Title: I Want a Gal Gamer to Praise Me Vol. 2
Author: Geshumaru
Publisher: Yen Press
Language: English
Format: Paperback
Pages: 162
Genre: Romance, Comedy
Publication Date: July 23, 2024
The Story
Raito continues his training alongside Rion in Bpex Legends; however, he’s doing it now inside of a gaming club that he and Rion started! The only problem is that they are the only two members in the club as nobody else has joined yet. Meanwhile, we see two new girls, Kokoa Nikaido and Yakumo Azuma grow awfully suspicious of Raito. Turns out they are Rion’s friends so they decide to scope out the clubroom and overhear some rather suggestive dialogue!! They burst in and discover that Raito has some things in common with them! +2 to Raito’s friend stat!
Meanwhile, Rion wants to 1v1 Raito so that he can learn how to move and attack better. Of course, as expected, Raito gets completely destroyed. This brings us to Friday and when Raito looks for Rion to tell him about a previous engagement that he has to attend, she’s nowhere to be found. He learns that she has team practice on Fridays and sometimes she doesn’t even show up to school because of it! (talk about dedication!).
This leaves Raito free to hang out with Yuu! She previously asked to hang out and they agreed that Friday would be the day where they do so. Yuu teases him and calls it a date; however, he reminds her that they are just going to play video games together. On the way to Raito’s house, Yuu wants to play the game they played as kids… “The sun is lava.” As they play and reminisce about the past, Yuu goes for a pretty big jump and stumbles. Raito catches her in a very precarious position!! The volume ends with Raito wondering why she’s so flustered. Hmm…
Characters
Yuu was a big focus here in this volume and they didn’t exactly leave the volume on a cliffhanger. Of course, with Raito wondering why Yuu got flustered, it could be seen as a cliffhanger… if they didn’t make it painfully obvious that she’s in love with him. I mean, they are childhood friends after all and when Raito found out she was a girl, it made things that much more interesting for her. She teases him left and right and with her facial expressions, it’s only natural that she developed a crush (or had one all this time.)
Outside of that, we just have our two new characters in Kokoa and Yakumo. Even though they have plenty of screen time, I can’t really get a read on how they are as characters. At first, they just seemed like protective friends of Rion… and then they came off as super nosy… then they both fangirled when they found out that Raito liked or, at least, heard of some of their niche interests. I want to say Yakumo is more laid-back based on her character design but she hasn’t really shown that, at least not blatantly. So far, they feel like common random support characters. We’ll see if the series goes any deeper into them in the future.
As for Raito and Rion… nothing new to report. Rion is still strongly hinting that she likes Raito and Raito is as oblivious as ever. He still sucks at Bpex Legends so nothing new on that front, either!
Final Thoughts
Another fun volume that builds nicely off the introduction to the series. We have a couple of new characters and we have some expansion on the history between Yuu and Raito. Call me crazy but I’m rooting for Yuu and Raito to get shipped more than I am Raito and Rion. Sadly, I know that Rion is the main character, and series like this don’t exist to ship the main’s counterpart with a supporting character but sometimes a supporting character feels like the right fit! Plus, you don’t see enough of those types of stories where the supporting character wins out in the end and gets the girl/guy.
There is room for Kokoa and Yakumo to develop feelings for Raito, too, turning this into a… quadrangle? Parallelogram? Rectangle? Love story. Oh yeah, they call that a harem. In a way, this is sort of like a harem already and we’re only on the second volume. There’s room to add more to Raito’s collection while having him remain oblivious to it all… which is another hallmark trait of a harem. Oh, God… this is truly a harem, isn’t it?
Be that as it may, this was a fun volume and I’m looking forward to seeing Yuu and Raito’s “date” in the next volume!
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This item was provided for review by Yen Press