Bottom-tier Character Tomozaki is an anime that suffers an inorganic script despite its desperate attempts to achieve a sincerity that’s only muddled in its convolution and contrivance; its symbolism is so on-the-nose that it disgraces the subtlety inherent in incorporating such in a composition. (Think about any sort of foreshadowing of Mimimi’s infatuation for Tomozaki and Kikuchi’s play here.) It alienates its viewers even during its most intimate because of the rigidity that it’s afraid of discarding for something truly sincere and resonating in its audience’s hearts. With an incredibly mundane script that’s degraded whenever the anime tries to color it with its shoehorned platitudes, the anime remains clunky even in stationary instances, and its delivery always seems insufficient.

One particular aspect that I furrowed my eyebrows at whenever inserted in the anime’s already lackadaisical script was the occasional usage of video game terminologies and analogies among Tomozaki and Hinami, which are of a nature so ludicrous as to cheese in the savviness of the two characters in video games. It must then follow that the only notable development I ever found in this season was the virtual absence thereof throughout the second half of the story, of which it becomes more bearable without my personal issues with the bland script. However, the plot that carries such, as well as the presentation that burdens itself with that upon its back, erodes the majority of possible, positive comments that I could ever formulate in my head regarding the anime.

Another feature inherent in Tomozaki that I would like to mention is certain characters’ adjustment to generic attitudes for the sake of soothing themselves into their environment, for Tama’s character demonstrates a development of that gone successful through the generic conversational jabs she learns from her friends, contrasting Tomozaki’s incapability to let a conversation he isn’t intrinsically drawn to flow. Note the following down: Tomozaki isn’t an anime about genuinely expressing one’s own feelings; it is an anime that aims for generic appeal, whether that be founded in its world or in a meta sense. Any hint of sincerity one may derive from Tomozaki is shattered the moment one finds that it is about reaching a level of social moderation; the factors contributing to such matter not. Hinami solidifies this whenever one allows her the moment of speech for Tomozaki. Her plans for him are merely only ways for him to reach a level of accessibility and openness to others around him, whether the way he conducts his strides towards the goals she’s arranged for him is inorganic or of sincerity. What matters first and foremost is the objective; the means through which one achieves such is of secondary importance.

Tama's character arc is spoiled with a script that doesn't trust the viewer enough to make a point without pampering them. (No, Tomozaki, I would much prefer this scene without your monologuing an already conspicuous element prominent throughout it.) It is detached from provoking any pinch of engagement from the viewer with its convoluted developments and comical tamings of Tama’s character. This banality is only amplified more with its bleak presentation, utterly devoid of any visual literacy: in the most tense, mere pans and amateurishly but adequately stitched sequences; in the most sentimental, attempts at obfuscating a shred of intimacy by over-emphasizing lighting or tonal dissonance, much grounded in the anime's tactlessness to its surroundings. This inflexibility in presentation is elucidated in the latter half of the season, in which the narrative focuses more on character development, one awfully relative to others.

Soon, Tomozaki, Kikuchi, and Mimimi enter a love triangle that shapes the latter half of the season, in which the most character development Tomozaki acquires from oscillating between the two main heroines is from the manifestation of such selections, when his introspection familiarizes us with his current discontents with his interpersonal relationships with those around him—soon resolved by the action of one of those he holds a comical attachment to, Mimimi. Once this detachment is enclosed, the character development of Tomozaki remains stagnant, and the nourishing of such shifts its focus onto the two, current main heroines: Kikuchi and Mimimi. Any sort of nuance to be possibly found in his self-resolve is disintegrated for the sake of polishing these two and their personal conflicts.

Kikuchi’s main concern is the overreliance she’s refined in her comfort space, which includes her zealous interactions with Tomozaki and her taciturness, all of which have materialized a desire to branch out from her space of solace for what she obscurely describes as the “world’s ideal,” i.e., how she perceives others necessitates her to become, one she believes contrasts her nature to the presumable perfection of the class Madonna Aoi Hinami. Of course, this is all a confinement she has surfaced with mere assumptions of her environment, which ultimately disregards how she truly feels about certain objects significant to her and so is thus only a self-centered overview on the environment. However, instead of portraying the dimensions to her situation with a cohesive fragmentation that simmers the nuances within such, Tomozaki figures its best utility to be the iron ladle with which it brews an unengaging approach to her conflicts: So little attention is actually focused on Kikuchi’s development as a character because of the rushed pacing of the narrative as well as the narrative’s inclination to molding a character like a boring university lecture (or a dialogue of minimal stylistic endeavor, for that matter). Viewers are spoonfed the situation around Kikuchi whenever the narrative ever cares to showcase her direction of the class’s practices of their play—the script of which she wrote, and so she balances between directing and scriptwriting, though this feat is hardly ever probed upon, something I consider a missing piece in her character development—but the narrative never dares to come close to Kikuchi’s internal conflict aside from superficial instances of interlaced discord, thereby instead focusing on the environment rather than the character. One could argue that this is a commendable touch to the sort of “oppression” Kikuchi feels from her surroundings that are never controlled under her stead, but the dialogue between characters assessing the situation contrasts that notion by trying to empathize with Kikuchi’s inward discontents. Thus, disorientation is founded by an acute clash between two significantly equal layers of narrative in audiovisual form.

It isn’t any less surprising to say that how the anime showcases Tomozaki’s attempts to trace Kikuchi’s behavior are as insipid as the ambivalence thereof. Again, this structure of the story is struck by its attempt to shoehorn the dynamics of all the characters in a rushed manner. As I previously mentioned, the story arc’s focus oscillates between Tomozaki’s relationship between the two main heroines, Kikuchi and Mimimi, of which the former bears a denser application in the plot. Consequently, whenever the focus of the story awkwardly shifts to Tomozaki and Mimimi’s adorkable interactions (with the subtleties in their expressions and bodies a refreshing touch to see, considering the anime’s abstinence from such in other departments), the perplexing abyss within Kikuchi’s character arc is only ever so enhanced. Though I could have tolerated this sort of attitude had it been handled with more tact, the narrative expects us to consistently understand that Tomozaki is brewing an adequate model of her character in the intervals between his charming banter with Mimimi. Indeed, it plays a role in amplifying the shared experience of the viewer and Tomozaki, both of whom lack the layers through which their lenses may operate under, but it is done at the cost of a contextualization that the anime continues to expect you to hinge upon.

In the 11th episode, Tomozaki, upon remembering a Michael Andi book of significance to Kikuchi—The Popple on Raptor Isle—decides to leaf through it overnight. Unlike the several, vivid drafts of Kikuchi’s play, crudely titled My Unfamiliar Way to Fly, that are iterated throughout the course of this story arc, the details of the book are simplified so as to deliver a single, direct unveiling of Kikuchi’s character. Naturally, in eschewing the fine minutiae—a characteristic that Kikuchi unequivocally scopes upon due to her inclination towards nuanced character writing, as implied throughout her numerous chats with Tomozaki—the impact intended in such a blow is lost, felt to be shoehorned at best, blundered at worst. This juncture only worsens as the scene progresses, as Tomozaki suggests elements that even the viewer is disillusioned about considering their unfamiliarity of the work being importantly referenced at the moment. He provides her a push that feels weightless to the viewer, so the only good the scene does then is to continue the plot with a forced development.

Moreover, since Kikuchi’s play’s drafts are iterated throughout the story arc with the essential elements intact (thus decently forming a cohesive whole I shan’t complain about much), the whiplash upon seeing it being shoddily performed on the stage is of attention to my withered eyes. With already salient symbolism that abandons any nuance or subtlety in the concocting of the play and the visceral feelings Kikuchi holds for it, it’s a shallow enough article of reliance that the narrative frequently uses to express Kikuchi’s current states of thought. Bulldozing through the sordidly rigid-looking postures and actions of the actors—of which the characters they portray are representative of Hinami, Tomozaki, and Kikuchi’s personalities (although you already knew that considering the fact that Mimimi utters them with complete conviction, used as devices for maximized comprehensibility of the situation and plot progression, another nail to the head on the anime’s on-the-nose approach to its narrative)—numerous moments of spatial inconsistency, a condensed performance of the story that the viewer’s become all too familiar with, and the other pompous characteristics it blindly wears, one finds Kikuchi’s mundane attitude towards Tomozaki according to her “ideal world.”

Again, since any shred of character development Tomozaki could’ve attained through this story arc is eschewed for the sake of developing the main heroines instead, Tomozaki is at a stagnance. Though he may have been dejected for a while after understanding Kikuchi’s intentions with that bewildering and perplexing conclusion, a little push from Mimimi sends him to convince Kikuchi in a world that would be ideal for her: not through her words, but through his. Throughout the anime, Tomozaki has always refined Kikuchi’s ideals by offering his own thoughts that then supersede her perceptions for the presupposed “better.” He tells her about refining her solace in the world instead, for that is what she is truly passionate about. Therefore, Kikuchi’s character development isn’t the embracement of a world by her unadulterated accord, but a refinement of it—pertaining to her personal desires—with her reliance on Tomozaki. Therefore, Kikuchi’s character development is practically nil. Of course, her relationship with Tomozaki has deepened, but her state as a character is essentially the same as always, a girl passionate about nuanced artistic expression through language and reliant on Tomozaki as a supporting pillar. However, this holds little difference to her starting square. The whole point of her taking the courage she needed to shape the class play was for her to develop as a girl who others could rely on, for she was dissatisfied with her preceding notions of bonds, but Tomozaki tells her that it’s okay to regress to that as long as she can still branch out while in that state, which is something that Kikuchi had already been doing. Him opening up about this only made her slightly more demanding of his attention—the absolute crux of this character development nonsense. As with how Tomozaki oscillates between Kikuchi and Mimimi in his romantic endeavors, Kikuchi’s story arc has been loaded with her oscillating between the “world’s ideals,” as perceived by herself which immediately questions the concreteness of such a phrase, and her desires—one tiresome, lackadaisical treatment of character writing akin to that of a ping pong match.

On the other hand, Mimimi’s inner conflicts are more romantically centered than those of Kikuchi’s. Mimimi constantly finds herself in a conundrum with the mass of girls she finds to be held in a potentially romantic regard for Tomozaki, though a fair number of these are her little delusions, such as the moment in which she encounters Tomozaki’s co-worker Tsugumi Narita and her friends and proceeds to comically doubt his decency as a man. Mimimi’s character development is rooted more in resilience and acceptance, as she cherishes the transient moments she shares with Tomozaki while hiding herself with a face of acceptance of his state of affairs, a passive approach that contrasts Kikuchi’s active actions to cater to a world she deems “ideal” in her story arc.

Besides a few savory moments ruined by the anime’s insipid production values, the moments in which Mimimi interacts with Tomozaki are brimmed with the appropriate atmosphere and tone. Though their snark is repetitive, it feels digestible from a mellow perspective of an adorkable couple of high school youths with a romantic ambivalence tied to their relationship. Mimimi can act in rather exaggerated ways, but they complement the density and rigidity of an individual like Tomozaki. The script doesn’t particularly flourish around these instances, but it definitely has a standard that suffices the dynamics between the two, and it pertains to said dynamic enough to be free of acute criticism.

However, as with the case of Kikuchi, I find the anime to be too afraid of shifting character perspectives for a satisfactory amount of time. Because of its adherence to unfolding through the lenses of the protagonist Tomozaki, it misses the moments in which Tomozaki’s presence cannot be savored by the environment. When Mimimi tolerates Tomozaki leaving the park to focus on the play with Kikuchi, I wish to see more of Mimimi’s conduct once he leaves. I wish to see the nuances that tug her heart to her desire for him. Most of the time the anime cares to show us Mimimi lamenting over her infatuation for Tomozaki, Tomozaki’s presence is there for her to consider and think about. This reliance the narrative holds for Tomozaki is a flaw that deters the viewer from thoroughly understanding the minutiae the characters bear in themselves, a characteristic I think enhances the resonating quality of a narrative set in one’s juvenile years. Subsequent to pushing Tomozaki to confront Kikuchi about her presumed rejection of him, Mimimi bawls with her broken heart, but that bawling is only a superficial layer to understanding her character, which, once again, eschews the significant reason why this love triangle was set in the first place (to develop its characters).

In spite of its efforts to produce a raw sentiment among its cast, Bottom-tier Character Tomozaki 2nd Stage lacks a conviction in its delivery dichotomous to the one Mimimi has to support her loved one, even if it risks the structure of her relationship. The series is loaded with superficial elements that hinder any possible nuance in its progression as a truly sincere work. Its presentation is second-rate and insufficient to the anchor its content holds with its saccharine desire to reach a level of sensibility and relatability. At its best, one finds slightly nuanced interactions (not necessarily exclusive to dialogue) between characters. At its worst, an insipid, regressive work that lacks the vitality to achieve the humanity it shallowly emulates. Tomozaki is a banal work that cannot balance any of its layers, thereby propagating one mess of a script of character writing, symbolism, plot progression, all of which is never elevated by its rigid audiovisuals.