being this with Amano, and goes a bit Crazy Jealous Guy against Misumi when he thinks Misumi is edging in on his spot as Amano's #1 BL partner.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: At his core, Uehara's heart is in the right place, but his constant attempts to play Shipper on Deck for Amano with Tendō and/or Chiaki frequently blow up in his face and cause Aguri to misinterpret his actions as cheating on her.
• Not So Above It All: He clearly considers himself the Straight Man, but it's pretty obvious he's equally as zany as the other four main characters and lots of the misunderstandings that pop up are his fault. The Love Dodecahedron starts because of his scheme to create a Love Triangle with Amano, Tendo, and Hoshinomori, and Aguri and Amano believe he's a womanizer because he gets repeatedly overheard complimenting Tendo and Hoshinomori's looks.
• Oblivious to Love: In the anime, while not quite as bad about it as Keita is to Karen being a Stalker with a Crush, Tasuku never seems to realize that Chiaki is crushing on him and that his compliments on her appearance are only feeding that. Granted, this is because his primary focus with Chiaki is to play Shipper on Deck between her and Keita, but he still never pieces together that her Expository Hairstyle Change was motivated by a crush on him. His internal narrative in the light novels does have him acknowledge that she has an attachment to him, though.
• Poor Communication Kills: While all the main characters fall into this, Uehara is noteworthy in that he recognizes that the miscommunication is the root of all their drama and actively attempts to defy it, with mixed success. While he does succeed in assembling the group together to talk about the issues at hand, actually addressing those issues seldom happens as much as he'd like.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: He gives one of these to Amano because Amano's meek personality reminds him of the way Uehara was in middle school and because he feels like Amano is dismissive of the work it took to go from nerd to jock. It doesn't have the intended effect, as Amano's fiery response gains Uehara's respect and causes them to become good friends, and also causes Tendo to fall in love with Amano (neither of the guys knew she was there or listening).
• Romantic Wingman: What he tries to be for Amano, setting him up with both Karen and Chiaki. The actions he and Aguri independently take to be this for Keita's love life unfortunately create Mistaken for Cheating misunderstandings in their own relationship with each other. Eventually, he decides to specifically focus on throwing his lot behind Chiaki in the race for Amano's heart, but this causes yet another misunderstanding that puts him at odds with her other wingman, Konoha.
• Schemer: A benevolent variant but most of the plot of the first half of the anime is due to his absurd schemes to get Amano together with Tendo and later his (again, absurd) attempts to figure out Amano's relationship with Aguri. Later on, he changes the scheme to help Hoshinomori reveal her feelings to Amano, which works about as well as all of his other schemes.
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: The manly man to Keita's sensitive guy.
• Shipper on Deck: He said that Tendo and Amano would make a cute couple, he also admits he wants to ship Amano and Hoshinomori when he realizes how compatible they are. He later decides to ship Amano and Hoshinomori completely when he sees her fall in love with Amano, although he's probably too late at this point. And even after committing to helping Hoshinomori, he still ends up collaborating with Tendo to help her affirm her relationship with Amano because they're both insecure about how close Amano and Aguri have gotten to each other.
• Shipper with an Agenda: The agenda being It Amused Me in regards to the love triangle he tries to engineer between Amano, Karen, and Chiaki. Later, he becomes a genuine Shipper on Deck for Amano and Chiaki when he gets emotionally invested in seeing the two get together, but remains a shipper with an agenda to Amano and Karen's existing relationship, the new agenda being his concerns about how close Amano has gotten to Aguri.
• Shipping Torpedo: Zigzagged. When he decides to back Chiaki over Karen for who to matchmake with Keita, he rescinds his support for Karen. However, he cannot bring himself to disapprove of Karen's feelings for Amano and reluctantly acknowledges that she's too sincerely in love for him to feel well about preferring her boyfriend with someone else. Additionally, when they learn how deeply Keita and Aguri have bonded, he helps Karen a plan to affirm her relationship with Amano so neither of them lose the person they love.
• Significant Wardrobe Shift: Had the stereotypical appearance of a geek back in his middle school days before he underwent a change in overall physical appearance by high school.
• Slasher Smile: While conspiring about Amano and Tendo's meet. He's pretty much the master of making weird faces while coming up with the kind of scheme that will inevitably backfire.
• Stupid Sexy Flanders: In the novel version of the Kizuna Dungeon incident, he gets paired up with Konoha in the dark and they are both mislead to believe that they are partnered with Keita. He is subsequently disturbed not only by her feeling him up, but also by the fact that his reaction is to think "Keita" smells nice and has soft skin.
• The Unfair Sex: Gets hit with this to a degree. Even after much of the misunderstandings get cleared up, Uehara ends up taking the blunt of the blame for the misunderstanding happening to begin with due to his unsolicited constantly trying to be a wingman for Amano. To push it further, everyone continues to view him as a two-timer even though it was proven otherwise.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: With Amano. While Amano is pretty affable to him, Uehara likes to jokingly mock him from time to time.
• What Does She See in Him?: He was initially taken aback when he found out Tendo has it bad for Amano.
• What the Hell, Hero?: He gives this attitude to Amano in volume 8, upset at him for not meeting up with Aguri at a restaurant like he usually does when she's in need of emotional support. Keita naturally turns this around on him and points out that the whole reason Aguri's in a funk is because Uehara himself broke up with her on the field trip.
• You Remind Me of X: He sees his middle school self in Amano, which initially rubs him the wrong way, but quickly becomes the basis of their friendship.

Aguri Sakurano

Aguri Sakurano

Voiced by: Rumi Ōkubo (Japanese), Tia Ballard (English)

Uehara's girlfriend, a gal from Class 2-C.

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• Accidental Kiss: At the end of volume 5, she misidentifies Keita as Tasuku and moves to kiss him in the dark of the Kizuna Dungeon, just when the lights come on and reveal who was really paired up with whom.
• Almost Kiss: In volume 6, she and Amano insist that their lips didn't actually meet when they mistook each other for their own significant others during the haunted house in the previous volume's cliffhanger.
• Ambiguously Related: Volume 10 of the light novels reveals that her surname is Sakurano, which, when taken with the other hints of a Shared Universe with Student Council's Discretion, implies a familial connection between her and Kurimu Sakurano, another pink-haired ditz (though Aguri's ditziness is an act and her hair is dyed pink). Main's conversation with Keita in Volume 12 heavily implies that Aguri and Kurimu are related.
• Audience Surrogate: Episode 12 has her voice a lot of complaints about the video game industry. Like the high prices for games, pay-to-win games, DLC, and boring grinding.
• Batman Gambit: The first chapter of volume 5 has her pull one on Keita to prove to Tasuku, Karen, and Chiaki that he doesn't put her on a pedestal over the rest of them. Specifically, she texts him two false messages, one telling him where to go to find that video game he was looking for in the previous volume, and one saying that Tasuku's crying alone in the Game Club room after a falling out with some of his other friends. As Aguri expected, Keita values his True Companions and rushes over to the Game Club to be there for Tasuku, showing them that his previous concern over Aguri's Mistaken for Cheating misunderstanding earlier was not an example of O.O.C. Is Serious Business. Granted, her point is undercut when Keita's reaction to her throwing him on another wild goose chase turns into a Vitriolic Best Buds demonstration between them with some Thanks for the Mammary casually alluded to.
• Beautiful All Along: When she shows up to high school and sees that Uehara got a makeover, she gives herself her own makeover which makes Uehara consider her extremely cute.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: She fell in love with "pre-cool" Tasuku because he gave her a plushie that he had won at the arcade. She later tells him that she changed her looks because she saw him change his image and tried to emulate it. When she first tells him this, he runs away because he's too embarrassed and shocked at the fact that she fell in love with him before he changed his public image, and suddenly sees her in a different light than before.
• Boyfriend Bluff: In volume 9, she calls Keita over to the restaurant to pose as her boyfriend so they can participate in a couple's ice cream eating challenge. Although they fail the challenge, Aguri admits that she had another reason for calling him, which is asking him to play the fake boyfriend she can introduce to her visiting relatives since Tasuku broke up with her. She isn't able to tell him her second reason until much later, however, because he interrupted her with his own request to put a moratorium on their regular meetings, which they've both come to realize are basically dates, as he wants to commit to the ultimatum Karen gave him about her competition with Chiaki.
• Brainless Beauty: Aguri tried to invoke this trope in order to get Tasuku's attention, and it worked. Her actual intelligence is more apparent when she talks to Amano, and his influence on her causes her to slowly drop the act in general.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: She hates it when anyone regardless of gender takes Uehara's attention away from her.
• Cloudcuckoolander: She comes off as one at first, but it's revealed she acts this way largely because she had been told that Uehara liked "ditzy" girls. She's still a little odd, but her interaction with Amano shows she isn't significantly weirder or dumber than any of the other main characters.
• Deadpan Snarker: After befriending Keita, she'll often drily snark on his idiosyncrasies, particularly in regards to his geeky hobbies. In turn, his own sarcastic side comes out most when he's speaking to or about her.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: Her hair was originally black and tied up, but she lets it down and dyes it pink in order to catch Tasuku's eye.
• First-Name Basis: Aguri always calls Uehara by his given name "Tasuku," and nobody else does. Everyone calls her "Aguri" (including Uehara and Aguri herself). Volume 10 reveals her surname is Sakurano, and Volume 12 heavily implies Kurimu Sakurano might be her sister or cousin.
• Gyaru Girl: She cultivated this aesthetic for herself in order to ask out Tasuku.
• Hypocritical Heartwarming: She'll pick on Keita and call him a nerd for his hobbies, but strongly jumps to his defense when Sarina, Kudo, and Shinohara diss him for that without even knowing anything else about him.
• Hypocritical Humour: Volume 12 has her finding it odd that Keita's new supposedly romantic relationship with Karen seems less affectionate than his new supposedly platonic friendship with Chiaki. This is after several volumes of her own Platonic Life-Partners friendship with Keita being Mistaken for Romance to the point of their Ship Tease practically being a Running Gag that Aguri herself has teased them about. She and Keita also agree that any intimate behavior between them that could understandably be Mistaken for Romance (e.g. kissing, showering together) is excusable because they're only friends, while simultaneously saying that Karen and Tasuku doing the same things together would be cheating.
• Insecure Love Interest: Aguri used to be a shy wallflower and even six months into her relationship with Tasuku, she senses he's not as invested in it as she is (at first). Ironically, by the time he does start taking her feelings for him more seriously, she's begun suspecting him of cheating on her with other people, such as Keita, Chiaki, and Karen, though that first one gets cleared up once she actually befriends him. She's especially worried about losing Tasuku to Chiaki because the latter's shy personality reminds Aguri of how she used to be when she first fell in love with Tasuku back in middle school.
• Insult Backfire: When she goes to meet up with a middle school classmate in episode 10, Sarina is seen hanging out with two guys, and they constantly berate Aguri and the others she's been hanging out with, as well as her cheating on her boyfriend. Disgusted, Aguri decides to leave, and when Sarina calls her a wallflower, Aguri tells her that said insult makes her happy.
• Like Brother and Sister: Aguri often describes Amano as being like a little brother to her when talking about their relationship. In the light novels, she tells him that this is why she wants him to join her working part-time jobs in retail, as she feels his presence would evoke a Cool Big Sis instinct in her to set a good example that can motivate her to overcome any social anxieties on the job. Volume 12 heavily implies that while they insist they have a purely sibling-like relationship to themselves and others, the fact that they aren't literally siblings means they aren't immune to being attracted to each other as a Stupid Sexy Friend.
• Locked Out of the Loop: She isn't informed about many of the later developments in the Keita-Karen-Chiaki love triangle until volume 8 when Keita recaps several of them to her in a successive Internal Reveal bombshell. It makes her Spit Take her hot chocolate in his face.
• Mistaken for Cheating: Due to many misunderstandings, Uehara thinks she's cheating on him with Amano. Due to many misunderstandings, Aguri thinks Uehara is cheating on her with both Tendo and Hoshinomori. A lot of this is due to the fact that she and Amano have a tendency to eavesdrop during the exact wrong part of a conversation, and also Uehara's inability to not say things that make it sound like he has the hots for Tendo and Hoshinomari. On the flip side, Chiaki mistakenly assumed that her relationship with Tasuku was itself her cheating on Keita, since she believed Aguri to be Keita's girlfriend.
• Mistaken for Romance: She has to say this about her Odd Friendship with Keita once it becomes apparent that Tasuku and Karen (and Chiaki) are insecure about how close they are. Even though she proves that their friendship is platonic, it does little to ease their worries. At the Christmas party, Konoha doesn't believe them until they answer her question about imagining the other kissing someone else. Ayumu and Ao from the DLC also assume that she's the girlfriend Keita mentioned who broke up with him.
• Non-Uniform Uniform: She wears a yellow cardigan under her blazer, which she ties around her waist during summer.
• The Not-Love Interest: She and Amano are this so intensely that their real love interests worry about their closeness, even after it's proven that their friendship is platonic. So much so that Karen and Chiaki panic when they realize that Karen dumping Keita to give Chiaki a fighting chance is only going to drive him to Aguri even more.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Initially Aguri acts ditzy, but it turns out it's mostly for Uehara's benefit. To everyone else's surprise she's just as intelligent as the other characters and often puts them to the sword about their love for games and the nonsense they put up with in regard to the hobby. Uehara notes that she's begun to drop the act ever since she started hanging out with Amano.
• Odd Friendship: She's the only member of the main cast who isn't particularly interested in games or game culture, but her bond with the notoriously game-obsessed Keita is extremely tight, to the point that she's one of the few people Kōsei acknowledges as a worthy friend to him.
• Only One Name: Her surname goes unmentioned for the entirety of the anime and most of the novels. Pretty much everyone calls her Aguri, even people who never use anyone else's given name. Her surname is Sakurano which is revealed in volume 10.
• Platonic Declaration of Love:
  • In volume 8, she and Keita end their restaurant conversation (in which they discussed their Odd Friendship and Uehara's jealousy of it) by making a joke love declaration to each other. By Contrived Coincidence, Karen and Konoha decided to meet and discuss in person with each other for once and walk into the restaurant just in time to overhear this, but by this point they're all is so used to misunderstandings that they avert Poor Communication Kills and understand it's Not What It Looks Like.
  • It happens again in volume 12, this time with them deliberately playing it up to sound like an exchange of wedding vows, complete with With This Ring shenanigans. Once again, they are overheard by people who are suspicious of how romantic it sounds.
• Platonic Life-Partners: With Amano. Due to their support with each other's love lives, they've become pretty close. So close that Aguri is one of only two people who Kōsei considers to be Keita's true friends. As the series goes on, they become increasingly dismissive of traditional boundaries between friends until they take this trope to its literal meaning by vowing to be together forever regardless of how their romances turn out.
• Precision F-Strike: Enthusiastically concludes that "games are real shit".
• Protectorate: One of the major factors that make her and Amano The Not-Love Interest to each other is that he can be fiercely protective of Aguri when she's in trouble or she's disrespected. He hurries to her when she thinks Tasuku's cheated on her, defends her honor when the bullies who were picking on him try Slut-Shaming her to tick off Tasuku, and he even gives a Declaration of Protection when Main goes too far in trying to claim "ownership" over the rights to Aguri and her belongings.
• Puppy-Dog Eyes: She makes such an innocent, tearful expression more than once to Tasuku so he'd win her a plushie in the first episode because he's super good at games. It works.
• Romantic Wingman: Her and Keita being these to each other is the crux of their Odd Friendship, much to the ironic consternation of their real love interests.
• Rose-Haired Sweetie: Dyes her hair pink to make herself look cuter for Tasuku and as part of her Love Confession towards him. Flashbacks reveal her actual hair color to be black.
• Rubber Face: She has been known to pull on Keita's cheeks or ears when she's mad at him or blaming him for something going wrong.
• Sarcastic Confession: With The Reveal that her love for Keita grew into something potentially romantic, hindsight makes this out of the flirty teasing and numerous Platonic Declarations of Love they've exchanged on her end.
• Shipper on Deck: She gets pretty invested in Keita's love life and chances with his potential love interests.
  • She intends to help Amano pursue his crush on Tendo as a repayment of his kindness in helping her with Uehara, and continues to support them in part because they're both afraid that Uehara and Tendo might be having an affair with each other.
  • Like Tasuku, she's also quick to notice the chemistry between Keita and Chiaki and thinks they'd make a cute couple of nerds, especially after she sees it firsthand when Chiaki drops in on them discussing at the restaurant how to explain their Almost Kiss incident at Kizuna Dungeon.
  • By volume 8, she's thinking that Chiaki and Keita could save themselves and Karen a lot of trouble if they all just date each other, after she sees the three of them nerding out about games to bring to Uehara's Christmas party. By volume 9, she's flat out telling him to kiss both girls.
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man: She fell for Uehara after he gave her a plushie in middle school, and she sees him as the nicest guy she's met. To say nothing of her growing feelings for Keita, who always prioritizes her happiness and wellbeing.
• Smarter Than You Look: Although she initially invokes Brainless Beauty and makes herself come off as a ditzy gal, she's actually quite perceptive (Mistaken for Cheating misunderstandings notwithstanding) and far more intelligent than everyone gives her credit for. She's also one of the only people to figure out on sight that Ayumu Kiriya is an androgynous woman and not a man like Keita thinks.
• Spit Take: In volume 8, she tries but ultimately fails to hold back her hot chocolate after Keita drops several bombshells on her in quick succession, those bombshells being Chiaki's confession to him, his subsequent rejection of the confession, her later admission to Karen about having confessed, and the fact that she's MONO and Nobe. She and Keita then joke that her act of spiting in his face has made him Defiled Forever and was something he wanted.
• The Tease: In the novels, her playful teasing of Keita eventually starts to tread into blatantly flirtatious territory, usually to poke fun at how intertwined their romance troubles have gotten. While Konoha holds a genuine flame for Keita that she hides behind her amusement at his reactions, Aguri's flirting conveys feelings that are platonic, though Volume 11 implies that at least some of it might have been serious. Eventually, he starts to flirt back at her.
• Thanks for the Mammary: At the end of volume 5's first chapter, Keita gets payback on Aguri putting him on a wild goose chase again by playfully chasing her around the Game Club's room, during which she warns him that if he makes a wrong move he might touch her breast. Both express stunningly little concern about the social consequences about this happening, and the fact that they casually joke about this with each other serves to reignite their love interests' insecurities about the intimacy of Keita and Aguri's friendship, right after Aguri quelled those fears by pulling a Batman Gambit to prove that Keita views them all as his True Companions and not just her.
• Third-Person Person: In the Japanese version, she refers to herself in third-person.
• Tomboyish Baseball Cap: Her boyfriend's cap, which she wears backwards on her head.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Her and Amano are this, with more emphasis on the "best buds" part than his interactions with Chiaki. She'll yell at him when things go wrong and they've been known to snark at each other (sometimes flirtatiously), but they deeply care for one another and have an extremely close friendship.
• With This Ring: After yet another Platonic Declaration of Love, she tells Keita that his "proposal" to her should come with a ring. After taking a paper straw wrapper ring from him, she gives him a "180 carat" onion ring.

Konoha Hoshinomori

Konoha Hoshinomori

Voiced by: Yuuki Kuwahara (Japanese), Jad Saxton (English)

Chiaki's little sister and Student Council President of Hekiyou High School. Also an avid Eroge gamer.

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• Always Someone Better: She feels she never excels at anything despite her best efforts. Tendō, being The Ace, makes her feel particularly inadequate — especially so after someone carelessly pointed out that becoming Hekiyou's Student Council President, her greatest achievement to date, was only possible because Tendō decided to attend to a different high school. The third DLC indicates that even in a timeline where she's the one dating Keita, she feels second best compared to Chiaki in his heart.
• Anguished Declaration of Love: In Volume 10, she finally brings herself to admit her feelings to Keita on the day before Valentine's Day, in front of Chiaki, and abruptly leaves the two of them, saying that she can work up the courage to confess her love to Keita but not to face Chiaki after making it known that she's also a rival contending for his heart.
• Annoying Younger Sibling: Defied. She's an avid eroge gamer, something that most certainly would embarrass her older sister Chiaki, but Konoha is careful of not letting her know about it.
• Batman Gambit: It’s heavily implied that she was pulling one in Volume 10 with her Anguished Declaration of Love to Keita on Valentine’s Day, hoping to spur Chiaki into more direct action for Keita’s love by asserting herself as a potential rival. If so, it probably worked, since the cliffhanger of that volume is Chiaki stepping up to Keita and giving him a Forceful Kiss.
• Bishie Sparkle: When she's self-advertising her Nobe freeware game-maker handle.◊
• Chekhov's Gunman: She was mentioned offhandedly by Chiaki in episode 3 and episode 7 before making her appearance in episode 8.
• Chocolate of Romance: On Valentine's Day eve, she gives Keita some chocolate, while making clear to him in no uncertain terms that she's in love with him and is expressing feelings much more romantic than the friendship/obligation chocolate he got from Aguri earlier. Prior to giving it, she also teases him with an offer to lick chocolate off her and Chiaki's naked bodies at the Hoshinomori house and surprisingly tells him this right in front of Chiaki, as a prelude to the Anguished Declaration of Love.
• Closet Geek: In public she keeps up an upstanding image, but she loves gaming at home.
• Covert Pervert: She's practically giddy that the student council is filled with cute girls, and she also plays eroge. The only person she's an overt pervert to is Keita, because he already knows about her hobbies. Konoha is especially careful to remain proper around Chiaki so her love of eroge is never made known, even when she's otherwise dropping the covert part during the prelude to her Love Confession to Keita in front of Chiaki.
• Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male: She has no problems hitting Keita around when she gets annoyed at him.
• Double Standard Rape: Female on Male: Her private behavior with Keita in the novels also treads into sexual harassment territory.
• Establishing Character Moment: The first we see of Konoha is her doing great at her work as the Student Council President, and once the rest of the members leave for the day, she locks the door from the inside and proceeds to rub her face on one of their still-warm seats, Perverted Sniffing and all, while loudly declaring that a high school student council filled with nothing but cute girls is Heaven on Earth.
• Foil: To Ken Sugisaki, of all people. Both of them worked hard to become a member of Hekiyou's Student Council, but whereas Ken is a Chivalrous Pervert, resident Butt-Monkey and proud H-game aficionado (only all-ages versions, he says) who is actually a hiding a lot of hurt beyond the surface, Konoha is an equal-opportunity Covert Pervert, well-respected Student Council President, and Closet Eroge Gamer Chick who is actually a lot more insecure about herself than she pretends to be, but all in all a better adjusted person without Ken's baggage weighing her down. Being a bit too overjoyed that the rest of the Student Council are cute girls is a constant, though. It's also established that she's been seeking out a legendary eroge he hid somewhere on campus.
• For Want Of A Nail: The third DLC installment implies that she would have gotten into a relationship with Keita had he never found out the truth about Chiaki being the real MONO and Nobe.
• Girlish Pigtails: Wears her hair in this style, as fitting for a younger character.

• Green-Eyed Monster: Her introduction makes it very clear that she's spent her whole life envying Karen's accomplishments and reputation, even long before she develops a crush on the guy who just so happens to be Karen's boyfriend Keita. To a lesser extent, she'll also admit to herself that there are some things about Chiaki she's jealous of such as the mutual romantic affection between Chiaki and the aforementioned Keita, but Chiaki's Heroic Self-Deprecation is too strong for her to realize this, and she loves Chiaki so much that this jealousy turns into admiration instead of the bitter envy she has for Karen.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: There are signs that she sometimes wants to act on her Matchmaker Crush on Keita and pursue a relationship with him for herself, especially after Chiaki confesses to Keita and triggers a chain of events leading to Karen breaking up with him, but she always puts these feelings aside and commits to supporting her sister's love life. It reaches its peak in volume 8, when she almost cries over realizing that she still wants to be Keita's favorite girl but decides that she's most happy when Chiaki's happy.
• Lovable Sex Maniac: She's a huge fan of eroges, and the less we say about how ecstatic she's of being surrounded by nothing but cute girls in Hekiyou's Student Council, the better.
• Master of None: How she feels about herself. While she has good grades and does well in sports there's always someone better than her in that particular field, and that someone better is usually Karen.
• Matchmaker Crush: Although she supports Chiaki in pursuing Keita's affections, Konoha comes to fall for Keita herself. She nonetheless continues to assist Chiaki even after she starts hitting on him, though she sometimes has to resist the temptation to make a serious effort.
• Moment Killer:
  • She tries to be one for Keita and Karen during their double date with Aguri and Tasuku, because Konoha wants Chiaki (and/or herself) to make a move on him in the aftermath of the Relationship Sabotage.
  • In the novels, just when Keita is about to improve his opinion of her after finding out that her questions to him earlier were an attempt to scope out a birthday present for Chiaki, Konoha then shoots that goodwill in the foot by sending him an E-mail with sexual innuendo.
  • The third DLC volume has her barging in and ruining the mood when Keita and Chiaki are about to kiss in the what-if? route where they're dating. She also brings her usual mood-killing dirty talk to ruin the romantic atmosphere in the route where Konoha herself is dating him.
• My Friends... and Zoidberg: Konoha is singled out amongst those in Keita's circle of friends as the only one Kōsei doesn't acknowledge even as a fake friend (Aguri and Chiaki being his true friends and Tasuku and Karen respectively being friend- and girlfriend-shaped trash, according to him).
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Konoha is usually careful to remain a Covert Pervert and not let anyone know how dirty her thoughts can get, especially when Chiaki is in earshot, so she only makes dirty jokes when she and Keita are alone together. In Volume 10, Keita notices that it's unusual of Konoha to openly make sexual passes at him while Chiaki is with them, which leads up to Konoha's Anguished Declaration of Love for him.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Her disguise when buying eroge? A coat, a hat, glasses and a really bad fake beard. It only works because other customers are too weirded out by it to approach her.
• Pet the Dog: Despite having previously attempted Relationship Sabotage on Karen and Keita for the sake of setting him up with Chiaki, when Konoha finally gets her chance to engineer their breakup, she backs down and affirms to Karen that Keita loves her, no matter what might have happened between him and Chiaki.
• Relationship Sabotage: Tries to do this to Keita and Karen, in the hopes that he'll end up dating her sister Chiaki instead.
  • Her first attempt is bringing Chiaki along with her to crash the double date they were going on with Aguri and Tasuku, which Karen and Tasuku had planned together to affirm their relationships. In the anime, she pulls Keita and Chiaki out of the Kizuna Dungeon before he can go in with Karen and gets them a heart-to-heart with each other but ultimately fails to significantly weaken his relationship with Karen. In the light novel, she runs interference for their attempt to take advantage of the electronic headphone buddy system and this indirectly results in Keita and Aguri accidentally having an Almost Kiss with each other in front of everyone.
  • In volume 7, she finds the perfect opportunity to destroy their relationship and eliminate Karen as Chiaki's competition, or potentially even steal Keita for herself and leave them both in the dust. Then it's subverted when her better nature wins out and she decides to be (relatively) honest with Karen about what Keita feels.
• Romantic Wingman: She's Chiaki's most fervent supporter in regards to the love triangle with Keita and Karen, despite her own Matchmaker Crush on him. Ironically, she's also got friction with other people who support Chiaki's feelings, namely Tasuku and Kōsei.
• School Idol: She presumably has to be this for Hekiyō High School, given that they determine the student council's membership via popularity contest and she became president.
• Shipper on Deck: For her sister and Amano.
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man: She starts to fall for Amano when his statement about helping those that struggle in the dark hits a chord with her. By volume 8, she's fully aware that she's head-over-heels in love with him after he demonstrates how pure his feelings are by feeling immense guilt over being in love with both Karen and Chiaki and wanting to cut off ties with them so they can move on to someone better.
• Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: She and Kōsei hate each other, in a manner far more genuinely hostile than their older siblings' Vitriolic Best Buds friendship with each other.
• Slut-Shaming: She's on the giving and receiving end of this. Due to the misunderstanding about Tasuku's supposed confession to Chiaki, Konoha refers to him as "a porn star who sold out his body" and generally derides him as a promiscuous man. As for receiving, Kōsei consistently refers to her as a slut and a bitch when telling her to stay away from Keita.
• Spanner in the Works: She ends up doing this to Tasuku and Karen's attempt at a Double Date with Aguri and Keita, after overhearing that they planned to go to a theme park during the next weekend. She coincidentally happens to have two tickets to the same park, and pressures Chiaki into going by claiming she'll invite Keita instead if she refuses to go. She also runs interference for their attempt to exploit the buddy system at Kizuna Dungeon, which in the novel version indirectly contributes to Keita and Aguri pairing up and having an Almost Kiss at the cliffhanger.
• Student Council President: She's the president of a certain student council's 37th incarnation.
• The Tease: To Keita, who she likes to get reactions out of by flirting with him or expressing her interest in eroge to him.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: By volume 9, her efforts to support Chiaki getting together with Keita have led to her unwittingly cooperating with her Sitcom Arch-Nemesis Kōsei, who shares her Shipper on Deck motives.
• Thinks Like a Romance Novel: Or rather, thinks like an eroge. Konoha's first-person narration in the novels often has her describing the current state of the plot by comparing it to the paths in an eroge.
• A Threesome Is Hot: She's suggested on occasion that this could be a solution to her and Chiaki's Sibling Triangle with Keita, such as before she makes her Anguished Declaration of Love to him and in the what-if route where Konoha is the one dating Keita.
• Too Much Information: In the novels, most of her one-on-one conversations with Keita involve her making innuendos at him and talking about the NSFW parts of the eroge she plays and makes, much to his discomfort.
• Tsurime Eyes: As opposed to Chiaki's Tareme Eyes.
• Unknown Rival: To Karen Tendō, whose shadow she's always been in since middle school.
• What You Are in the Dark: Volume 7 presents her with a situation where she realizes she has the perfect opportunity to completely crush her long-envied Unknown Rival Karen and destroy her relationship with Keita, leaving him available for Chiaki or even alone for Konoha to have all to herself. While she's sorely tempted to make her move, the good in her heart ultimately wins out and she instead chooses to assauge Karen's Mistaken for Cheating fears regarding Chiaki's Anguished Declaration of Love to Keita. The only other person around to witness this is her even more hated Sitcom Arch-Nemesis Kōsei, who actually seems to develop a tiny bit of respect for her as a result.

Niina Oiso

Niina Oiso

Voiced by: Yuna Yoshino (Japanese), Dawn M. Bennett (English)

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• The Comically Serious: She stoically tosses celebratory confetti à la Dick Gumshoe at the end of the Game Club's Ace Attorney-style mock trial when Eiichi proves Keita didn't cheat on Karen with Aguri.
• Cryptic Background Reference: Karen explains that the reason Niina plays fighting games is to train so she can get her friend back from the dark side. No further elaboration is given for what "the dark side" is or how fighting games relate to it.
• Decoy Protagonist: The first episode sets her up as a major character, only to be Demoted to Extra after Keita rejects the gaming club.
• Demoted to Extra: The novels give her a bit more presence, including her own dynamic with Uehara, but the two never meet in the anime and her scenes with him are omitted as a result.
• Hero of Another Story: Karen mentions that she plays fighting games to help pull her friend out of the dark side, whatever that means. Perhaps in another series, she would've had some focus.
• Online Alias: It's revealed in the DLC that her username in online fighting games is SALT0519, which Karen borrows to arrange a meeting with Torabasami aka Ayumu Kiriya.
• The Quiet One: She rarely speaks, and when she does it's a few words at most.
• Sdrawkcab Alias: A variant. Keita catches onto the fact that the main part of Ayumu's rival's username is salt, the Japanese word for which sounds similar to Niina's surname backwards.
• Serious Business: Fighting Games. Like Kase, she's parlayed her skill into enough tournament wins to help buy the gear in the game club.
• Unknown Rival: Ayumu considers her continued losses against Niina to be a rivalry between them, but Niina herself is chill and friendly about it.
• The Worf Effect: Despite being the fighting game expert of the club, she's the first one to be eliminated by Main in the four player free-for-all for the rights to own Keita.

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Gakuto Kase

Gakuto Kase

Voiced by: Yasuaki Takumi (Japanese), Alejandro Saab (English)

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• Decoy Protagonist: The first episode sets him up as a major character, only to be Demoted to Extra after Keita rejects the gaming club.
• Hero of Another Story: He got his FPS skills from his mercenary father. He would've made for a good sidekick in another series.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: In the example mentioned below on Eiichi's profile, Mii recounts that Gakuto's involvement in the adventure had him use a long rifle to kill all the enemies and save Eiichi.
• Serious Business: First Person Shooters. He's serious enough to win tournaments, from which he uses the winnings to buy the club's equipment.

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Eiichi Misumi

Eiichi Misumi

Voiced by: Natsuki Hanae (Japanese), Howard Wang (English)

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• Adaptational Skimpiness: In his focus chapter in the light novels, he describes his initial clothing upon awakening in front of an arcade machine as a military uniform with a handgun in the jacket and an armband with E.G.G. written over a griffon silhouette on it. The anime adaptation has him buck naked when he wakes up instead.
• All for Nothing: He passive-aggressively complains to Amano about his efforts being rendered all for naught when running into him on a date with Chiaki, as up to that point Misumi had been supporting Keita's relationship with Karen, to the point of acting as his "defense lawyer" during the matter of his Accidental Kiss incident with Aguri.
• Amnesiac Hero: He lost most of his memories of his life.
• Archnemesis Dad: One of the short stories involves him going on a quest to rescue his stepsister from a kidnapper wearing a clown mask. After a harrowing battle, a Dramatic Unmask reveals his stepfather to be the kidnapper, who did all this as an elaborate way to fulfill a promise that he would play a game with Eiichi before succumbing to the Soap Opera Disease he was Secretly Dying from.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Although he quickly takes it back and remains friendly, he's surprisingly passive-aggressive when he initially runs into Keita and Chiaki on their date, expressing frustration that Keita's on a date with Karen's cute rival shortly after their breakup rendered his Shipper on Deck support of Karen All for Nothing.
• Chick Magnet: His stepsister is head-over-heels in love with him, Konoha considers him the kind of Pretty Boy who is like catnip for the soul of girls like her, and the glimpses we get into his various Hero of Another Story escapades indicate he has several other potential love interests, such as the girl who said she was from the future and gave him a goodbye kiss after interrupting the search for Mii’s "mother" by threatening to kill his friends if he didn’t help her on her off-page adventure.
• Converted Fanboy: At first, his reason for accepting the invitation to the Game Club is because he believes his skill at puzzle games might be a clue about his Mysterious Past, and he's otherwise a complete newcomer to video gaming as a hobby. Spending time with the club and Amano leads to him getting more into games in general, to the point where he takes Amano's suggestions on what dating sims to buy and deliberately emulates the Ace Attorney games when acting as Amano's "defense lawyer" for the trial about Keita and Aguri's accidental Almost Kiss at Kizuna Dungeon.
• A Day in the Limelight: The anime dedicates the first two minutes of episode 12 to his life behind the scenes (adapting chapter 4 of volume 2), which turns to be a tongue-in-cheek Cliché Storm crammed to the brim with overused lightnovel and Shōnen tropes such as a Naked on Arrival Amnesiac Hero with Gratuitous Ninja skills, his Tsundere adopted Little Sister Heroine who dresses like an Elegant Gothic Lolita, a Nebulous Evil Organisation connected to his Dark and Troubled Past and a televised Tournament Arc of Serious Business gaming where the semifinals consist in an overly dramatic match of knucklebones.
• Decoy Protagonist: The first episode sets him up as a major character, only to be Demoted to Extra after Keita rejects the gaming club. He's still a fairly recurring extra compared to the other half of the club, particularly in the light novels, but nowhere near the protagonist-level prominent he would have been.
• Demoted to Extra: The anime plays up the "another story" part of his Hero of Another Story status by making him a minor recurring character outside giving him A Day in the Limelight, but he's fairly prominent in the novels and has more scenes for his individual friendship with Keita outside of being a Shipper on Deck for him and Karen.
• Even the Guys Want Him: Keita's first person narration has indicated that if Eiichi were a dating sim protagonist, Keita himself would probably be the Gay Option in Eiichi's harem.
• Godlike Gamer: The novels emphasize this as one of his "protagonist" qualities, with the implication that it's the result of the experimentation he was subjected to by the sinister conspiracy that erased his memories.
• The Heart: Seems to be this of the gaming club. It's downplayed, but he's far more personable than the other members, and even has Tendō beat when it comes to interpersonal communication skills. Aside from that, he is the only one who engages in "girl talk" with Karen.
• Hero of Another Story: More so than any other members of the Game Club. He remembers nothing of his life, except that he's really good at block puzzles. The sinister E.G.G. organization that tried to kidnap his wealthy future stepsister is the same one that experimented on him and gave him amnesia. It's likely that he would've been a protagonist in another series. The first part of episode 12 lays this on thick, showing that he's caught up in his own high-stakes, conspiracy-filled adventure. In the novels, the other characters refer to him as a protagonist to lampshade how a traditional story would center around him instead of Keita.
• Informed Attractiveness: When Konoha sees Eiichi and Keita for the first time, she expresses that Eiichi is a Pretty Boy whose good looks are like catnip for her soul, while Keita looks like a bland Featureless Protagonist from a dating sim in comparison. This is despite the fact that the designs for both the light novel illustrations and the anime give Keita and Eiichi nearly identical facial features, similar hairstyles, and average physical builds, with the biggest visible differences being their hair colors and Eiichi being only slightly taller. Ironically, Keita is the one she falls in love with on an emotional level, while Eiichi gets her lustful attention for less than five minutes before she practically forgets he exists.
• Instant Expert: It's only briefly mentioned in the first episode of the anime due to Adaptation Distillation, but the novel version of Eiichi's Day in the Limelight explains that he picks up on other games very quickly and can perfectly mimic another person's playstyle if he tries, to the point where it's treated as an outright Power Copying technique.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: It's implied that whatever mysterious organization experimented on him also erased his memories of his prior life.
• Mistaken for Gay: When Eiichi meets Tasuku, the latter references how his own friendship with Keita has been misinterpreted by gossipers as romantic, and then mentions that Eiichi spends enough time in Keita's company to be subject to similar rumors. Funnily enough, they briefly get competitive with each other about who is more mistaken for gay with Keita.
• Mr. Fanservice: Episode 12 starts with him naked for some reason.
• Nice Guy: He's nothing but kind in all his scenes.
• Oblivious to Love: He seems completely oblivious to his stepsister's romantic feelings for him in the anime, though the novels have others tease him about it even if he doesn't believe them and thinks there is some other reason she gets upset at him talking to other girls. The twelvth volume shows him and Riki seemingly about to kiss on a date, but The Reveal indicates that this may have been part of an elaborate ruse to prevent Keita & Karen's solo date, Aguri & Tasuku's solo date, and Konoha & Chiaki's sisterly outing from running into each other since they all independently chose Viva Spiel Kingdom to avoid each other.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: When he's helping out in the search for Mii's "mother" he's abruptly approached by a mysterious girl who threatens to kill his friends if he doesn't help her. The specifics of the incident are not shown to the reader, but it reportedly involved 8 near-death crises within a span of fifteen minutes, and ended with the girl giving him a kiss before supposedly returning to the future.
• Platonic Life-Partners: He hangs out with Tendo a lot and ships her and Amano. After her obsession with Keita frustrates the other Game Club members and distracts her from her friends outside the club, Misumi becomes one of the only people Karen can talk about her love life with.
• Pretty Boy: Konoha definitely thinks he’s easy on the eyes, especially compared to Keita.
• Rescue Romance: He won the affection of his future step-sister by saving her from a kidnapping.
• Secretly Wealthy: Turns out he's rich due to being adopted by a rich family that owns a pharmaceutical company for saving their only daughter.
• Shipper on Deck: As Tendo's friend in the Game Club, he supports her attempts to connect with Amano, and sometimes gives her advice on how to approach relationships. He even advocates on behalf of Keita's innocence when another misunderstanding threatens that relationship. As such, he's understandably frustrated when Karen's breakup with Keita renders it All for Nothing and Keita goes on a date with Chiaki.
• Stock Light-Novel Hero: His entire backstory is a parody of one.
• Theme Naming: The Final Boss he faces off against in the Total Video Game Tournament in his focus chapter is named Machina, and she turns out to have ties to the same shady organization that erased his memories. She recognizes him and addresses him as Ex, though there’s yet to be an appearance by any Deus from the organization to complete the trio.

Kōsei Amano (unmarked spoilers)

Kōsei Amano

Keita's taller, smarter, more handsome younger brother who plays video games with him.

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• Adapted Out: He is completely absent in the anime adaptation.
• Big Brother Instinct: Though he's the little brother in terms of age, he has this for Keita, being quite invested in Keita spending time with worthwhile people who value him, of which only Chiaki and Aguri meet his standards.
• Big Brother Worship: Keita doesn't realize it, but Kōsei adores him, bordering on Big Brother Attraction, to the point that his main reason for preferring Chiaki over Karen is because Keita and the former are Birds of a Feather, and Kōsei hopes their children will be Generation Xerox.
• Big Little Brother: He's the younger of the two, but taller than Keita.
• Big "YES!": What he lets out when he learns that Chiaki's on a date with Keita. He then leaves to give them some privacy and decides to take the opportunity to pester Konoha, who is ironically the one directly responsible for what he's celebrating.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: He acts nice around his brother's friends, but when Keita isn't within earshot he's as unpleasant as possible in disparaging those he considers unworthy to be with Keita.
• "Blackmail" Is Such an Ugly Word: It's not "eavesdropping" when he uses an app on Keita's phone to overhear his conversation with Chiaki while Kōsei, Konoha, and Karen are following them as Date Peepers.
• Hypocrisy Nod: What he admires most about his brother is that Keita is a straightforward person who knows how to Be Yourself, and as such he hates those among Keita's friends that he considers to be dishonest trash who hide aspects of their personality behind some kind of façade (e.g. Tasuku's Closet Geek, Karen's mask of perfection, and Konoha's Covert Pervert). Kōsei is a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing, and acknowledges himself as one of the two-faced deceivers who have hurt Keita in the past.
• Insult of Endearment: After Konoha decides against preying on Karen's insecurities over Chiaki's love confession to Keita, Kōsei calls her Hentainomori-senpai. While she's annoyed at being nicknamed for her Covert Pervert status, she does notice that the -senpai honorific attached indicates a sort of newfound respect for her that he didn't have before.
• Ludicrous Precision: He can predict Keita's thoughts and actions down to very minute details, even when they aren't around each other. For example, he gives specific numbers for Keita's body temperature, the angle at which he'll bend down, and likelihood of needing to use the bathroom, all while he and Konoha are in the game shop without Keita.
• My Friends... and Zoidberg: Or rather, "My Brother's Friends and Konoha." He bares much of his hostility at her when saying she isn't even worthy of pretending to be Keita's friend, while Tasuku and Karen at least have value as false friends.
• Prized Possession Giveaway: According to him, Keita doing this for him is what sparked his Big Brother Worship. Kōsei once misplaced a large collection of money his friends had entrusted to him, and Keita decided to raise money to pay them back by selling a large portion of his video game collection (and pointedly only holding onto the games that he knew Kōsei himself would not want to throw away), all so Kōsei wouldn't be ostracized by his peers.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: In volume 6, he gives a massive one to Karen, Tasuku, and especially Konoha, calling them each garbage in the shape of a friend for being two-faced and not as attentive to Keita's needs as Chiaki and Aguri are.
• Shipper on Deck: For Keita × Chiaki, as he considers Chiaki to be a more suitable match for his brother.
• Shipping Torpedo: In his eyes, a relationship between Keita and Chiaki is preferable to his relationship with Karen, as Kōsei thinks of Karen as a fake girlfriend who's not worthy of Keita's love. And when she asks what Keita's type is, Kōsei is quick to decry Konoha as a slutty bitch who should stay as far away from Keita as possible.
• Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: He and Konoha hate each other, in a manner far more genuinely hostile than their older siblings' Vitriolic Best Buds friendship with each other.
• Slut-Shaming: "Slut" and "bitch" are his preferred insults when addressing Konoha.
• Stealth Insult: Between the very blatant insults he hurls at Tasuku and Karen, he slips in a more subtle one when describing them as "soul fertilizer" because thinking they're his friend and girlfriend is comforting to Keita even if Kōsei believes them to be False Friends.
• Sugary Malice: All the harsh words he throws at Konoha, Tasuku, and Karen in his "The Reason You Suck" Speech to them are given in a cheerful tone with a pleasant smile on his face.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: There is no love lost between him and Konoha, but they share a common goal of matchmaking their older siblings together and are more-or-less on the same page in their actions to make it happen.
• This Is for Emphasis, Bitch!: During his "The Reason You Suck" Speech, he consistently refers to Konoha as a bitch and a slut, and the only one who shouldn't even pretend to be Keita's friend.
• Walking Spoiler: Keita having a brother isn't a spoiler in itself since it's a facet of his life that the narrative establishes early on. Said brother turning out to be a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing and voicing his strong opinions about Keita's friends, on the other hand…
• Wham Line: When asked what types of girls Keita is into, Kōsei's unexpectedly biting answer that kicks off his "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Konoha, Tasuku, and Karen is…
  Kōsei: At least, bitches like you will never be his type. Know your place, slut.

Ayumu Kiriya (unmarked spoilers)

A university student and video game livestreamer introduced in the first DLC volume of the light novels. Keita gets invited to Ayumu's apartment to play video games, not knowing that Ayumu is secretly recording his first time reactions for content.

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• Always Someone Better: Ayumu considers SALT0519 to be her rival in fighting games, because the win/loss ratio between them heavily leans in the latter's favor. Keita points out that they can't really be considered rivals if the gap between them is so large. Additionally, when she tries to meet and play against SALT0519 in person, not only does her opponent beat her, it turns out to have been Karen assuming the actual SALT0519's identity.
• Ambiguous Gender: In-universe, she's invoking the ambiguous part by the end of the first DLC to keep Keita from making anything out of the growing evidence he finds that she's a woman. Ayumu compares it to the Schrödinger's Cat quantum superposition, whereby as far as Keita's concerned, Ayumu could be both male and female, but won't know for certain as long as there's any ambiguity.
• Becoming the Mask: At first, Ayumu only pretends to be friendly to Keita so she can keep him from finding out that she's using him to make content for her channel. By the fifth visit, she's come to legitimately enjoy her time playing games with him and cares about him enough to worry about potentially jeopardizing his relationship with his girlfriend if he were to learn her real gender.
• Bifauxnen: She looks like a pretty boy without effort and has a naturally deep voice, though she starts making an active attempt to mask her gender after Keita's first visit.
• Boyfriend Bluff: After Keita sees her sports bra on the floor of her bedroom, she lies and claims it's a kneepad. When he isn't fooled by that, she instead claims it belongs to Ao, which naturally leads to him assuming that Ao and Ayumu are dating. She ends up roping Ao into playing along when they run into her.
• The Cameo: She and Ao are briefly mentioned to be present in the background in Volume 12 when the other main characters return to Viva Spiel Kingdom.
• First-Episode Twist: The fact that Ayumu is an androgynous woman is not made clear to the reader until the end of her introductory chapter, and it is a major defining factor in the remainder of the DLC.
• First-Name Basis: It's mentioned in her internal narration that she naturally addresses her best friends by their given name, and by his fifth visit Keita is one of them. It actually upsets her to an extent that Keita only ever addresses her by surname.
• Hero of Another Story: She's the main focus character of the DLC volumes, and her story is affected by the events of the main plot.
• Indirect Kiss: She and Ao are no strangers to sipping from the same drink, though Ayumu doesn't seem to grasp the concept of an indirect kiss. She nearly sips from the same coffee can Keita did, but Ao puts a stop to it.
• Liar Revealed: Keita's suspicions about Ayumu's true gender steadily build up over the course of the first DLC volume, culminating in him directly asking if she's a girl in the final chapter. She's too startled to give a definitive answer and they quickly Change the Uncomfortable Subject, but the truth is still within reach.
• Loners Are Freaks: Keita insists that Ayumu is a loner like him, a notion that she takes offense to.
• Luminescent Blush: Ao notices a faint blush on Ayumu's face when Keita reaches his hand toward her head to pick off some dust.
• Oblivious to Love: Ayumu doesn't notice that her neighbor and fellow university classmate Ao Saika is obviously crushing on her, which Ao lampshades. Whether or not Ayumu realizes that her own growing feelings for Keita may not be strictly platonic is uncertain.
• Oh, Crap!: Whenever Keita comes close to discovering her gender, such as when he notices the sports bra lying on her bedroom floor. She and Ao share another one when they realize that Ayumu's gender is obvious to Aguri, who has an unusual but close relationship with him. It starts to become a regular occurrence for her to have this reaction whenever she learns that she's crossed paths with someone in the Love Dodecahedron surrounding Keita.
• One Dialogue, Two Conversations: When she first meets Uehara, he mentions that he learned about her from Aguri, only for Ayumu to say that Aguri's better off leaving her old relationship behind. The missing context here is that Ayumu is under the assumption that Keita was a bastard boyfriend to Aguri and recently broke up with her. Meanwhile, Tasuku thinks he's just been insulted to his face, and has no idea that Ayumu actually thinks positively of him.
• Online Alias: Torabasami^note Tigertrap or Tigerclip is the name she goes by when streaming. While talking to Keita on camera, she insists he call her Tora so he won't pry into her videos.
• Replacement Goldfish: She ends up deliberately seeking out someone with the same personality quirks as Keita to be her new livestreaming partner, and lands on Chiaki Hoshinomori, who turns out to be so similar to Keita that Ayumu thinks the déjà vu it causes is supernatural in nature.
• Samus Is a Girl: The majority of the DLC follows her perspective, but it's not until the end of chapter two that the narrative directly confirms that the handsome, deep voiced gamer who's Oblivious to Love to a female neighbor/classmate is also a woman herself. After Ao tells her what the situation looks like, she starts making a conscious effort to hide her gender from Keita.
• Spit Take: She spits out her coffee after Keita casually mentions that he has a girlfriend, which comes as a complete surprise to her after Keita made a point of identifying himself (and Ayumu) as a loner.
• Sweet on Polly Oliver: Inverted, in that Ayumu is the one who shows signs of developing feelings for Keita while playing up her own Bifauxnen presentation.
• Sweet Polly Oliver: After Keita's first visit to Ayumu's apartment, Ao points out that an older woman inviting a younger boy into her apartment alone might look salacious from an outside perspective. Following this, Ayumu starts actively hiding her gender from Keita out of concern that he'll stop coming over. At first, she mainly does this so she can keep making videos with him, but her priority soon changes to wanting to keep spending time with him while avoiding adding complications to his love life.
• Theme Naming: The aliases she comes up with for herself and her streaming partners all evoke trap imagery.
• Two First Names: Ayumu and Kiriya are both usable as given names.
• Unknown Rival: Ayumu holds a grudge against SALT0519 (actually Niina Ōiso) because she pretty much always beats her no matter how hard she tries, though Niina considers Torabasami a good friend who she enjoys sharpening her skills against.

Main Fushiguro (unmarked spoilers)

The Fushiguro sisters^note Mii (left) & Main (right)

Main Fushiguro^{Click here to see her on the cover of Volume 10} 

An abrasive Otobuki alumnus introduced in Volume 9 who runs into the main characters on several occasions. First introduced when her little sister Mii gets lost and needs Keita, Tasuku, Eiichi, Kōsei, and Gakuto to find her "mother," then alluded to as a member of the defunct Game Club that Karen revived. She turns out to be a cousin of Aguri's.

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• Absurdly High-Stakes Game: She enjoys challenging people to competitions where they bet ownership of their rights to her, which usually translates to the loser becoming her subservient toady.
• Always Someone Better: In volume 9, Karen spends all of chapter 4 trying in vain to beat Main's high score on an old game, and it takes the combined efforts of the whole Gamers' Meet-up group to reach her level. Then they find out that MAI is also the highest scoring player on the mobile version of the game, at which point they give up. In volume 11, Main takes on Niina in the latter's specialty of fighting games and beats her.
• And Now You Must Marry Me: Implied and downplayed. Karen challenges Main to a fighting game contest to win back Keita's rights, with a three-on-one advantage against Main. As a tradeoff for the handicap, Main's prize if she wins is that she gets to choose who Keita must date. She implicitly names herself as a likely candidate by peppering in casual declarations of love when she informs him of this.
• Appropriated Appellation: Main quickly takes to Keita's referring to her as a demon king.
• Arc Villain: She takes over as the primary source of conflict in the Love Dodecahedron from volumes 9 to 11, and is the only participant in the romance drama who deliberately makes it more complicated.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: Besides being an Instant Expert at games, she's able to correctly deduce several details about the Love Dodecahedron simply by observing the behaviors of those involved. She instantly figures out that Keita and Aguri's Boyfriend Bluff was a façade, while also accurately predicting that their real relationship is close enough to make Aguri's actual (ex-)boyfriend jealous and uncomfortable. She even manages to figure out that Chiaki used to have a crush on Tasuku, long after said crush had faded.
• Card-Carrying Villain: She openly embraces Keita's description of her as a demon king and proudly accepts the title.
• The Confidant: In Volume 11, Keita admits to her alone that he has thought about dating Aguri before (even if he's already decided beforehand that he would never act on those feelings), and entrusts her to not speak a word of it to Karen, Chiaki, Tasuku, or anyone else.
• Control Freak: Main's fixation on owning the rights to things and people is an expression of this, and it's especially apparent with how controlling she is over Mii.
• Cuteness Proximity: Aguri tells Keita that Main secretly has a fondness for cute things and decorates her room with such. According to her, she dresses up Mii as a way of expressing this without letting others know, and it's probably the reason why she tried to take Aguri's Loverbear keychain.
• The Dreaded: To Aguri, and soon to everyone else in the main cast.
• Even Bad Women Love Their Mamas: Main thinks the world of her mother and describes her lovingly when telling her backstory to Keita.
• Foil: In several ways, Main and her relationship with Keita is a dark reflection of Aguri's.
  • They both enjoy teasing him in similar ways and referring to him as their servant, and he often responds by playing along with the servant routine. However, Aguri's teasing of him is part of their Vitriolic Best Buds dynamic and they'll both laugh it off like an inside joke, while Main is much more domineering and it's only her forceful personality that prompts Keita to play servant, until she tells him that she loves his stubborn side.
  • Aguri is Platonic Life-Partners with Keita and they share a strong bond of mutual trust, whereas Main's feelings for Keita are (claimed to be) more romantic in nature and any love between them is definitely one-sided. Aguri's feelings for him are (mostly) platonic, but that doesn't stop her from being The Tease and flirting with him, because they both know her flirting isn't serious. With Main, however, Keita can't tell if her flirting with him is serious or not because she's a known troll.
  • In regards to other aspects of Keita's love life, Aguri is his Romantic Wingman and she's an eager Shipper on Deck for her friend getting together with Karen and/or Chiaki, but she's also entertained at seeing him juggle his relationships, and unwittingly becomes subject to the other girls’ jealousy. Main on the other hand basically forces herself into the Love Dodecahedron and deliberately tries to screw with his other potential love interests for her own amusement.
  • Also, they both dye their hair.
• Freudian Excuse: Her insistence on "owning" people is due to her philosophy of "take what you want by force", which she got when she saw her mother selflessly sacrifice her happiness in the best interests of her husband and her daughters.
• Freudian Slip: After telling Keita the story of her parents' divorce and how it shaped her, Main tells him that his Let's Get Dangerous! moment to defend Aguri struck a chord in her as a demonstration of the strong conviction she wishes her mother could have had back then. Then she realizes how vulnerable she's let herself be to him and tries to Verbal Backspace and say that those were Mii's feelings.
• From the Mouths of Babes: Main's raising of Mii has expanded the latter's vocabulary to some rather unusual places, leading to awkward situations like Mii asking if Aguri and Keita are Friends with Benefits.
• Godlike Gamer: Like Misumi, she's an Instant Expert at every video game she plays and can quickly close the gap between herself and a seasoned veteran.
• I Am Not My Father: While she clearly loves her mother and considers her the most gentle and beautiful person in the world, Main also fully acknowledges that these qualities made her mom an Extreme Doormat, and developed her own selfish personality opposite to her mom's to avoid that fate.
• I Love You Because I Can't Control You: She admits to Keita that he's her favorite of all the underlings she's taken ownership of and that she loves him because of the Honor Before Reason and courage he displayed when he challenged her to stand up for Aguri, strength she wished her mother could have shown. She vastly prefers his defiant side to the obedient servant routine he plays when accompanying her shopping.
• Instant Expert: She's an extremely fast learner when it comes to video games she isn't already familiar with. Although Keita has an upper hand on her at first due to having three years of practice with the mecha fighting game he challenged her to, she only needs two rounds to close the gap between them and eventually beat him.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: She's condescending to just about everyone she interacts with, from complete strangers to extended family. The only person she's remotely kind to is Mii, and even that is twisted by her obsession with owning people. Keita later gets a firsthand taste of how difficult she can be even to those she has affection for. That said, she has her moments of kindness and vulnerability, like when she gets Keita to confide in her about his forbidden thoughts about dating Aguri, and when she participates in a group effort to keep the main cast from having awkward encounters and misunderstandings.
• Kick the Dog: She pushes Keita's Berserk Button by attempting her "own your rights" schtick on Aguri's Loverbear that he and Aguri worked together to buy for Tasuku and Karen.
• Morality Pet: Mii is the most obvious example, as her affection and understanding of Mii are strong enough that she admits her analytical mind often falters in response, which she claims is why she tends to lose track of Mii despite being so observant most of the time. She also tells Keita of another cousin of hers that evokes a similar attachment in her, heavily implied to be Kurimu Sakurano from Student Council's Discretion.
• Parental Substitute: For Mii, to the point that Mii flat out addresses Main as her mom.
• Punny Name: Main's given name sounds like the English word "mine," as in what someone says when claiming things for themselves. This is appropriate given her penchant for taking ownership of others and their property.
• Smug Super: On a mundane level, her gaming skills are prodigious enough that she can easily win whatever challenge she's issued to someone to make demands of them.
• Sympathetic Adulterer: In-universe, she considers her mother to be one, and has sympathy only for her when the affair caused a divorce.
• Troll: She immediately figures out that Tasuku is Aguri's real love interest and trolls everyone by making Keita and Aguri continue their Boyfriend Bluff and forcing them to act like Sickeningly Sweethearts in front of Tasuku. Later, she deliberately pushes Chiaki's Clingy Jealous Girl buttons by being affectionate to Keita in front of Chiaki.
• Uncanny Family Resemblance: Tasuku notes at the end of her introductory chapter that she looks similar to Aguri. Later on, it's revealed that they're cousins.
• White Hair, Black Heart: Main dyes her hair platinum silver, and she’s easily the most antagonistic character in the story.
• Yaoi Fangirl: If she wins Karen's challenge to get back Keita's rights, Main's prize is that she not only keeps ownership of him, she's entitled to decide who he dates. Implied And Now You Must Marry Me aside, she briefly floats the idea of making him date Tasuku.

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