Literature / Gamers! (2015)

Keita Amano is a friendless second-year Ordinary High-School Student who has nothing but his games. One day, Karen Tendou, the prettiest girl in his school, invites Keita to join the video gaming club that she is the president of. To her dismay, Amano turns down her offer, as he isn't into the ultra-competitive gaming scene her club caters to. And thus begins a string of gaming and romance shenanigans involving Amano and his schoolmates...

Gamers! is a Japanese light novel series written by Sekina Aoi (author of Student Council's Discretion), with illustrations by Saboten and published under the Fujimi Fantasia Bunko imprint. It began publication on March 20, 2015 and had its twelfth and final main series volume published on October 19, 2019. It has also spawned a yonkoma manga adaptation illustrated by Tsubasa Takahashi, which was serialized in Shonen Ace magazine from 2016 to 2019.

A 12-episode Animated Adaptation by Pine Jam premiered on July 13, 2017. It is available for legal streaming with subtitles on Crunchyroll here, and with an English Dub on Funimation here. The Simuldub premiered on July 27th, 2017.

The novel series includes:

1. Keita Amano and Youth Continue (Amano Keita to Seishun Kontinyū/雨野景太と青春コンティニュー): Released 20 March 2015
2. Karen Tendō and Surprise Happy End (Tendō Karen to Fuiuchi Happī Endo/天道花憐と不意打ちハッピーエンド): Released 18 July 2015
3. Chiaki Hoshinomori and New Game of First Love (Hoshinomori Chiaki to Hatsukoi Nyū Gēmu/星ノ守千秋と初恋ニューゲーム): Released 20 November 2015
4. Aguri and Unconscious Critical (Aguri to Mujikaku Kuritikaru/亜玖璃と無自覚クリティカル): Released 19 March 2016
5. Gamers and Annihilated Game Over (Gēmāzu to Zenmetsu Gēmu Ōbā/ゲーマーズと全滅ゲームオーバー): Released 20 July 2016
6. Lonely Gamer and Love Confession Chain Combo (Bocchi Gēmā to Kokuhaku Chein Konbo/ぼっちゲーマーと告白チェインコンボ): Released 19 November 2016
7. Gamers and Kiss of Dead End (Gēmāzu to Kuchizuke Deddo Endo/ゲーマーズと口づけデッドエンド): Released 18 March 2017
8. Konoha Hoshinomori and Reversal Back Attack (Hoshinomori Konoha to Gyakuten Bakku Atakku/星ノ守心春と逆転バックアタック): Released 20 July 2017
   • Gamers! Short Story Collection
   • Gamers DLC Volume 1 (Gēmāzu DLC/ゲーマーズ! DLC): Released 20 September 2017
9. Keita Amano and Youth Skill Reset (Amano Keita to Seishun Sukiru Risetto (雨野景太と青春スキルリセット): Released 20 January 2018
10. Karen Tendō and Surprise Update (Tendō Karen to Fuiuchi Appudēto/天道花憐と不意打ちアップデート): Released 19 May 2018
11. Gamers and First Love Multi End (Gēmāzu to Hatsukoi Maruchi Endo/ゲーマーズと初恋マルチエンド): Released 20 October 2018
    • Gamers DLC Volume 2 (Gēmāzu DLC 2/ゲーマーズ! DLC 2): Released 20 February 2019
12. Gamers and Youth Continue (Gēmāzu to Seishun Kontinyū/ゲーマーズと青春コンティニュー): Released 19 October 2019
    • Gamers DLC Volume 3 (Gēmāzu DLC 3/ゲーマーズ! DLC 3): Released 19 March 2020

Not related to the 2006 mockumentary with the same name.

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Gamers! provides examples of:

A-E

• Acquainted in Real Life: Main character Keita initially has only two people he's close to, whom he considers very important; one is a fellow player on his favorite MMO, and the other is an aspiring game creator by a different name. He doesn't know, but both of these are a single girl named Chiaki, who also only associates with him and values his companionship. They meet at school and are constantly at each other's throats. When Chiaki hears Keita talk about his online persona and how much he values her online self, her opinion of him visually transforms; their friend, who knew about this, bemoans the fact that she'd finally fallen in love for the first time only after he'd gotten a girlfriend.
• All Love Is Unrequited: At least the characters think so. Tendo loves Amano, who has Ship Tease with Hoshinomori, who has a crush on Uehara, who's dating Aguri. In reality Amano and Tendo are in love with each other and Uehara and Aguri are also mutually in love, but for (comedy) reasons everyone assumes everyone else is playing some kind of bizarre relationship gambit and that they're actually interested in other people than what they outwardly say. Adding on to the whole snafu is both of the Hoshinomori sisters falling for Amano after he and Tendo have a Relationship Upgrade.
• Almost Kiss: At the end of volume 5, Keita and Aguri, thinking that the other person was their respective partners, go in for a kiss at a dark attraction before the lights come on. Volume 6 shows that they were almost to each other's lips before they stopped.
• Audience Surrogate: Uehara can be seen as filling this position, as he frequently comments on the increasing absurdity of the relationship drama transpiring around him and especially on the ridiculous extremes to which Fate Drives Us Together is subverted in the case of Chiaki and Amano. Most notably, when Chiaki gets out of revealing her true identity to Amano by having her sister pretend to be Mono and Nobe, he decides it's not his place to interfere and instead continues to have a passive role. Played with in that Uehara is just as involved in the implausible dramatics as everyone else is.
• Bait-and-Switch: The series sets itself up to be a typical school club anime in the first episode, with a colorful cast of clubmates and a nearly Mary Sue-level of perfect girl as its leader for the protagonist to fall in love with. Once Amano rejects the gaming club however, it's as if its self-contained reality falls apart with the gaming club being relegated to the background, the perfect girl becoming a funny Broken Ace and the plot really revolving around hilarious high school misunderstandings. Of course, gaming is still prevalent, but it's only used as a means to further the Rom Com plot rather than being the central focus.
  • The club itself includes a boy with amnesia - who knows nothing except that he woke up naked in front of a puzzle arcade game - and a girl who is obsessed with fighting games because she needs to defeat her best friend to save her life. How did any of this come about? No clue, they are barely in the anime after the first episode!
• Beach Episode:
  • Episode 7 is a downplayed example where only Amano, Tendo, and Hoshinomori are seen at a pool but it isn't the main focus of the episode.
  • The bonus Episode 12 is at a bathhouse, and plays the tropes to the hilt, particularly when the girls are naked and starts discussing the use and value of Fanservice, nude codes and DLC, and censorship techniques.
• Beautiful All Along: To a comical degree. Uehara decided to change his look in between middle school and high school and is now a handsome, popular bishonen. In reaction to Uehara's transformation, Aguri changed her hair color and read some fashion tips in a magazine, and is now considered gorgeous. When Amano and Hoshinomori meet, he antagonizes her by dumping on her appearance; but Uehara defends her by telling her she would look better with short hair. When she shows up the next day having gotten a haircut, the entire student body is mesmerized by the gorgeous new "transfer student" that they don't recognize.
• Big "WHAT?!": Everyone in Amano's class lets out a loud, surprised exclamation when he asks Tendo to be his girlfriend and she accepts.
• Bland-Name Product: 3ZS stands in for 3DS, and PZ stands in for PS. Averted in that several actual video games are mentioned explicitly.
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: When Aguri mentions that she thinks video games are pointless because they don't have any real value, Karen counters by that logic going to the movies, bowling, and undressing Keita with her eyes would be pointless too.
• Bros Before Hoes: In this case, the bros are Amano and Aguri to each other. When they become Platonic Life-Partners, Aguri is willing to sacrifice time she'd ordinarily spend with Tasuku to help Amano talk to Karen. Once Amano and Karen start dating, she expresses that she wishes she could spend more time with him but he's busy with either games or going out to a restaurant with Aguri.
  • Amano also displayed this indirectly. He instructed everyone, including Karen, not to bother him while he goes out to buy the new Space Ocean game, but immediately drops it and rushes to Aguri's side when she might be heartbroken.
• invokedCasual-Competitive Conflict: Amano's first foray into the Gaming Club had this vibe. While he's an avid mobile game player, he just doesn't mesh well with the competitive aspects of the Club's members and declines their invitation to join.
• Chocolate of Romance: Volume 10 covers Valentine's Day and all of the girls' chocolate gifts to their love interests. Karen goes above and beyond; she makes a miniature chocolate statue of Amano.
• Cliffhanger: The novels are filled with them. Usually some important action or relationship drama will end an installment, only for the next volume to resolve it relatively quickly.
  • Volume 2: A massive crowd of students has gathered around Class F to see what Keita has to say to Karen. Tasuku internally panics because he thinks Aguri looking at him nervously while this happens is proof that she's secretly cheating on him with Amano, Aguri internally panics because she similarly thinks him looking at her guiltily means he's cheating on her with Tendo and/or Hoshinomori, and Chiaki thinks the awkward looks they're exchanging indicate that Aguri's cheating on Amano with Uehara and they're both scamming him. Finally, Keita flubs his formal friend request and mistakenly asks Karen out in front of everyone, which she accepts without a second thought.
  • Volume 3: Just when it seems like all the misunderstandings have been cleared up and all the relationships are stable, Tasuku can only watch helplessly as a new complication develops; Chiaki's Belated Love Epiphany for her rival Keita as she witnesses him speak fondly of her usernames MONO and Nobe to his now girlfriend Karen, unknowingly revealing himself to be Chiaki's two online best friends Tsucchie and Yama.
  • Volume 4: Just as it seems that Tasuku's Mistaken for Cheating troubles are over and he doesn't have to worry about Aguri getting jealous of him being around Karen and Chiaki, Keita arrives to attend to her distress, sparking a new jealous feeling. Aguri and Keita casually express the deepness of their bond as he demonstrates that he cares more about her than video games, while Tasuku, Karen, and Chiaki watch in envy and insecurity.
  • Volume 5: The lights come on at the end of the Kizuna Dungeon, with every pair discovering that they were joined with someone else, resulting in Chiaki and Karen cuddling (mistaking each other for Keita), Konoha feeling up Tasuku to his discomfort (again, mistaking each other for Keita), and finally, Keita and Aguri embracing and about to kiss because they each think they're with their significant other.
  • Volume 6: Underneath a starry night sky, Chiaki follows up her admission to Keita that she's actually MONO and Nobe with a love confession to him.
  • Volume 7: At the amusement park during the field trip, just as Aguri and Keita are about to gift the souvenir teddy bear keychains they worked so hard together to buy for their significant others, Tasuku and Karen interrupt them with a kiss on the forehead and lips respectively (the latter of which is unknowingly witnessed by Chiaki and drives her away in tears), before declaring that they're going to break up.
  • Volume 8: Konoha joins Keita as he walks from the Hoshinomori residence to pick up refreshments for the Christmas party. She asks him about the hypothetical question she posed to him and Aguri earlier, getting him to admit that he had a Green-Eyed Epiphany when he imagined Chiaki with anyone other than himself, and his guilt over being in love with both Chiaki and Karen is driving him to consider a Dump Them All conclusion. Konoha holds back her own tears for the sake of I Want My Beloved to Be Happy, and reveals to him that Chiaki was following behind them and heard everything.
  • DLC 1: As Ayumu Kiriya and Ao Saika leave the arcade after the former's loss in a fighting game against SALT0519, the opponent reaches out to them and removes her hoodie and hat to reveal that she's actually Karen Tendō—Keita's real ex-girlfriend unbeknownst to them—having filled in for Niina, the actual holder of the SALT username. Ayumu breaks into a sweat. Time until Keita Amano's girlfriend enters Ayumu Kiriya's apartment: 4 months.
  • Volume 9: After running out of patience for Main's attitude and discovering that she's the MAI whose high score Karen couldn't beat, Aguri agrees to let Keita leave. Before he goes, Main claims ownership of the Loverbears keychains Aguri planned to give to Tasuku before he broke up with her, and Keita changes his mind. He has an internal "No More Holding Back" Speech deciding that he'll gladly throw away his newfound placidity to wipe away Aguri's tears and challenges Main to another game, wagering ownership of his own life for the rights of Aguri and every person Main has taken ownership of, not worrying about how this will affect the Love Dodecahedron they're in.
  • Volume 10: Realizing that she has more competition than anticipated (i.e. Main intentionally flirting with Keita to rile her up and Konoha having given him an Anguished Declaration of Love in front of her the day before Valentine’s Day), the overwhelming pressure drives Chiaki to take Main’s words about seizing what you want by force to heart and interrupt Keita’s conversation with Karen during a group outing to plant a Forceful Kiss on him, which the next volume shows him reciprocating.
• Collective Death Glare: Happens twice with Keita and Aguri.
  • When Keita splashes Aguri with water and the two get into a back-and-forth water splashing game, their friends have to alert them of their presence while glaring at them with a very sinister purple aura surrounding their annoyed friends.
  • At some point, Aguri and Keita start having a very friendly chat excluding their other friends and totally forgetting the person they're each dating. Karen, Chiaki, and Tasuku all give them an evil-looking death glare, with Karen particularly saying, "you two are having fun, huh?"
• Compressed Adaptation: The second half of the anime crams the plot points of three volumes into the span of five episodes, caps it off with a Gecko Ending, then dedicates the last episode to adapting two non-plot relevant chapters. The pace is much more frenetic compared to the first half of the anime, which takes its time adapting the essentials of the first two volumes over the course of six episodes.
• Continuity Cameo: The first chapter of the short story collection flashes back to when Karen was in fifth grade and came to love video games because the eccentric neighborhood Gamer Chick kept visiting her to play games with her. Karen's words address this self-proclaimed "Masked Gamer" with the names "Shīna-san" and "Mafuyu", and she's blonde in the accompanying illustration.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: Referenced. When asked about her Sitcom Arch-Nemesis, Hoshinomori hopes aloud in Episode 6 that he would get on a helicopter built by Capcom. Given how choppers tend to fare in their games, especially the Resident Evil franchise, this is a fairly creative way to wish ill to someone.
• Day in the Life: The first part of Episode 4 depicts a day in Karen's perfect School Idol life. It then depicts a day in her life after she's smitten with Amano, which completely threw her daily routine for a loop. Both segments use exactly the same voiceover speech to drive the differences home even further.
• Decoy Protagonist: The first episode has Tendo bring Amano to the game club and introduce several members who are given comically compelling backstories such that the audience assumes they will be the main characters. But then Amano refuses to join the club and none of them other than Tendo are more than extremely minor characters. The novels give the rest of the club members more prominence, but still not the protagonist-level focus they were set up to have.
• Destructo-Nookie: The board game in episode 8 includes a spot where the player and their spouse engage in this and have to pay a fee for busting their bed. Amano and Aguri—whose in-game characters are married to each other—both land on this space in a row, much to the embarrassment and frustration of themselves and their insecure significant others across the table.
• "Do It Yourself" Theme Tune: The OP, "GAMERS!", is performed by Hisako Kanemoto (Karen Tendou), Manaka Iwami (Chiaki Hoshinomori), and Rumi Ōkubo (Aguri).
• Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male: Konoha sometimes hits Amano whenever she gets frustrated at him.
• Everyone Can See It: Even before any romantic feelings develop between them, the chemistry between Keita and Chiaki is palpable. Karen is immensely upset by how much they act Like an Old Married Couple, Tasuku finds it both hilarious and frustrating that they aren't a couple already, and even Aguri writes on her Love Chart they get along better than they care to admit.

F-G

• Fanservice: The show itself doesn't have much of it, but the ending cards are filled to the brim with it. Episode 12 also shows the girls talking while bathing in a hot spring, zooming in on their, ah, parts (covered by Censor Steam and scenery) as they chat and move about.
• Farce: Gamers! takes the typical misunderstandings (both intentional and accidental) of a Romantic Comedy, but instead of playing them for some drama or to stretch the plot, it amps them up to eleven to such a ridiculous level of complexity that they've instead become the show's main source of comedy and plot progression. The lack of serious drama comes from the fact that none of the characters react seriously to anything, e.g. Uehara (incorrectly) suspects his girlfriend is cheating on him with his best friend, but never says anything to either of them and it does nothing to change his relationship with either of them. Think of it as combining the Sitcom from Love Hina with the I Know You Know I Know from Death Note.
• Fate Drives Us Together:
  • Subverted. As described in the Loves My Alter Ego and Strange Minds Think Alike entries below, Keita and Chiaki have more potential relationship starters between the two of them than the full cast of an average shoujo manga and somehow they've managed to remain just Sitcom Arch-Nemesis of each other. Uehara puts it the best:
    Uehara: [thinking] Damn it, how much more star-crossed can you get?! (…) No, seriously, how are these two not dating yet? Where the hell did your Red String of Fate get tangled up?
  • Double Subverted later on because Fate doesn't go down without a fight and Chiaki ends up discovering by accident that Amano is both "Tsucchie" and "Yama-san", who were the closest thing she had to friends before the start of the series.
• Finagle's Law:
  • Probably the only reason Chiaki was at the same entertainment facility as Amano and Tendo during their date.
  • Anytime a typical anime protagonist would win by a burst of last second luck, Amano fails spectacularly instead. Prime examples include betting his last token on a million-to-one odds race to win a bet, and using a power item in a racing game that has a 50% chance of taking out his opponents, and a 50% chance of taking him out. Both times, it's played up as if he just won, only to reveal a moment later that he lost spectacularly.
• First-Name Basis: Amano and Hoshinomori use the other's given name almost immediately after they meet despite each of them claiming to hate the other. Aguri uses Uehara's given name, Tasuku, as well. Aguri is exclusively referred to with her given name by everyone, even those who otherwise would use surnames, and her surname is not revealed until volume 10.
• Food as Bribe: Keita does this to Aguri, hanging out with her at restaurants and cafes. Part of it was to try to reassure her that Uehara wasn't cheating on her, despite him being seen a lot with Chiaki, but also to get some advice about girls, regarding Karen in his own case.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: The unused spaces of the "Love-Love Game of Half-Life" board game from episode 8 are this. Several of them are worth a laugh too:
  [You slip on a banana peel. Ouch. Miss a turn]
  [You find a job as a tutor, and get into a taboo relationship with your student. Earn 5,000 yen]
  [You work, you lose. You are jobless]
  [You're broke! You beg your folks for money. Earn 3,000 yen]
  [Your ex makes their major debut. You watch their concert with mixed feelings. Pay 5,000 yen]
  [Release date for the new game! You stay home from work and play all night. Miss a turn]
  [That famous dating sim gets VR support! Droves of people go missing]
• Gambit Pileup: The majority of the cast spends the first half of the anime concocting schemes to figure out who's going out with who and manipulating others to further their needs (none of which is played for legitimate drama, of course). It all comes to a head in Episode 6, and new ones cropping up in episodes 8 and 9.
• Game of Life: the "Love-Love Game of Half-Life" in Episode 8 is a parody of the classic game.
• Gamer Chick: Karen and Chiaki are prominently featured as such. Especially since they literally sing their love and passion for games as the opening theme.
• Gecko Ending: The anime concludes its main story in episode 11 with a different take on volume 5's ending, which was a cliffhanger where Keita and Aguri have an Almost Kiss in front of everyone at the end of the Kizuna Dungeon. The anime version instead has Konoha pull Keita and Chiaki out of the Kizuna Dungeon before they can get that far, and reaches a softer resolution for the existing couples. Episode 12 adapts an earlier story from the novels.
• Good Adultery, Bad Adultery: Main's mother ended up cheating on her father due to his long work hours and neglect of his family. She absolutely doesn't hold it against her mother, and treats the act with sympathy.

H-K

• Harem: Keita definitely has one: Tendo, Chiaki, and Konoha, for starters, with more distant menbers in later volumes.
• Honor Before Reason: During the class trip, some antagonistic members of Tasuku's group decide to mock him and call Aguri his "whore of a girlfriend". But he's not the one this trope applies to; Amano does. While Tasuku does get mad, he decides that he doesn't want to make a scene and ruin Amano's enjoyment for the last couple of days. Amano, meanwhile, rushes in to defend Aguri's honor, but his almost beatdown of these kids means that Tasuku's going to have to deal with them for the remainder of the trip.
• Hope Spot:
  • Episode 8 was beginning to end with many of the misunderstandings cleared up. Uehara and Aguri realizing that neither had been cheating on the other, and Amano sharing with Tendou about his mobile gaming habits. But then Chiaki walks in and realizes that Amano is her online friend, throwing another wrench into the Love Dodecahedron.
  • Volume 7 has a big one near the end: After much introspection about how they fail at being proper lovers to their respective significant others, Karen and Tasuku resolve to give Aguri and Amano a surprise kiss on the last day of their school trip… as a precursor to asking them to break up.
  • Volume 10 had Amano duel Main in a fighting game for "ownership" of Aguri. While he won the first round, Main quickly adapts to the game and throttles him in the second. By the last round, they're on pretty equal footing, getting each other to a final sliver, but we learn very quickly that Amano loses.
• Hot Springs Episode: Episode 12 of the anime has the cast take a trip to concentrate on gaming, which happens to include some time bathing at hot springs.
• How We Got Here: The first scene of the anime depicts a classroom during summer, with Keita and Karen facing each other nervously, Tasuku and Aguri staring each other down with incredibly awkward expressions in their faces, and Chiaki looking utterly shocked. It then rewinds back to the spring to show how everyone got to that point. It isn't until Episode 6 that the scene is revisited.
• Imaginary Love Triangle: The majority of the love triangles are imaginary and due to Poor Communication Kills; the cast never tries to clear it up. Even when they're clear about it, the other party will inevitably assume it's part of a gambit that it assuredly isn't.
• Inner Monologue: Used to great effect in Episode 6, as the Gambit Pileup comes to a head and each of the main characters internally evaluates their plans and the possible meaning of the others' actions and reactions to said pileup.
• Insane Troll Logic: Episode 6 is entirely fueled by this. Every primary character has a completely delusional scenario in their head about how the event with Amano and Tendo will go, largely out of nowhere. All of them have insane scenarios built up in their heads which they intend to resolve by seeing where people are looking during Amano's event.
• Insatiable Newlyweds: A hilarious in-game example. To their embarrassment, Amano and Aguri's characters in a modified Game of Life are this to the point they had to pay in-game currency to replace the bed their intense lovemaking broke down (twice). Their respective significant others playing the board game with them were not amused by this.
• Insecure Love Interest: The entire main cast is this. The main reason all the insane misunderstandings occur is because everyone is all too ready to believe in the worst due to a lack of self-confidence.
• Japanese School Club: Karen runs a gaming club. The usual plot purpose of such a club is Subverted in that Keita declines Karen's offer to join it.

L-M

• Laughing Mad: Uehara, Aguri, and Hoshinomori do this during their individual monologues about the upcoming Tendo/Amano after-school meeting.
• Lemony Narrator: A downplayed example. Particularly in the first couple of episodes, anytime somebody said something arrogant (Tendo being the most popular, Uehara thinking that Aguri would never see anything in a guy like Amano, etc) a narrator box told us how they were wrong ("She will fall hard, a lot," "Will ending up meeting with Amano many times," etc.)
• Local Hangout: A family restaurant (named Gardenia in the anime) serves as this for Keita and Aguri. There are a few instances of other characters going there, but it’s primarily a set piece for the two’s regular conversations. By Volume 9, Amano’s come to realize that he and Aguri frequent the restaurant so much that they’re basically going on platonic dates on a daily basis.
• Love Chart: Aguri draws one in Episode 6 (during class, no less) to try and make sense of the romantic SNAFU between Uehara, Chiaki, Amano, Karen, and herself. Notably, she makes a very poor job at it because more than half of her assumptions are wrong.
• Love Confession: After revealing herself as Mono and Nobe, Chiaki sort of blurts out a confession to Amano along the way. Ship Sinking ensues, and she's rejected.
• Love Dodecahedron: Both the central idea of the plot and explicitly lampshaded by Uehara as a "love pentagon." Ironically, the existence of the "pentagon" is largely Uehara's fault because he intentionally set up the Amano/Tendo/Hoshinomori triangle in order to amuse himself but both he and Aguri got sucked into it. The actual relationship statuses between the characters is obvious to the audience but the characters somehow manage to keep themselves in the dark as to what is going on the entire time. In reality, it isn't that complicated. Tendo is completely head-over-heels for Amano, but is convinced Amano doesn't like her (because he rejected her invite to the gaming club) and instead believes he likes Hoshinomori. Amano likes Tendo back, but he is Oblivious to Love (everyone else is too, but Tendo is a borderline stalker), thinks Tendo is out of his league (which she is), and assumes Tendo is really after Uehara (she barely knows Uehara exists). Aguri and Uehara are both dating and in love with each other, but Aguri thinks Uehara is cheating on her with both Tendou and Hoshinomori, while Uehara thinks Aguri is cheating on him with Amano. Hoshinomori also thinks that Aguri is cheating on Uehara with Amano, but for some insane reason also believes Aguri's involved in a scheme to pretend to date Amano "for the money."
  • In some ways, it's a parody, or a deconstrction of the Love Dodecahedron, as the actual characters aren't in one, merely percieving themselve as being in one. Amano and Tendo are both devoted to each other, and Uehara and Aguri are both happy in their relationship. Only Hoshinomori is actually creating a Love Triangle, first by crushing on Uehara, and later by loving Amano. Ironically, she is the person who is most frequently left out by the first four's insane romantic paranoia.
• Love Epiphany: Two occur in episode eight:
  • Chiaki's sister Konoha starts to fall in love with Keita after he highly praises an underdog dating sim that she herself just picked up moments earlier.
  • Chiaki herself goes through one at the end of the episode when Amano starts mentioning having a deep bond with an online gamer using the name "Mono" and a developer named "Nobe", both of whom are her, unbeknownst to him. Uehara, who tried to protect her identity, does a facepalm and feels sorry for her, as he immediately knows she'll fall in love with Amano and be relegated to Hopeless Suitor status since Amano is already dating Tendo.
• Loves My Alter Ego: A squared platonic variation for both Hoshinomori and Amano. They claim to not particularly like each other in real life, but as Uehara finds out, they're online friends as "Mono" and "Tsucchie", respectively, in a Granblue Fantasy Expy, and neither of them knows about it. Furthermore, Amano is unknowingly a huge fan of her indie games published under the "Nobe" developer name too, and a recurrent reviewer of her work as "Yama-san" with whom Chiaki also gets along very well.
• Love Triangle: The only actual secret love going on in the series is Hoshinomori loving Amano who loves Tendo who loves him back.
• Mistaken for Cheating: The most prevalent misunderstanding caused by Poor Communication Kills. To wit…
  • Amano and Aguri believe that Uehara is cheating on Aguri with both Hoshinomori and Tendō, not knowing that his interactions with them are mostly intended to engineer a love triangle between them and Amano. These suspicions linger even after Amano starts dating Tendō himself.
  • Uehara takes notice of all the time Amano and Aguri spend together (discussing his own supposed cheating) and thinks Aguri is cheating on him with Amano.
  • Hoshinomori is initially unaware of the fact that Aguri is dating Uehara, and only learns about it after she's been led to believe that Aguri is already Amano's girlfriend. So she ends up thinking that Amano's being cheated on by Aguri with Uehara, and that Amano's relationship with Tendō is just a ruse to get out of his loveless relationship with Aguri.
  • When Uehara decides to give up the love triangle plan and commits to being a Shipper on Deck for Amano × Hoshinomori, he affirms it to the latter in a phone call that she misinterprets as a Love Confession, all while her sister and Amano are listening.
  • After she overhears the vaguely worded aftermath of Keita receiving and ultimately rejecting Chiaki's love confession to him, Karen panics and assumes that Keita is going to cheat on her with Chiaki, having a relationship with her in secret while keeping Karen unaware.

N-R

• Non-Dubbed Grunts: The footage from Guilty Gear and P4AU are left undubbed in the English Dub. Justified because it'd be too costly, and too much extra work, for a weekly Simuldub to be practical (plus, Guilty Gear Xrd -Revelator- had a case of No Dub for You anyways, so it was also for consistency's sake).
• Non-Indicative First Episode: The first episode of the show is entirely focused on Tendo's effort to get Amano to join the gaming club and sets up an entirely different show than what Gamers! actually is. While the premiere makes it seem like the premise of the show is Amano's integration into the gaming club, he turns down the invitation, never joins the club at all and the gaming club itself rarely appear and are largely irrelevant to the actual plot.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Tasuku, Karen, and Chiaki all get deeply insecure and suspicious when Keita—who is most Serious Business over video games out of all of them and told them not to bother him when he went to buy a game he is extremely passionate about—drops his errand without a second thought to attend to Aguri's Mistaken for Cheating distress.
• Ordinary High-School Student: Keita Amano is described as such; other than enjoying video games, there is nothing remarkable about him, and he's never been in love. Konoha even describes him as a typical dating sim protagonist.
• Overdramatic Dating Commotion: Amano visits class A while stating he didn't come to see Tendou, he came to be friends with another girl (Hoshinomori), which makes Tendo faint before he catches her. Tendo being a popular school idol, the whole class screams like they witnessed a murder at the action.
• Passive-Aggressive Kombat: Tendo and Konoha have one in episode 11, complete with HP bars as Gamers! is wont to.
• Poor Communication Kills: The levels of misunderstandings and jumped-to conclusions would fill any three other Romantic Comedy shows. Unlike most other works that use this trope, the misunderstandings form the basis of this show's comedy. Hits the boiling point in episode 6 where Uehara thinks Aguri is cheating on him with Amano, Aguri thinks Uehara is cheating on her with Hoshimori and Tendo, and Hoshinomori thinks Aguri and Uehara are conning Amano. It's questionable whether better communication would even work: Amano explicitly tells Hoshinomori he was never dating Aguri in the first place, but she doesn't seem to understand despite how clear he is being, yet Uehara is able to fix some of misunderstanding between Aguri and himself by talking to her in episode 8.
  • When Hoshinomori sees Amano and Aguri at a cafe, Amano goes out to explain to her that they are just friends and Aguri would never cheat on Uehara. He does this by extolling what a great girlfriend Aguri is, without ever clarifying that she is Uehara's girlfriend. Hoshinomori understandably thinks that he is bragging about what a great girlfriend he has, and sullenly complains about it to Uehara, furthering the misunderstandings.
  • When Uehara realizes that emotions are on the line thanks to his playing up the Love Triangle for his own amusement, he decides he has to back one girl or another. He decides to back Hoshinomori and tells her by calling her and telling her "I chose you!" and then hanging up, leaving everybody there (Hoshinomori, Amano, and Konoha) to think he just confessed his love to her.
• Production Throwback: In volume 8, Konoha brings a card game that President of Student Council's Discretion made.
• Product Placement: The few non-Bland Name Products include Arc System Works fighting games, most notably Guilty Gear Xrd -Revelator- and Persona 4: Arena Ultimax. Also, Amano owns posters of BlazBlue and Under Night In-Birth.
• "Reason You Suck" Speech: Amano's younger brother, Kousei, gives one to Karen, Tasuku, and Konoha for not being good friends to Amano and not noticing if there were any problems he was going through, especially in comparison to Aguri and Chiaki. This hits Tasuku and Karen pretty hard, given that they're his friend and girlfriend respectively.
• Recycled Title: The final volume of the main light novel series reuses the title Gamers and Youth Continue from the anime adaptation's penultimate episode (the one that concluded the main narrative).
• Red String of Fate: Mentioned by name by Uehara when hearing just how incredibly fateful Hoshinomori and Amano are for each other.
  Uehara: [thinking] How did your red string get this tangled?
• Relationship Sabotage: One instance was intentional with Uehara trying to start a Love Triangle between Keita, Karen, and Chiaki. But it ends up backfiring and turning into a case of Poor Communication Kills and Not What It Looks Like, as everyone thinks that the person they like or dating is secretly cheating on them behind their back, and are too insecure to confront them about it, such as when Aguri spends a lot of time hanging out with Keita.
  • Konoha plays this straighter, crashing on the others' double date specifically to keep Keita further from Karen and push him closer to Chiaki.
• Relationship Upgrade: At the end of Episode 6, Amano asks out Tendo, and she accepts.

S-Z

• Screwball Comedy: Gamers! is much closer to this trope with its pileup of misunderstandings, rather than the usual Harem Comedy for this kind of show.
• Serious Business: Video games, obviously. Best exemplified with Amano and Chiaki's bickering over the presence of Moe characters in games.
  Amano and Chiaki: [Lightning Glares]
  Uehara: [separates them] Okay. Aegis VIII was a bad call.
  Amano: I don't care if you think we're stupid. A gamer's opinions aren't something you just change willy-nilly. [Suddenly Shouting] No! They're our creed and we defend it to the death!
  Chiaki: [Suddenly Shouting too] What he said! Having friends is nice, but being right is even better!
  Amano and Chiaki: [identical "flaring nostrils" expression]
  Uehara: You guys deserve each other.
• Shared Universe: With Student Council's Discretion by the same author. Konoha attends the same school as the characters from that series and is a member of a later incarnation of the student council^note Five years after the 32nd council began writing their stories into light novels, so Konoha is in the 37th council. Additionally, volume 8 has Konoha bringing the card game that they made to the Christmas party, and Aguri's surname is revealed in volume 10 to be Sakurano, implying a relation to Kurimu Sakurano that volume 12 makes even more blatant. The short story collection reveals that Mafuyu Shīna's interactions with a fifth grade Karen are what influenced the latter's interest in games.
• Shipper on Deck:
  • Uehara is the main culprit and ships Amano with both Tendo and Hoshinomori, motivated primarily by the entertainment value of Amano being Oblivious to Love for his Stalker with a Crush and bickering Like an Old Married Couple with his would-be soulmate. However, he soon grows legitimately invested in the feelings of everyone involved in the love triangle he set up and wants all of them to be happy. While he thinks Chiaki would be the better match for Keita, he also can't help but support Karen's feelings for him, especially once it becomes apparent that Keita and Aguri's friendship is closer than their actual romances.
  • When Aguri thinks Uehara is cheating on her, Amano assures her that Uehara's faithful and promises he will help solidify their relationship. Aguri responds to the positive feedback by promising to help Amano ask out Tendo. This mutual support of each other's love lives is the foundation of their Odd Friendship, which ironically becomes a source of tension for said love lives.
    • Aguri also notices how compatible Keita is with Chiaki and thinks they'd make a good couple. She even says as much to them directly when Chiaki drops in on one of their restaurant meetings, and by volume 8, she outright says the two of them and Karen should all just date together, a sentiment Tasuku agrees with.
  • Misumi is well aware of Tendo's crush on Amano and often gives her advice so she can approach him.
  • Despite her own feelings for him, Konoha ships Amano and her sister, and tries several times to get them together and/or sink his relationship with Tendo, especially in episode 11.
• Ship Sinking: Comes with a double whammy of sinking and ship confirmation. In volume 12, Amano turns down Hoshinomori and asks to be friends with her again, while in the same breath reconfessing his feelings to Tendo and asking her to give him another chance.
• Shout-Out: Has its own page here.
• Sibling Triangle: Both of the Hoshinomori sisters fall in love with Keita Amano.
• The Simple Gesture Wins: Karen Tendou is the most popular girl in her school and has to turn down dramatic Love Confessions almost daily. Which comes as a shock to everyone when the boy who wins her heart is Keita Amano, a socially-awkward loner. Tendou falls head-over-heels for Amano not because of any romantic gesture he made, but simply because (even after declining Tendou's invitation to join) Amano defended Tendou and her club from ridicule without even knowing she was around to see it.
• The Stinger: The scene after the ending credits of Episode 2 has Karen fawning over Amano before overhearing a conversation between him and Misumi. To Karen's disappointment, Amano came to her class to meet with a different girl.
• Strange Minds Think Alike:
  • Uehara and Aguri think one is cheating on the other with Hoshinomori and Amano, respectively, because the latter two are a lot like they used to be when they first met and fell for each other.
  • Continuing the above, Uehara and Aguri also had the same idea of encouraging Keita to try to (publicly) make friends with Karen because they wanted to gauge the other's reaction to it in order to figure out if they were actually cheating on the other, scheming that led to the farcical conclusion of Episode 6.
  • To Uehara's great chagrin, Amano and Hoshinomori are Birds of a Feather to such a ridiculous extent that they often follow the same trains of thought even for the most convoluted of things. For example, they both came up with Screen Names by taking their mothers' maiden names, dividing the kanji into two parts and writing the results in a different characters sets. The only difference is that Amano used hiragana and Hoshinomori went for romanizations.
• Sustained Misunderstanding: This show runs on this trope, with each character hiding something from the others, while also acting somewhat suspiciously around some of the others, which then causes them all to come up with wrong conclusions, such as Aguri thinking Uehara is cheating on her with Hoshinomori. Or Uehara thinking Aguri is cheating on him with Amano after seeing them hang out a few times while discussing him.
• Switching P.O.V.: Although Keita is the main protagonist overall, the novels have the POV narrator switch constantly between any given character.
• That Came Out Wrong: In episode 9, Uehara screaming "I choose you!" to Chiaki over the phone and then immediately hanging up causes Amano, who was nearby, along with Chiaki's sister Konoha to think Uehara was giving her a Love Confession. However, he actually just meant he'd rather see Chiaki in a relationship with Amano, since the two share a lot more stuff in common that he does with Tendo.
• Threesome Subtext: In volume 8, after Karen joins in on Keita and Chiaki gleefully geeking out about what party games they want to play at the Christmas party, Aguri snarks that the three of them should all just date each other, even though Karen had recently broken up with Keita specifically to give Chiaki a fair chance at winning his heart.
• Title Drop: The OP of the anime, "GAMERS!", but entirely in capital letters.
• Truer to the Text: The manga adaptation is more accurate to the light novels compared to the anime, namely in the details of events like Chiaki showing up to school with a new haircut or Keita and Karen's first date.
• Twice Shy: Keita and Karen are an example of this. The tension between them is exacerbated by them having different degrees of Oblivious to Love and the fact that this story runs on comedic misunderstandings. On Keita's side, he is definitely aware of his own crush on Karen, but somehow ignorant of the fact that she's a Stalker with a Crush on him. At best, he thinks she's only getting close to him because her real target is Uehara, and at worst, he thinks she hates him for humiliating her by publicly rejecting her offer to join the Game Club. On Karen's side, she doesn't even realize that her obsession with him is far from platonic, or that Amano's awkwardness around her is because he likes her back. At best, she worries he's more romantically interested in other girls (despite not knowing why this notion bothers her) and at worst thinks he hates her for bothering him about gaming, which they have similar passion for but different opinions on. This awkward tension continues to persist even after he accidentally asks her out and she immediately accepts, leading to their Relationship Upgrade.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Everybody. The chances of Episode 6 ending as it did with Amano the Ridiculously Average Guy asking to Tendo go out with him and the School Idol (who's also famous for receiving and rejecting Love Confessions on a daily basis) agreeing to it in a heartbeat in front of a crowd would have been next to nil were not for the combined misunderstandings, half-baked scheming, oblivious good faith and the best intentions of not less than six named characters. That, and Amano accidentally screwing up what he wanted to say due to the game he was playing the night before.
• Visual Pun:
  • When Amano tells Karen in Episode 4 that he got a little into Arcade Games since he started to hang out with someone (i.e. Uehara), the question "Do you mean Hoshinomori-san?" literally appears written on her face for the audience's benefit.
  • In the Love Chart Aguri draws in Episode 6, she symbolizes Keita, Karen, and Chiaki with Visual Puns based on their surnames' kanji writings — an umbrella for Amano ("Ama" = rain), a cloud for Tendo ("Ten" = sky), and a star for Hoshinomori ("Hoshi" = star), respectively.
  • When Amano and Tendo delivered a doozy of an In-Universe Wham Line combo at the end of Episode 6, the whole screen spun wildly for a second as their schoolmates exclaimed in surprise, then stopped in a tilted position for a moment before finally righting itself — as if saying that the characters' whole world was thrown into a disarray and ending up askew as result.
• Wham Line: One on every other episode:
  • Episode 1: When Amano turns down joining the gaming club.
  • Episode 6: "Yes, gladly!"
  • Episode 8: "In this game, I go by the name Tsucchie..."
• Worst. Whatever. Ever!: The first chapter of volume 6 sees the Game Club host to a mock trial in which Eiichi and Karen evoke Ace Attorney while arguing about Keita's innocence in the matter of his Accidental Kiss with Aguri in the previous volume, and Karen names the result after the games' Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: "Dumbest Turnabout Ever".
• Yonkoma: The series spawned a manga adaptation in this format.

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