Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki - 2nd Stage

 Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki - 2nd Stage (弱キャラ友崎くん 2nd STAGE) is the 13 episode conclusion of the series based on the manga of the same name by Yaku Yuki.  This second series aired during he Winter of 2024.

    To recap the first season, Tomozaki, Japans best 'Smash Brothers' player does little to advance in life, assuming he's a bottom tier character in the MMO that is life.  Popular classmate and 2nd best 'Smash Brothers' player, Aoi, challenges him to strive for a better position in life.  She sets before him a series of tasks as if he ws living in an RPG.  The final goal, to have a girlfriend by the third year of high school.  Tomozaki has worked hard to pass all of Aoi's goals.  He has become friends with a number of people in his class and has begun to develop a better opinion of himself.  He still has a long way to go to reach the goals Aoi has set before him.  Now that hes advanced far enough with himself his attention shifts to helping those around him, taking a more proactive approach to things.  When a girl in class becomes to target of bullying at the hands of the most popular girl, Tomozaki can't sit by and allow it to continue.  But this is something he won't be able to do on his own and begins to work with those he has grown closer to in order to find a resolution that won't cause more issues.

    After the resolution of the bullying, Aoi shifts Tomozaki's focus back to himself.  He needs to to begin narrowing his field for a potential girlfriend.  At the same time the class begins to prepare for the upcoming cultural festival.  The class decides to double dip, doing a manga cafe and putting on a play.  Tomozaki suggests doing an original piece and recruits Fuka to provide the script for them to work with.  At the same time Mimimi ropes him into doing a manzai routine.  Fuka and Mimimi are two of the girls he said were in the list of potential girlfriend targets and when Mimimi admits that she likes him, his goals become clouded with internal conflict about what falling in love really means.  He struggles with how to approach either girl and if his intentions are true or not, all while helping both of them to accomplish what they want to do for the cultural festival.  In the background, Aoi sits, observing, hiding her true intentions from everyone, for unknown reasons.

    The second series started from a running position and did a good job of continuing the story.  It did not suffer from the stunted and uninteresting beginning of the story.  It doesn't hurt that the core characters were expanded upon to the point they are all easily identifiable and unique.  The expansion of the story into Tomozaki moving to helping other people showed a logical progression of the story, instead of repeating the same arc's it tread in the prior season.  The bullying arc was relatively satisfying and when it shifted back to focusing on Tomozaki I became concerned that the story was moving backwards.  With Aoi shifting his tasks towards girls, particularly with listing 5 romance targets, it really felt like it was sliding back into being a shitty dating sim story.  That fear was quickly squashed and the final arc went rather well.

    Too many times do high school slice of life stories deal with an awkward play performance.  This story took a better approach and had a well developed original story it was using that really played out as a parallel comparison to the actual plot of the story.  I may not agree with the resolution of Tomozaki's pursuit of romance but it was handled realistically.  In the end I was quite surprised with the quality of the writing and characterizations of this series.  The art wasn't disappointing either, with enjoyable character designs and directing.  It feels like there could be a third part, as there are a few items that surfaced in the course of the second series that should really be expanded upon, but it is hard to tell if this will ever come to pass.  I may need to check out the original light novels, to see how far beyond the story goes.

Both seasons of the anime are available on Crunchyroll in both sub and dub formats.