I think I might have become one of those people who prefers to read the manga or light novel over watching the anime.
I mean, don't get me wrong, I enjoy a good anime, but for some reason my brain tells me it's somehow more "effort" to watch an anime than it is to read something — and consequently I've found myself investing in expanding my collections of several manga and light novel series recently.
Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki is my first experience reading Japanese light novels and I wasn't quite sure what to think at first, but before long I was very much enjoying myself. And once I got into the second volume, I was very much hooked.
The idea of a series of books all based around the same characters in the same setting isn't a new one of course — I grew up reading stuff like the Secret Seven and the Famous Five, after all, and these days there's stuff like Harry Potter and its ilk in the YA sector.
But there's something… I don't know, "different" about the way light novels handle things. Each volume clearly stands by itself, but it's part of something bigger — even if that "something bigger" is something that doesn't really matter or which isn't especially dramatic compared to wizards battling or whatever. Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki is about a shy nerd who gradually learns how to talk to people, for example, and that's it. He's not a great hero or a chosen one, he's not a harem master, he doesn't have some great destiny ahead of him — he's just a shy nerd. And getting to know him — and the people he gets to know — is a real pleasure.
As for manga, I think I've been quite fortunate in that the manga I've explored to date tend to work a bit better in that format than in anime. Komi Can't Communicate, for example, is full of visual gags that only really work with text — and where some of those have been recreated note for note in the anime they look very out of place. (That said, the Nagatoro anime was very good — but I do still think I might prefer the manga).
Anyway, that's my idle pondering for the evening taken care of. Now it's time to start volume 3 of Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki before sleep. Christmas party tomorrow! Yay…?
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