Ranked #533

Working!!

With the coming of an Anime with just about no plot, one wonders how good something like Working!! can actually be. To my surprise, what was supposed to be a filler series to pass the time for me ended up being one of the most enjoyable of spring 2010.

There isnt much of a story really. Takanashi justs goes to work at a family restaurant full of weird and unique co-workers and takes it from there for the rest of the series. However even with the lack of a real story, Working!! makes up for easily with their characters. Even with the lack of plot, a handful of the characters were well done in the sense that they achieve what this anime was ment to do, to make us laugh. There were quite a bit of running gags, but still has more then enough to keep you watching.

For an anime with very minimal plot, it does a very outstanding job in entertaining its viewers and is definitely worth watching. read more

Working!, a popular anime adapted from a 4koma which is riding on the "moe" wave was one of the better shows of the Spring 2010 season.

We start off the story with a young man named Souta Takanashi or more commonly known as Shinra or Lelouch. This young man is looking for a job to support his dysfunctional family filled with eccentric women. He is forced to help put food on the table for his underprivileged family and begins working a restaurant called the Wagnaria (Denny's) and meets a large array of hilarious characters. Takanashi needs to support his family because of the troubles at home. His mother works long hours and his father is dead yet due to his mother being an office lady she doesn't make enough to feed the family. Takanashi must take care of his 4 eccentric sisters by working at the restaurant. His oldest sister, Kazue, despite being a lawyer and in her 30's lives at home after going through a divorce and losing custody of her kids because she got home late and beat them. It's a miracle that she still can practice law and beat her kids but that's Japan's problem. Takanashi also needs to support his depressed siste, Izumi, who's liable to kill herself at any given moment and is too depressed to walk. Despite being nearly 30 she still lives at home and complains about the colorful world and keeps to her dark room. (If I could pick a girl from the show to be my wife, I'd take her..she'd fit my dark and brooding vampiric lifestyle perfectly). On top of that he has to take care of his drunken sister, Kozue, who despite somehow holding down a job spends all of her money on liquor and abortions for all the times she has unprotected sex with various men. To top it all off Takanashi's youngest sister Nazuna is manipulative and a dominatrix despite being in elementary school. As you can see Takanashi's family circumstances are very dark and upsetting which is the undertone for this series. I personally found the darkness and depth of this show to be excellent since I am a dark person myself and I like to sit in a dark corner at Starbucks and drink black coffee.

While at work Takanashi's life is just as hard. He has to deal with a group of mentally unstable and eccentric people that are most likely on drugs (it's just like Denny's here in the US, the one by me was shut down because they were cooking meth in the basement). Takanashi is repeatedly beaten and abused by Mahiru Inami, a self proclaimed "androphobe" but in reality is just tweaking from her lack of meth at work. He also has to deal with the two strongest men in Ikebukuro, Satou and Souma who happen to the cooks. They do nothing but troll him and make fun of him and offer little consideration for Takanashi's home issues. He also has to work with a mentally challenged yet well endowed short girl named Poplar who can't do anything right yet somehow still has a job and a Zange clone who's also mentally challenged named Yamada. To top it off there's the two lesbian crew leaders named Kyouko and Yachiyo who service each other throughout the day. As you can see Takanashi's working life is not much better than his home life and the eccentric and most likely drugged up people he works with don't help his situation.

The character depth and story of this show is very good and it gives off a very dark and deep theme. I like that in a show and I like to watch Takanashi suffer in his daily struggles that are shown in the show and to watch my 2d wife (waifu) Izumi. I give the story and characters an 8/10 because they were dark and depressing. However, there was too much fun in the series and it could have been better if there was more dramatic moments and if there were some tragedies.

The sound and art was good so I give them a 9/10..they could have been drawn in a much darker setting but every Denny's I've been to is very bright to show off the cockroaches anyways.

Overall I rate this show an 8/10..I really enjoyed the characters and their back stories and I really liked how the show related to a dark and foreboding creature like myself. I would definitely watch this on my windows powered laptop at Starbucks and I would recommend it to anyone who likes a dark and depressing show mixed with some comedy for extra enjoyment. I feel this show is the highlight of the spring season and I like the direction Japan is going with these depressing, vampire orientated shows as of late. However, this show was not without flaws..there could have been some gore added to it like with Satou and Souma in the kitchen having accidents and Poplar accidentally impaling herself on a broken glass shard. A little blood in a dark show like this goes a long way and I feel that it needed some sanguine goodness to be a 10/10. read more