Fumiya Tomozaki is an ace gamer, but a bottom-tier character in real life. His favorite game is called Tackfam, which is an in-universe parody of Super Smash Brothers. One day, while playing Tackfam online, he was invited to meet in-person with an old gaming rival called NONAME. When he arrived at the spot where they agreed to meet up, he was surprised to discover that NONAME’s true identity was none other than his classmate, Aoi Hinami. Tomozaki has always been jealous of Aoi’s high social status–with her intelligence, confidence, and charisma–and wishes he could be like her. Aoi was just as surprised as he was. She begins to unload her disappointment in finding out that her gaming hero, known online as the great Nanashi, is actually a rock-bottom loser who has given up on life. Tomozaki tells Aoi that someone as popular as her knows nothing about how it feels to be unconfident in everything. He also says that no one can change their character like they can in a game, but Aoi begs to differ. She begins to teach Tomozaki how to play the ultimate god-tier game called life, beginning by setting some goals for Tomozaki to achieve. The highest of which is for Tomozaki to get a girlfriend by his third year of high school–a goal that makes him gasp in fear. Will Tomozaki succeed, or will he forever remain a bottom-tier character? Let’s take a look at his potential candidates!

Minami Nanami is a bouncy and bubly class flirt. Her creedo is to always live life with a smile on her face no matter how bad she feels on the inside. Tomozaki first tried talking to her in his Home EC class, but his awkwardness caused her to burst out lauging. When Tomozaki walked home with her the next evening, he learned that Minami considers herself to be a “young maiden with lots of worries.” At the end of Episode 5, Minami announced she will be running against Aoi for student council. Perhaps Tomozaki’s campaign with Minami isn’t over yet.

Fuka Kikuchi is a shy bookworm who has a secret eye for Tomozaki. When Aoi and Tomozaki got lunch at a restaurant one day, they were surprised to have their waitress be Fuka. Aoi noticed that Fuka addressed Tomozaki first despite herself being more popular and of the same gender. Another day later, Tomozaki met Fuka in the library where they talked about her passion for books. Tomozaki only pretended to follow the conversation about her favorite author just to make her happy, but he later apologized to her for not being genuine. Aoi thinks Tomozaki’s relationship with Fuka is his most promising so far, and is certain she will become his girlfriend.

Yuzu Izumi is a glamour girl who sits next to Tomozaki in his first class of the day. At first, Tomozaki would try to strike a conversation with her about her hair, her clothing, or their last homework assignment, but it would always end up getting awkward. Then one day, Yuzu asked Tomozaki to teach her how to play Tackfam so that a guy she likes, named Nakamura, won’t think she is too weak to play with. They get together in Yuzu’s bedroom where Tomozaki uses Aoi’s teachng methods to show Yuzu how to get better at the game. After the instruction session, Yuzu reveals to Tomozaki that she wants to stop worrying about what other people think of her. In the last episode, Yuzu even trusted Tomozaki enough to help her find a gift to buy for Nakamura’s birthday. Although it had a rough start, Tomozaki and Yuzu seem to be developing quite a connection.

As Tomozaki continues his pursuits for a girlfriend, who does he have as a potential wingman?

Shuji Nakamura is an egotist and the most popular guy in Tomozaki’s class. He heard that Tomozaki was good at Tackfam, so he challenged him to a match at the very beginning of the first episode. The bottom-tier protagonist absolutely creamed him, so ever since then, Nakamura has been practicing Tackfam non-stop in preparation to defeat Tomozaki and satisfy his ego. Nakamura got his rematch at the end of Episode 4. He tried and tried again, but still could not defeat Tomozaki. Finally, a girl who Nakamura previously brushed off, named Erika, ridicules him for wasting his time, trying to get better at a stupid game. Tomozaki stands up and rips into Erika for calling Tackfam stupid. He defends Nakamura for all of the hard work he put in to try and beat him. Although they seem to be forming a connection, Nakamura is more like Tomozaki’s rival than a potential wingman.

Hiro Mizusawa is one of Nakamura’s sidekicks. At the beginning of Episode 5, Mizusawa complimented Tomozaki for standing up to Erika and suggested they should go on an outing with two girls. Tomozaki ends up organizing a shopping-restaurant trip so they can help Yuzu find a gift for Nakamura. She decided to get him some styling wax for his hair. While looking for wax to buy, Mizusawa demonstrates his hair-styling skills by using some sample wax on Tomozaki’s hair. As a contrast to Tomozaki, who mainly goes with the flow, Mizusawa tends to take charge of the situation, like when he decided on a place to go for lunch. During the shopping trip, Yuzu passed a rumor to Tomozaki that Mizusawa and Aoi are dating. For someone who doesn’t have a lot of friends, Tomozaki seems like he may have found a good wingman in Mizusawa.

At the end of Episode 5, a teacher announces they will begin accepting nominations for student council, and asks who would like to run. Aoi raises her hand and says she would like to. No one is surprised, but they do get surprised when another girl raises her hand. It’s Minami!

She turns to Aoi, and says, “If we’re fighting over grades, I’m gonna win!”

Change, Can We?

At the beginning of Episode 6, Aoi and Tomozaki meet in the sewing room, where Aoi announces they will put their meetings on hold until after the election. She also says Tomozaki will be Minami’s campaign manager. (I smell election interference.) She doesn’t explain how this will help Tomozaki fulfill his goals, so it might be strategic sabotage (she knows Tomozaki won’t help Minami win the election), but she also says she’s confident she will win no matter who Minami’s campaign manager is. So, I’m honestly not sure why Aoi is instructing Tomozaki to do this.

An unspecified amount of time later, Tomozaki happens to run into Minami in the hallway (almost literally). He awkwardly stutters when trying to say her name, which causes Minami to burst out in laughter again. Tomozaki’s gamer brain identifies this moment as a random encounter, and prepares for battle. He asks Minami if she has a second.

“Ooh, for what? A confession of love?”

(bouncy, bubbly, flirtatious)

“No! Um, you know the student council election? I was thinking, um…I’d like to be a campaign manager. Yours, that is.”

“Thanks!” responds Miami, “I appreciate the sentimet, but you’re a tad unreliable!”

(So she can say something worse than ‘no.’)

The scene cuts to the library where Tomozaki asks Fuka why she thinks Minami decided to run in the election.

“She was joking that it would be a battle over grades,” says Tomozaki.

“I don’t think that’s it,” responds Fuka.

“You think maybe she wants to change things around here?”

“Yes. And change herself, too, I feel the same way.”

“You want to change, too, Kikuchi?”

Fuka becomes embarrassed and hides her blushing face behind a book. She tells Tomozaki not to tell anyone, but Tomozaki thinks her reaction is cute.

That means that Minami, Fuka, and Yuzu all have a desire to change. At first, Tomozaki thought it was just him, but as he gets to know his classmates more and more, he realizes that it’s not just him. Of course, it makes sense that Tomozaki and Fuka want to change, since they are near the bottom of the social totem pole, but Tomozaki is puzzled as to why someone as popular as Minami wants to do the same.

The bottom-tier protagonist arrives at school the next day when he sees Minami standing at the front gate. Her campaign manager, a girl named Yumi, is spouting out all the reasons why everyone should vote for her. (Yumi won’t be in the series that much, so you don’t need to remember her.)

Tomozaki greets Minami at the gate and heads in towards the school building, where he sees Aoi rallying for her campaign. And who does she have as her campaign manager? It’s Mizusawa. (Even more evidence that the two of them are dating.) Tomozaki notices that Aoi seems to know every student’s club affiliation and can adapt her campaign promises to each of them.

Minami and the Brain (Brain, Brain, Brain)

Later that day, Tomozaki almost runs into Minami again. This time, she shows him the flyers she made, listing all of her campaign promises. Unfortunately, all of the text is in Japanese, and it seems like the translators only had enough room on the screen to translate the title of her flyer, so I won’t be able to tell you what her campaign promises are. Tomozaki looks over the flyer and notices it could use a few adjustments. He realizes this is an opportunity to showcase his usefulness in Minami’s campaign. He switches into an Aoi-style instructional mode, but keeps his Tomozaki-level energy. (Unlike when he was in Yuzu’s bedroom and went full-on Aoi mode.)

“It’s not the promises so much as the layout,” explains the ace gamer.

He brings her to the computer room where he prints out a different version.

“Whoa! It’s so much easier to read now!” exclaims Minami, “You might actually be pretty competent.”

“Listen, Minami,” continues Tomozaki, “I think I could help you–with this kind of brain-forward stuff.”

“Yeah, it could work. I’m not really the best at that kind of thing. And besides ‘Brain’ just sounds so darn cool!”

(Hey, that’s his name.)

“But first, Tomozaki,” continues Minami, “There’s something I gotta ask. Why are you so dead set on helping me?”

Tomozaki thinks about it for a second before he says, “I’d like to see Hinami go down.”

“You’re totally out of your depth,” teases Minami, “But I’m with you, Tomozaki. I wanna take on that uber-powerful Aoi and win, too! Which is why I’m running.”

Before they leave, Tomozaki helps Minami print out another set of flyers. Again, the words on them are in Japanese, and not translated into English, but the context suggests they are planning to make some “shady” campaign promises.

Minami and Tomozaki begin handing out flyers to the volleyball team. Minami sees Tama and immediately begins harassing her. Then, she whispers in the ear of the volleyball captain a promise to get the team an electric ball pump.

After handling out flyers, Minami and Tomozaki sit on the swings at sunset, when Minami asks, “What are we doing tomorrow, Tomozaki the brain?”

Tomozaki responds by saying, “The same thing we do every day, Minami: Try to take over the world!”

(Just kidding.)

He actually says they will try to secure a majority of the votes. Minami asks why Tomozaki is going to such great lengths to beat Aoi. Tomozaki doesn’t answer the question, but asks it back.

“Quiz time!” says Minami, “What is Japan’s tallest mountain?”

“Mount Fuji,” responds Tomozaki.

“Sure, but what’s the second-tallest mountain?”

“What was it again? Let me think…”

“Time’s up! The answer? Mount Kita! Question number two: Who was the first president of the USA?”

“George Washington.”

“Sure, but who was the second president?”

“What was his name…?”

“The answer? John Adams! Not big on world history, huh, Tomozaki?”

“Maybe not.”

“Here’s a gimmie. This one’s about our very own Sekitomo High: Which girl came in first overall in the May sports tests”

“Aoi Hinami.”

“Uh huh, but who took second place?”

Tomozaki doesn’t answer.

“You don’t know, do you. That’s basically how it goes. Number one stands out and gets super well-known, but not number two. The answer is me, Minami Nanami!”

(So, this is the answer to all the riddles.)

When Minami says it’s her, you can almost see the disappointment in her face try to break through her “always smiling” persona.

Check, Check, Check

Tomozaki meets Tama in the gym again and asks if she will help him do something to prepare for Minami’s campaign speech. He stands in various corners of the gym and plays a recording on his phone. Tama raises her hand if she can hear the recording. Then, he asks where she could hear it the best, and Tama points to one of the corners.

“Anything else?” asks Tama.

“Yea, for now,” responds Tomozaki, “You’re not curious about all this? And me doing the asking?”

“It’s for Minmi, right? Then I’m good.” (Minmi is Tama’s nickname for Minami.)

Tama asks Tomozaki not to push her too hard, becauase Minami is an overdoer.

The next day, Minami and Tomozaki meet up in the cafeteria. Minami mentions she was able to convince some first-years that she will do “everything in her power” to install air conditioners in their classrooms. (Maybe this is one of the “shady promises” they printed on the flyers.)

Tomozaki shows Minami what he wrote for her campaing speech. After reading the speech, Minami cracks up again.

“Oh, Tomozaki! You absolute con artist!” she says.

They give each other a high-five and hope for the best.

Thoughts: The Secret to Being Special

In Dr. Jordan B. Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life, Rule #4 is “Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.”

Dr. Peterson grew up in a small town in Fairview, Alberta where the weather would constantly drop to 40 below. In a small town, as Peterson explains, anyone could be the best at something, but in the digital age, it is much easier to find people who excel far better than you in your respective field of interest. Peterson says that all of us have an internal critic that compares ourselves to others. It works by selecting, “a single, arbitrary domain of comparison. Then it acts as if that domain is the only one that is relevant. Then it contrasts you unfavorably with someone truly steller in that domain.”

The harsh reality of this situation is that not everyone can be the best at everything. Not everyone can become an NBA player, or a chess grandmaster. Not everyone can become an A-list actor in Hollywood, and not everyone can become a New York Times best-selling author. Jordan B. Peterson refers to this principle throughout his book and lectures. This unfair distribution of creativity is also manifested in music. “…just four classical composers (Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, and Tchaikovsky) wrote almost all the music played by modern orchestras,” explains Peterson, “And only a small percentage of each composers’ music is played.” This unfair distribution is referred to as the Pareto principle, which states something like 80% of the outcomes come from 20% of the sources.” I’m sure most of us are familiar with the principle from The Incredibles, that if everyone is special, no one is.

That said, even though not everyone can be the best at everything, everyone can potentially be the best at something different.

“To begin with, there is not just one game at which to succeed or fail,” says Peterson, “There are many games and, more specifically, many good games–games that match your talents, involve you productively with other people, and sustain and even improve themselves across time.”

In this episode of Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki, the character Minami Nanami views herself as forgettable because she is not as athletic as her peer, Aoi Hinami. Now, Minami is running against Aoi for student council for the sole purpose of defeating her, coming in first, and most importantly–being remembered for it. Minami is typically bouncy and bubbly. She puts on a happy demeanor to lift herself out of her distress, but in reality, she is doing it to hide her miseries. And these miseries primarily stem from constantly comparing herself to someone else.

In the real world, there are some people who seem to be “good at everything,” but the reality is that everyone has a weakness, maybe more than one. In the world of Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki, Aoi does seem to be highly proficient in everything, and her only weaknesses seem to stem from her questionable sense of ethics. Whether or not Minami can actually defeat Aoi is completely in the hands of the writer. If Minami were a real person, the best thing for her to do is stop comparing herself to Aoi and find another way to stand out from among her peers, a way that matches her skills and talents. For example, Minami has an energy to her that not even Aoi can match. This energy is very useful for lifting her classmates out of a bad mood, but unfortunately, it is not very effective at lifting herself out of despair.

Will Minami be able to overcome her self-criticism? Will she be able to defeat Aoi in the election? Be sure to follow my blog for more Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki reviews!