Working!!

Title: Working!! Genre: Comedy Rating: 8/10

Summary: Set in a family restaurant in Hokkaido, the northern prefecture of Japan, 16 year old high school student Takanashi Souta works part-time along with his strange co-workers: Taneshima Poplar, a high school girl who’s a year older than Souta who’s easily mistaken for a elementary/middle schooler, and Shirafuji Kyoko, the 28-year old store manager who doesn’t bother to do any work at all. (MAL).

Review: Working!! turned out a little different than I first expected. Unfortunately it was different for the worse. Let me begin by letting everyone know that the series did live up to its genre. Every episode gave me a good laugh, mixing with enough conflict to keep the atmosphere interesting in this small family restaurant. When I started watching Working!! I expected it to easily hit 20+ episodes. I felt a kind of crashing when information was released that it only had 13 episodes. Considering I learned such information roughly 10 episodes in, and it showing no signs of ending, I was a bit shocked.  There were so many directions the anime could have taken itself. I understand that keeping a comedy funny can be rather difficult, but I don’t think it needed to be cut so short. I was far from tired with the running gags, which actually progressed the story nicely. On top of that a new character was introduced in the last episode (although you see her in the background of previous episodes). I felt that the producers really cut the audience short. Now that my ranting is out of the way, let’s move onto other matters. The art style was very simplistic. Color variety was at a minimal, which made the anime seem slightly under the average budget. Personally I liked the style the illustrator took especially the constant background changes. One moment would be a normal restaurant, and the next is a shiny, happy background amplifying the cute factor of the girls. The best were the illustrated thoughts going through the character’s minds. It added a whole new flavor to comedy. Someone… someone one…  The opening had me saying this over and over throughout the day. The catchy tune and phrase made it really stick. Admittedly at first I tended to skip the opening, but it slowly grew on me and I started to listen to it every time. As for background music, there was hardly any, which didn’t bother me considering Working!! is meant to be a comedy. I don’t think that adding music would help, in fact it would probably only hurt the comedic factor of most scenes.

Final statements: I know that I said quite a few negatives about this anime, but it did what it was meant to do: make the audience laugh. I wasn’t expected a strong storyline or heavy character development, who does with a comedy? At first I didn’t like the main character, but he started to grow on me after a while. All in all my only real complaint is that the anime cut itself short. I am hoping that they are in the making of a season two, since season one had no sense of resolve. Definitely a preferred watch.