Anime Review – Skull-face Bookseller Honda-san

A skeleton named Honda works in a bookstore. Hilarity ensues daily in his work at the shop’s manga counter. – ANN

Streaming: Crunchyroll

Episodes: 12 (11-minutes apiece)

Source: Manga

Review: This review may contain spoilers for the series.

Everyone’s life experiences are different, but if I could name one thing that’s been relatively consistent among the people I know, it’s that they all have some experience working in customer service. Whether, like me, it’s something they did during high school and college to help pay for school or other needs, or whether it’s work they do today, it’s an experience we can all bond over.

When I was in high school thinking of applying for a part time job, I had a mental hierarchy of what I’d like to do. I definitely wanted to avoid food service if I could; I have a weird aversion to getting greasy and wasn’t keen on slinging fries. I ended up working for nearly 7 years at a big-box discount retailer which, like just about any service job, was a good learning experience that taught me the joys and challenges of working to help customers.

Even though I never got the chance to find out personally, I always thought that it would be interesting to work at a book store. The quiet atmosphere always looked appealing, and as someone who’s always loved to read it seemed like it would have been a perfect fit. Then the collapse of Border’s kind of put an end to that fantasy and I moved on with my life.

Skullface Bookseller Honda-san is a tale all about the experience of working in a book store. The author (and main character) Honda-san is one of several employees at a manga-focused book shop, which at first glance sounds like living the dream. One of the first things that Honda articulates, however, is that members of the general public like you or me have our preconceived notions about the potential joys of working among the stacks, as well as the the traits that make a good bookshop employee. According to Honda’s wisdom, most of these ideas are either misinformed or downright wrong.

The reality is that working in and managing a bookstore all boils down to customer service, and customer service can be one of the most difficult jobs to perform depending on your personality. Honda-san’s customer-facing experiences range from attempting to help foreigners using his broken English, dealing with dejected or irate customers who are searching fruitlessly for sold-out volumes, and accommodating (or not) complicated requests or interpreting half-descriptions in order to aid people’s connections with their new favorite pieces of literature. That’s all in addition to managing back-stock, keeping the shelves orderly, and designing and implementing displays and special sales that keep both customers and publishers happy. There’s obviously much more to the job than a winning smile and a “welcome to our store!”

These revelations all come about through the anime’s related, but not necessarily chronological, vignettes. Some of the bits focus directly on quirky customers, some on the various other employees inside and outside the store, and still others on aspects of the business that might not seem at all compelling at first glance, but which add to its broad picture of the paths our favorite manga take before we’re able to buy them. It’s a really unique insider look at all of this, through the eyes of someone who actually performs the job.

This series is possibly one of the funniest anime I’ve seen lately. There are a lot of anime comedies that don’t sit right with me, because they tend to be either too mean-spirited, too esoteric, or too cringe-y for me to deal with. Honda-san is funny because it tackles humor from many different angles, but seems to do so out of a spirit of love and appreciation rather than anger or frustration. It pokes fun at the individual quirks of Honda’s different coworker, but pretty much never in a way that could be interpreted as hurtful – they’re all just extremely passionate people, some of whom have extremely specific interests or traits (like superhuman box-lifting strength or the ability to keep the store looking orderly no matter how many customers tear through the stacks or swap around different volumes). The gags can be a little self-deprecating when it comes to Honda-san himself, but never in a way that crosses into self-loathing.

There’s a lot of referential humor, though that can be more of a mixed bag depending on how familiar different viewers are with various popular manga titles and imagery. There’s a sequence late in the series where Honda shares his opinions on the output of various publishers, and there are several pretty recognizable character images (partly obscured, naturally) from franchises like My Hero Academia, Berserk, and Natsume’s Book of Friends, to name a few. This kind of thing is fun for people like me who get puffed-up about our broad knowledge of various manga and anime titles. However, the gag may fall a little flat without that kind of background.

The first episode also gave me a good laugh (and impressed me, too) with its focused and loving look at BL fans and their fervor. BL/yaoi fandom has gotten dumped on for most of the time that I’ve been an anime fan, so my expectations weren’t high when I saw the show meandering in that direction. Rather than make fun of insulting stereotypes that exist for this subculture, Honda comments on how extensive and international the fan-base is, and how they almost always come in to the shop knowing exactly the type of thing they’re looking for. The humor comes from seeing oneself reflected in the on-screen images, and this is a trend that continues throughout the series.

There are also some truly touching moments, believe it or not. In one episode, Honda helps a father and son from Texas locate volumes of the Naruto manga, and the two generations bond over the experience. I don’t really care much about Naruto, but I do deeply understand the experience of connecting with others through a shared interest in a piece of media, and I was unexpectedly in tears during this otherwise funny and over-the-top scene.

The only real criticism I can honestly level against this series is for its very limited animation. It’s not an action series and I don’t think much “real” animation is required, but I do know that its limited vector-animated look isn’t everyone’s favorite. On the other hand, one thing I liked a lot about the visual style of the series was its incorporation of characters with different body types, different genders, and various ages, which can be a rarity in anime.

Skullface Bookseller Honda-san isn’t just humorous and informative, although I obviously laughed and learned a lot through watching it. What distinguishes it is its sympathetic look at the lives of customer service professionals doing their best to please their most fervent and passionate customers. Most of us will recognize Honda’s exhaustion after getting off the phone with an angry customer, but also his elation at being able to help a kind one soon afterward. It’s that endless roller-coaster of emotions, as well as the satisfaction of a job well done, that sustains people doing this difficult (and sometimes thankless) kind of work.

This series manages to tell this very universal story without the overwhelming cynicism one might expect, and that alone is extremely refreshing. The fact that it’s so focused on manga in particular is a wonderful and welcome bonus.

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Pros: A great look at customer service jobs, manga fandom, and bookstore work, all in a relatively positive, funny package. Good character diversity (even ignoring the silly masks worn by the employees).

Cons: The animation is extremely limited.

Grade: A-