Wait? A smart workplace comedy about real adult issues I can relate to? A main protagonist that is tall, fiery and introspective while cutting through everyone else’s bullshit? And character interactions involving inner monologues, differing perspectives, and conversations? Welcome to my review.
What It Is
As stated in the opening, this is primarily a workplace comedy. The vast majority of the series takes place within the magazine and tabloids branch of Godansha Publishing, an obvious direct parody of Kodansha. The main protagonist, Hiroko Matsukata, is a 28 year old editor for that magazine and is jokingly referred to as the most “manly” woman in her department with a Super Sentai transformation gag to boot (early on).
What It Isn’t
It’s not mostly all fun and games like ShiroBako or Amagi Brilliant Park, two other workplace comedies aimed primarily at a younger audience. There was some hard drama here, especially within the publishing house. Characters do work themselves into being sick and relationships, gender politics, sexuality, and class dynamics were on display. The show is not for children but instead adults.
What Impressed Me
The soundtrack consisted of a variety of different styles of music being jazz one scene, punk rock the next and then blues afterwards. Music was going at all times in some form and all of it just worked for me. Several tracks were repeated but none of them took me out of the experience. The opening felt very 90s punk rock and reminded me a bit of Weezer’s “Say It Ain’t So.” The ending was a bit less frantic but didn’t feel out of sync with the opening in tone. I have no complaints with the music itself, is what I’m trying to say here.
I was also impressed with how many characters were on display in each episode and how none of them that got major speaking roles and inner monologues truly felt like background characters. They were allowed to leave an impression with a living photo snapshot of them in that moment (including their names, ages, and current job titles) and had things going on outside of work (that weren’t necessarily on display but I wanted to learn about regardless).
Not all characters shown worked in the same location or were in the same industry as Hiroko, but most of them did get to speak about their jobs and their inner worldviews related to those jobs. This series was an ensemble piece that felt less like an advertisement for different careers and more just a general painting of broad strokes to flesh out the lives and careers of those within our heroine’s circle of connections. She made me laugh way more than expected with her anxiety driven outbursts and inner thoughts about having sex with some of them (due to lack of it with her long running relationship with her boyfriend) and other insanity (which luckily didn’t overstay its welcome).
What Disappointed Me
HiDIVE doesn’t have a good quality version of the series. The release had many blurry edges on the hand drawn parts of the Anime, movement was rough with major pixelation in places, and the audio levels felt out of sync at times. Sometimes, the music would overpower the voice work or background audio would sound a bit muted and muffled. I’m not sure if this was an issue with their release or the original but was noticeably distracting. I also felt that some of the music was misplaced in the latter half of the series due to some frequent repetition.
The pacing was pretty inconsistent with too much melodrama at times bogging down the plot of the particular episode it showed up in. The relationship between Hiroko and her boyfriend did feel realistic but also didn’t have enough to it to make me feel attached as well as I would have liked (despite their troubles taking up a pretty hefty chunk of the runtime). I also would have loved to have seen the stakeout photographer, Sagawari, have a bit more of a presence due to his immediate chemistry with her.
Studio Gallop is not known for having high quality output and this series did feel cheap in places. The opening and ending animations were a bit too plain and simple for my liking. The backgrounds were often photos with filtering added to them or just blurry hand drawn scribbles. Characters frequently had little movement to their animations and were very poorly drawn when in the background of scenes. The food also looked pretty plain despite being a big part of the background. For some reason, characters eating was the focus of way too many scenes when the food itself wasn’t at all appealing to my eyes (especially the pasta dishes recycled from scene to scene in a few places). This part may not bother you.
Time to Spoil the Joke Title
This series, also known as ”Working Man,” is considered a classic look into the modern overwork culture prevalent in Japan. The director, Katsumi Ono, directed most of the entire YuGiOh and Symphogear franchises (starting with the 2013 series for the latter). The composer for most of the soundtrack, Yuugo Kanno, was the main composer for all of David Production’s adaptations of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. The sound director, Hideyuki Tanaka, was why the mechs sounded so damn good in Neon Genesis Evangelion. There was some pedigree here and it showed. Source
My Final Thoughts
I had a decent time with Hataraki Man. It was rough in places and the pacing did bog it down a bit for me (especially towards the end), but it wasn’t a bad experience. I’m glad I finished it and would recommend it if you want a more grounded, realistic slice of life workplace series for adults. I wouldn’t recommend watching it on HiDIVE if you can find it elsewhere, though.
If you enjoyed this review, feel free to reblog, vote, comment below and follow me. If you’ve seen this series, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Thanks for reading and have a wonderful day.
Important Info
- Adapted from a Manga of same name by Moyocco Anno
- Studio: Gallop
- Genres: Seinen, Slice of Life, Adult Comedy, Character Piece
- Seasons / Episodes: Fall 2006; 11 Episodes
- Recommended Similar Works: Wagnaria (similar workplace comedy for a younger audience that deals with some darker subjects in the background); A Sister’s All You Need (for a similar adult comedy vibe from the perspectives of mostly the creators that similar publishers serialize works from)