Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki light novels will end with volume 12 on October 16
Author Yuki Yaku revealed the cover of the final volume of the Gagaga Bunko series, which ran for more than a decade and inspired two Project No.9 anime seasons.
Fumiya Tomozaki's game of life is down to its final level. Author Yuki Yaku announced on X on September 30 that Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki Lv.12 will close out the light novel series, and he shared Fly's cover art for the book, due in Japanese stores on October 16.
In his post, Yaku pointed out that the series has been running for over ten years. He wrote that he had reached his own answer to the questions the story has been working through, and that this is why he settled on the 12th volume as the last. The end has been approaching for a while: the novels began their "last stage" with volume 11 in March 2023.
Shogakukan launched the series under its Gagaga Bunko imprint in May 2016. The premise treats social life like a game with rules that can be learned. Tomozaki sits at the top of the Attack Families leaderboard yet is a nobody at school, until he agrees to meet the game's second-ranked player offline and discovers she is Aoi Hinami, his seemingly flawless classmate. Hinami sees real life as a game worth playing seriously and offers to teach him how.
The story spread beyond prose. Eight Chida drew a manga adaptation that ran in Square Enix's Monthly Gangan Joker from December 2017 to February 2021, and a spin-off about Minami Nanami, illustrated by Bana Yoshida, has run in Monthly Sunday Gene-X and MangaONE. Yen Press releases both the novels and the manga in English.
On screen, Project No.9 turned the books into two TV seasons directed by Shinsuke Yanagi: a 12-episode first season in winter 2021 and the 13-episode 2nd Stage in winter 2024, with a cast that includes Gen Sato, Hisako Kanemoto and Ai Kayano. Crunchyroll offers both seasons in North America, the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and more than 120 other territories.
