Working!! – First Episode Review

Episode Summary: The staff of Wagnaria restaurant has been feeling somewhat overworked as of late, so their lazy assistant manager decides that it's time to recruit some new blood.  She passes the job of doing so off to Poplar, a tiny girl whose small stature disguises the fact that she's 17 years old.  She has little success convincing her friends and and hawking the position on the street doesn't work either, but she runs into a boy in a residential neighborhood who is instantly charmed by her cuteness.  Takanashi Souta, the boy in question, mistakes Poplar for a lost child at first, but soon discovers her real age and the fact that she's his upperclassman in high school.  He joins the staff of Wagnaria on the basis of his attraction to her cuteness, and soon discovers that the rest of the staff is just as quirky.

While learning the ropes from Poplar (who has trouble doing simple tasks due to her diminutive size), Takanashi meets some other members of the wait staff, including Shirafuji, his manager and complete lazy bum who has a penchant for violence when people tease her about her age. He also shares the floor with Yachiyo, a very sweet, sword-wielding shift supervisor, and Satou, the intimidating chef. However, Takanashi notices that his schedule rarely matches up with that of a mysterious employee named Inami, which he finds out during their first shift together is because she has a violent fear of men.

Thoughts: This show was advertised to death before it was broadcast.  It seems like hardly a day would go by when I wouldn't see a link to yet another commercial starring another member of the cast or some piece of news regarding the show's production or broadcast.  It was even given an early-broadcast as a preview (which is the copy I obtained).  While it obviously took a while for me to watch the series, I spent some of that time pondering why the creators seemed to be pushing it so hard.  I briefly entertained the possibility that the staff was simply so proud of the show that they wanted their hard work to pay off via their overwhelming enthusiasm, but that didn't seem quite right.  The conclusion I settled upon was that there really wasn't anything special about the series and the creators needed to do something to  embed the series, its characters and imagery in the minds of consumers in order to distinguish it from the thirty-something other series barreling out of the gates at the same time. From what I could tell from the first episode, that hypothesis is roughly correct.

I sometimes wonder if I'm wired differently than most people.  I realize that advertisement is a method used to hype something up to a potential audience (and eventually make some money from doing so, natch) and it's a method that clearly works in some cases.  When I come across something heavily-advertised, however, my natural response is to become extremely skeptical and the product being hawked has a much higher barrier to entry than it might were it a more modestly advertised entity.  This isn't very reasonable and I know it; I've let harping by passionate fans steer me away from a number of anime franchises in spite of there being indications that I might otherwise enjoy the viewing experience (Gurren Lagann was a big one that I eventually rectified). So despite going into the first episode already being tired and burnt-out, I'll do my best to keep my response more reasonable that I would normally (hey, you can't blame a person who's already short on time for being angry when that time is wasted, okay?).

Working!! is a prime example of why slice-of-life comedies tend to be extremely hit-or-miss with me.  While the setting might be fertile ground for comedic hijinks (and having known a few people who worked as wait staff I have a good idea of how irritating, humorous or bizarre these situations could potentially be), so much of the appeal of the series rides on the backs of its characters that their development is more important than the location of their antics.  While the characters in this series have their own obvious quirks, those odd behavioral tics, physical peculiarities and goofy attitudes are so completely one-note and pasted-on that the end product feels like a rehash of any number of other slice-of-life comedies. As I mentioned, this is probably a good part of the reason why the advertising for this show was so gosh-darned aggressive; the show isn't memorable enough on its own, so someone had the mission of making it memorable by force.  By the end of episode 1, it was clear to me that this tactic hadn't managed to reach me in the intended manner.

Additionally, I found the character quirks to be that much more irritating than usual.  It's one thing to go the Azumanga route and have a genki girl, a tomboy and an airhead to round out the cast.  At the very least, these are people who one might meet in their own lives, and while it may not be realistic to dilute people down to one or two major character traits, at the very least groups of characters like this tend to mesh well and compliment each-other. The author of Working!! seems to have created his characters based mostly on whatever arbitrary and minor variations on standard character archetypes popped into his mind at the time.  Inami isn't just scared of men, she's violently scared of men (and seemingly for no good reason - perhaps they're saving that for "A Very Special Episode of Working!!"). Yachiyo is the sweetest character of the bunch, who just happens to carry a samurai sword around with her.  Gee, wonder if she's going to, oh I don't know, snap and go all ultraviolent on some poor shmuck. Takanashi is stuck on cute things to the point of seeming like he might be a closet pedophile. The manager is sensitive about her age, but might also have yakuza connections.  Some people might call these characters original and easily-distinguishable from their contemporaries; I see them as victims of their creator trying to turn the dial to "11" without thinking it through first.

The series' one true charm point is its animation, which takes after series like Kannagi which feature very naturalistic, expressive character movement throughout.  Despite feeling disconnected from the sentiment behind the acts themselves, watching Satou mess up Poplar's hair or Inami take a big swing at Takanashi is interesting just on the basis of how the characters are portrayed visually while doing it.  Poplar is especially fun to watch just because her attitude resulting from her small stature is conveyed very visually through the movement of her body.  More generally, there's just a certain nuance and attention to detail that I find very pleasant to watch.

However, while well-drawn movement is certainly fun to sit and examine, the entire setup for the series takes this idea of mechanically interesting visuals and extends it to mechanically filling in the blanks in all aspects of the production.  While I'm sure the characters will have their devoted fans, I found them to be nothing more than templates with a whole lot of useless and focus-less embellishment - embodiments of the "more! weirder!" sentiments that seem to dominate nowadays but which are wholly lacking in the substance department. In short, the decor was funky but the food was stale and the service mediocre.  Check please!

Pros:

• Much of the character animation is surprisingly lifelike and pleasant to watch on its own merits.

Cons:

• This show is a prime example of what happens when something is overhyped - the constant harping from advertisers and news outlets just made the show's flaws more obvious and my drive to watch it in the first place very low.
• The characters are infuriatingly derivative and lack the charm needed to carry the show.

Recommended? No, there are much better and funnier ways to spend one's free time. A series meant for brainless enjoyment doesn't need to be brainlessly constructed.