The Spring 2024 Manga Guide

I Want a Gal Gamer to Praise Me

What's It About? 

When high school shut-in Raito Sasaki hires a pro gamer coach to help hone his FPS skills, he never expected that the one knocking on his door would be Rion Suzuki―a cute and fashionable beauty the same age as him! With such a charming and supportive gamer gal cheering him on, can Raito take his game to the next level, or will the pressure of being up close and personal with a bombshell like Rion lead him to throw?

I Want a Gal Gamer to Praise Me is a manga with story and art by Geshumaro. Ko Ransom translated the manga into English. This volume was retouched and lettered by Ivo Marques. Published by Yen Press (March 19, 2024).

Is It Worth Reading?

I respect the forthrightness of I Want a Gal Gamer to Praise Me. If the title somehow didn't make it obvious, you also have author Geshumaro confirming in notes that this series, shockingly, was entirely conceived around the appeal of playing video games while a gal praises you. Fair enough, fiction has entertained far odder fantasies. The biggest issue is how much there will be to this beyond watching a dude fumble with a controller while We-Have-Kitagawa-Marin-At-Home encourages him to git gud.

In the beginning, I Want a Gal Gamer to Praise Me has shockingly little going on beyond the waifu wish-fulfillment of its titular premise. Geshumaro doesn't draw much of the actual video games themselves, so most of the "action" is just dramatic shots of our dude Sasaki sitting and tapping buttons while Rion breasts boobily around him. As Rion games more later on, the artist indulges in drawing her sexily crouched in her gamer chair—this book is like 75% pinups by volume. And hey, the facial expressions are nicely varied. The script throws in some mild gamer lingo via Rion's coaching, but it's all pretty generic stuff that mostly serves as a lead-in for her patting Sasaki's head and calling him her little pogchamp. Even the gyaru slang that Rion uses feels restrained in the translation here. There is one brief allusion to Rion having to deal with the unique sexist struggles of being a girl gamer. Still, it comes and goes quickly in favor of focusing on her and Sasaki's intersecting confidence issues instead. This leads to something resembling a character dynamic, but it's as light as everything else in this manga.

The fanservice aspect mostly feels hobbled by how perfunctory its arrangement is. Rion's hardly the most sharp-tongued gal, instead being an assuring, non-threatening gift of a girl who accepts everything about Sasaki's mediocre existence and throws herself into playing games with him. It'd be nice to get more insight into her as a person, but at least neither Sasaki nor the writing feels like they're dismissive or disdainful of her. As far as light, fanservice romance comedy, you could do a lot worse. Plus, halfway through, the volume introduces Sasaki's tanned blonde-haired tomboy childhood friend, and like the people who want a gal gamer to praise them, I have my sirens I am not immune to.

I'll be honest, everybody: I somewhat hated the first half of this book because of how incredibly generic it was. I can't knock the volume for false advertisement because it is what it set out to be: a story about a young, awkward boy who wants to be praised by a gamer gal. It seems like wish fulfillment in the most direct way, but a few little things caught my attention. The story is about a young boy who hires a gamer who happens to be a gal for a set amount of time, specifically so that she can help him be better at playing video games. The first half of this book is just them being in a room, dealing with every awkward cliché you can imagine while the time runs out. Every chapter ended with exactly that: a timer showing how much time their session had left, and to my surprise, the book didn't wait till the very end for the timer to run out. There was more to tell after the gaming sessions were done.

What follows is still as generic as what preceded it, but there is real character growth here, with our main characters slowly wanting to come out of their shell. I must admit I started liking the interactions between our two leads and buying the romance between them. It's nothing you haven't seen before, and I don't think you're missing a lot by skipping it altogether. But by the end, I didn't feel like my time was as wasted as I initially thought it would be. It's also pretty to look at, so I guess it also has that going for it. Maybe the trend will continue as things get more interesting the more the story goes on, but that's not up for us to decide now.