I'd hate to see a good show with genuine, heartfelt content in it be dried up in what could be considered by some a poor adaptation, and by the more autistic fans perhaps a "normie filter".
It's almost disheartening to see how poor the presentation of this show is in general. The art direction is incredibly bland, with the backgrounds showcasing the most generic depictions of modern day Japan in history and Fly's very pretty art being placed into animation that doesn't quite match up with the pristine glittery nature of his designs. The music, while good, is horribly misplaced and and throws off the
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tones of certain scenes by a substantial amount. The pacing of the adaptation is horrid, with the first 3 episodes whizzing past you without you having even a clue about what's happenign or where the story is headed.
All of the above, compounded by a bizzare "epic gamerz" hook that has little to nothing to do with the show's themes other than an extremely broad "life is like a video game" thing that Hinami and Fumiya like to throw around sometimes and the rather cringe-inducing way Fumiya acts in the beginning seems to have driven people away in droves.
Indeed, this is the return of the "omg he is so me" type of protagonist that seems to eternally exist within the deep realms of our minds that everybody loves to see on screen. He's doesn't care what anybody thinks! He's got no friends! He's a super cool sigma male who's here to spit on your corpse and fuck your wife! They've existed forever and will probably never go away because there's always going to be that one demographic of people who loves to eat this shit up. These type of omegaloner protags seem to always pull the salt of the guys who stare in from outside, calling them edgy or losers or incels or whatever shitty term is in favor that year.
What strikes me as odd is how these characters all seem to categorically blend together in people's minds. As an example, Hachiman, an unsociable kid who's never had a real chance to make any friends, and Ayanokoji, a psychopath who doesn't understand the concept of friendship, are two incredibly different characters who's stories have little in common. And yet, despite their rather unnuanced differences, people have still just collectively grouped them up into the same type of person for what seems to just be the superficial reason of "they're like, both loners or something, right?". Maybe it's just because all of these guys always seem to be randomly packing heat, or maybe it's because the anime adaptations of these light novels are always shit, but regardless of how high Excaliber stands, the title of King can only ever belong to one.
It doesn't mean that there's no reason that all of these characters always seem to attract the same type of audience, however. There is obviously some reason why these characters are all grouped together. The real categorization, instead, should probably be the "unmotivated protagonist". Never wanting to do anything, never wanting to change, and letting destiny coincidently fall into their hands before they even deliberate on acting. This description rings true for almost all of the lowlife good-for-nothing le "i was bullied 40 years ago" guys that sit on their ass and wait for Misaki's salvation.
Fumichad is not that type of guy.
Waking up at 8 am on Saturday morning, he wakes up and gets out of bed. The ground shakes before him as he marches onwards to open up his Nintendo Switch and grab a Gamecube controller from depths of his asshole, he sits on the smelly destroyed cushion on the floor of his room. His hands already ramp up to 10 billion APM, as he ghosts some combos before his button inputs could be detected by the console.
Fumiya is a guy that just has his priorites elsewhere, and this show is just a show about a guy that shifts his motivations towards self improvement into the real world.
That's pretty much it. This show is about a loser improving both himself and his surroundings through his own effort and Hinami's guidance. For anybody going into this show, please do not take this as another crusade against society and those who have wronged us. It isn't a critque of society at large, but rather the of the indiviual. For what the show is offering and for what you could consider a "call to action" for so many losers in the otaku community, transcendent of cultural boundries. I'd love to exist in a dimension where the struggles of the Tomokos of society are free to suffer in their own patheticness without dirty looks from others, but while real life is much a place where nobody can care enough about anybody else to really think that way, the losers of the world are very quick to rise up and tell those other losers how much better they are then them.
If I've been using too many shitty analogies or whatever, what I'm trying to say is that writing the show off as bad because it's "cringe" or whatever is pretty retarded.
And to the same extent, please don't disregard the show if you disagree with what Hinami seems to view as a "winning state" in life. The series is rather careful of what it likes to showcase as the right and wrong morals a character might act upon, and isn't caught up in broadcasting the author's personal beliefs through a holy messiah.
But saying that brings up another question: if this show isn't a drama series or a romance series, what is this show really about?
Tomozaki-kun is a rather unenjoyable show. I'll reiterate though that this anime's presentation is really quite shit. The art is below average and the soundtrack is incredibly distracting due to a bizzare inconsistency between the mood of the certain scenes and what track plays in the background. The pacing of the show is absolutely horrendous, too, and will feel incredibly rushed and confusing until the later half of the show.
The show itself isn't very entertaining. The comedy is subpar at best, the majority of Fumiya's dialogue with other characters aren't very interesting, and a lot of Fumiya's behaviour is at best sad and at worst incredibly cringe-inducing. It's all compounded by the fact that many of the people who wouldn't mind that last part too much are completely scared away because half the cast, and especially Hinami, can be seen as both the idealized and totemized versions of the perfect riajuu.
It's basically driven many people in it's own target demographic away from the start. Of course, being lonely and antisocial isn't wrong nor is wanting to experience relationships in a natural, more genuine matter, but many seem to already have taken whatever Hinami said and just ran away with it like the author has injected his own blood and tears into her words.
Keep in mind that Tomozaki-kun isn't a romance series or a proper drama series until the later volumes/season 2, either. So what we've really been left with seems to be an adaptation not too disimilar to the "quality difference" between the Monogatari's series' first and second seasons.
But for anybody who's interested in seeing the show, please keep your balls empty and your mind open to whatever is to come, and I promise you that you will have a much better time then you would otherwise.
Mar 26, 2021
Jaku-Chara Tomozaki-kun
(Anime)
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I'd hate to see a good show with genuine, heartfelt content in it be dried up in what could be considered by some a poor adaptation, and by the more autistic fans perhaps a "normie filter".
It's almost disheartening to see how poor the presentation of this show is in general. The art direction is incredibly bland, with the backgrounds showcasing the most generic depictions of modern day Japan in history and Fly's very pretty art being placed into animation that doesn't quite match up with the pristine glittery nature of his designs. The music, while good, is horribly misplaced and and throws off the ... 
Dec 8, 2020
IS: Infinite Stratos 2
(Anime)
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When I was a kid, I lived in a rural part of Fujian in China, a few hours away from Xiamen. We lived on a mountain of sorts and the main industry of the village was mining ceramics, due to the high abundance of the material and the relatively cheap labour cost. I really, really hated it back in that village. The air was nasty as hell, the water was always polluted with mud and dust and all sorts of germs, and every time you walked back into your house you'd cover the entire floor with dust that would choke every breath you took and
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