Review: Jaku-Chara Tomozaki-kun (Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki) Vol. 4
Volume three of Tomozaki left us at the beginning of a new arc. One where Tomozaki doesn’t follow Hinami’s instructions and quests for the purpose of ‘leveling up’ (social climbing, status, etc.), but one where he has fun with his newfound friends while learning new skills from Hinami. What’s the point of treating life as a game if you can’t have fun while playing it? This volume, volume four, is the first volume where Tomozaki is in control of his own destiny (sort of).
Tomozaki’s main assignment in this volume is to get the other ‘Most Popular Girl in the Class’, Erika Konno, to get excited for the upcoming Athletic Festival. At the beginning of the volume, she plays cool and pretends to care less about it. The goal of doing this assignment is for Tomozaki to learn how to ‘read the room’ and ‘manipulate the mood’. To learn why Erika is playing it cool in the first place can be used against her to get her to care. While learning how to ‘manipulate the mood’ sounds evil and PUAish, it really isn’t that bad when it’s used for something as benign as making someone care for a sports day.
The thing that continues to surprise me about this series is the attention to minute details about something as insignificant as small talk or deciding captains for the Athletic Festival. Due to Tomozaki’s way of ‘gamifying’ everything, something that I would view as being psychotic is now viewed as Tomozaki analyzing social situations to come up with ‘strats’ for engaging what Hinami has set out for him. Kind of weird, but not alarming. Especially for picking up hints on how to ‘manipulate the mood’ to make Erika care about the festival, it feels like I’m reading someone trying to play a game. Tomozaki even states that this assignment was like an RPG quest. While I would not ever recommend anyone to do this is real life, the focus on Tomozaki’s mission to gain social skills in terms of a video game makes it way more enjoyable to read.
The one complaint I have about this volume is that it feels like I’m reading filler. From the beginning to near the end, the most important thing that happens plot-wise is that two side-characters start going out. Other than that, this volume has nothing important going on other than the cliffhanger ending. It almost feels like this volume was an intermediary between the first arc and the next major arc.
Tomozaki has been compared to Oregairu for its similarities. While each series’ end-goal is similar, the way they approach it is the polar opposite to each other. While Oregairu relies on the reader/viewer reading in between the lines to pick up the subtext of what is actually going on, Tomozaki has everything set out in front of you, showing everything that is going on, down to the point of explaining the subtext of the current scene. It’s not that the novels think that you’re too stupid to understand what’s going on, it’s the way that we can understand Tomozaki’s decisions and why he made them. With that being said, we’re only four volumes into this series, still enough time to change the tone if it wants to. I hope it doesn’t though, since it would lose most of its charm if it did.
As I stated with my review of the first volume of this series, reviewing light novels like these almost seems like a waste of time. Most light novels are meant to be entertaining, not good. While one can be both at the same time, it’s better to be wacky and entertaining than serious and boring. In that sense, trying to rate one based on how ‘good’ it is can be pointless. That being said, it would be unfair to this series to not take it seriously based on the format it is released. Tomozaki has gotten better with every volume (from ‘bad’ to volume one to ‘okay’ from volume three and four), and I hope it continues getting better. I enjoyed the third volume more than this one, but I still got enjoyment out this one nonetheless. Even though this volume was the same length as the other three, it still felt too short. Maybe it has something to do with it being a start to a new major arc, or maybe I read it too fast. That being said, see you guys in November when the fifth volume comes out.
