Mangaka-san to Assistant-san to The Animation

This is an anime about a man and his dream. His dream of panties. Seeing panties, smelling panties, touching panties.... Yeah that's honestly most of what this show is about. Oh, and a there's also little stuff about making manga. But it's ecchi manga about panties anyway. Each episode is divided into three or four different scenes, and almost all of them deal with panties and Aito's love for them in one way or another.

This is a harem anime about a mangaka of an ecchi manga and the girls around him. His three assistants (though two are hardly ever seen actually helping his manga at ... all), his editor, and several other minor characters. The main character, Aito, is absolutely ridiculous. His emotions seem bipolar and he can quickly flip from being a perverted idiot to a sympathetic and kind mentor in the blink of an eye. His voice during many of the perverted scenes gets so high it's annoying (though I will give credit to his voice actor for having excellent vocal range) yet at other times he can be quite likable. He has balls of steel and, unlike many male protagonists in ecchi anime, has almost no fear of asking to see a girl's underwear or to touch them (in fact he even succeeds a couple times).

As for the girls, they are mostly archetypal, though they do break out of their archetypes and become unique on several occasions. Aito's main assistant, Ashisu, is the girl who least fits into any archetype. She is Aito's main love interest (of course she would rather die than feel the same way about him). Being an assistant, she has dreams of debuting and becoming a real mangaka. She has a love-hate relationship with Aito which can range from her going along with his perverted schemes to acting like a dominating yandere around him. Mihari is Aito's editor and friend from high school who has long had a crush on him. Aito has no clue of course because Mihari is your typical, lovable tsundere. Rinna, a well-endowed airhead, and Sena, a spoiled-rotten weakling, are much less important and only have a few important scenes despite being main characters.

The animation is fairly well done for an ecchi anime. Despite all of it's focus on panties, the amount of ecchi content is probably not as much as you're expecting. There are more moments with sexual innuendos and Aito asking to see panties than there are actual moments of near-nudity. The character designs are average and since most of the anime takes place inside of Aito's apartment studio, the characters are usually seen close up and tend to avoid being shown with minimal detail when far away from the viewer like many shows do to save some of the animation budget. Still, this means there are not too many scenery changes, though there are still a beach/hot spring episode and several trips to lingerie stores in the mall. As for the sound, the music is typical an for ecchi and comedy anime. Most of the time it is light-hearted, but it can get intense to match Aito's bizarre outbreaks. Still, it does nothing more than fit the mood fairly well at the time and is often unnoticeable.

"Mangaka-san to Assistant-san to" is a fairly entertaining, simple, and short (12 minute long episodes) ecchi comedy. If that's all your looking for, then you've found something you'll enjoy. If you're looking for one of the best ecchi shows out there, or something with tons of nudity, then you'll probably be disappointed. The show does get a little better as it goes and as you grow somewhat attached to the characters (I personally enjoyed Mihari with her crush on Aito the most and I was happy that there was an entire episode dedicated to that). Also, if you're going into this expecting a lot of focus on making manga, you would be better to check out something like Bakuman as this only occasionally focuses on how tiring the process can really be.

Somewhere in me is a cynic that I refuse to give in to, because I don’t want to make the mistake of judging shows by their cover. And every so often, I have reason to be optimistic, as a number of shows I’ve doubted have proven to be not just pleasant surprises, but fantastic works in their own right. But damn it, Japan, when you release shows like this, it’s very hard to stay positive.

‘The Mangaka and His Assistants’ focuses on the daily lives of manga artist Yuki and his all-female assistants. When he’s not drawing manga, he’s usually trying to subject them to his ... perverted desires. Among the assistants, Rinna would go along with him if Sena, Mahiru, and Sahoto aren’t there to stop her, while the latter three thrash him for his advances. This is the entire show, and unfortunately there are deeper problems than the humor not being to one’s liking.

A major problem with The Mangaka and His Assistants is its cast lacks development, personality, or anything I could use to call them interesting. Everyone who isn’t Rinna has two personalities, with nothing between to make those two sides believable as part of the same person; Yuki is perverted then nice, Sahoto is indifferent and then motivated, while Mahiru and Sena are basically the same character, feisty on the outside but warm on the inside. Not that Rinna is any better, because the way she would accept Yuki’s advances were it not for the others is disturbing.

It isn’t just a lack of development, but how much that development doesn’t make sense. Yuki is relentless in his perverse advances and Sena, Mahiru, and Sahoto all bash him for it. Makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is Sena and Mahiru showing signs of falling for Yuki, supposedly because he’s a nice guy despite his perversion, except that even in flashbacks, we don’t see enough of Yuki being that nice guy. The only one who doesn’t fall for Yuki is Sahoto, and even then she’s supposedly going to stay with him because she pities him. Yeah. Really.

It gets even better when the show tries to justify its lack of development in favor of Yuki being perverted. His main reason for making manga is because he wants to draw panties, and Mahiru points out that the reason his manga is losing popularity is because he’s focusing too much on panties and not enough on the story. Quite frankly this sort of self-referential humor only works when the show is at least decent, but do things sound even decent so far?

But fine, clearly asking for decent characters is too much. Too bad the humor can be outright repulsive. There is a scene where Yuki is crossdressing so he can understand what it’s like being a woman. After being shrugged off by his assistants, one of them falls asleep. He then tries to breast feed that sleeping girl so he can ‘also’ understand what it’s like being a mom. The girl wakes up with a mouthful of man chest and promptly thrashes him. This scene was so uncomfortable I had to stop the episode. Comedies are not supposed to do that.

Actually, most of comedy in this show—and by extension, most of the show itself—is just uncomfortable. Between the brand of humor, lack of development, and self-awareness, I sometimes wonder if the show is just poking fun at the reason people watch ecchi shows. Are we supposed to go ‘good thing I’m not part of that audience!’ or ‘at least I’m not as depraved as that guy!’? Maybe some people can find this funny, but I don’t. All the humor did was remind me of people who really can’t divorce reality from fiction, on top of reinforcing bad stereotypes of Japanese animation.

The animation itself is serviceable but nothing impressive or distinct. But aside from the lack of inspiration to differentiate between Sena and Mahiru, the characters designs are at least pleasant to look at thanks to somewhat vibrant colors. The sound isn’t all that great either, lacking much of a proper soundtrack, but nothing is particularly out of place. The aesthetics of this show on a whole are just really, really standard.

I just wish I could describe this show as even being ‘standard.’ While I wasn’t expecting something groundbreaking, I did expect a reasonable story or at least some decent characters. Unfortunately there’s uncomfortable humor in place of development on top of the show trying to shrug off its own faults. Even if you’re an ecchi fan—no wait, ESPECIALLY if you’re an ecchi fan—skip this patronizing, heartless garbage.

I say ‘heartless’ because even something like Mayo Chiki really tries. Amagami tries. Mashiro Symphony tries. This show doesn’t. It doesn’t understand that panties and fanservice only go so far, because what any kind of show needs is heart. And for The Mangaka and His Assistants, it isn’t something they’re going to have no matter how many times they go back to the drawing board.

Mangaka-san to Assistan-san is a show about a perverted mangaka with a bunch of female assistants, who does perverted things and then gets away with it because he's "nice" and...that's about it, really.

Already it is a bit difficult to buy into the premise, but good execution can make all sorts of things work - so, how is the execution? This is supposed to be a comedy, and it is by no means an ambitious one. That being said, I probably only genuinely laughed once or twice throughout the whole thing. I understand that humor is subjective, but the jokes were just not very well-crafted. It ... is easy to see most punchlines coming from a mile away, which would not be as big of a problem if it wasn't applicable to almost every joke in the series, but sadly that is not the case. If you've seen one episode, you've seen almost all the jokes.

For instance (I just realized that I don't remember anyone's name - time to look those up!): Aito says or does something perverted. Sahoto, his assistant, not amused by his antics, tells him off in some way. Aito asks something to the effect of "do you not like me?" or "do you think I'm creepy?" and Sahoto responds that, yes, she finds him or his act to be creepy/perverted/annoying or what have you. Aito freaks the fuck out. Sahoto calms him down.

This kind of thing happens all the time and there is almost never any interesting twist on this joke, or any of the other uninspired, repetitive jokes. Usually if there is, the joke just becomes uncomfortable instead of funny (like a certain breastfeeding scene). Not that I have a problem with "uncomfortable" humor in and of itself, but the tone and characters of this series do not lend itself to that kind of humor, as it generally attempts to stay somewhat grounded (unlike, say, Prison School).

Speaking of the characters, they are not anything to write home about. Aito is a pervert obsessed with panties who often acts incredibly childish for a 20-something year old, and he's also a really nice guy who says nice things. That about covers it. Sahoto's personality is sort of deadpan and blunt, but she also has a bit of a domineering side to her. Mihari is an abrasive tsundere with a soft spot and the only one who gets any sort of development, although the way they presented her transition into a more abrasive personality in her backstory was a bit silly (it just kinda happened after she realized she had to leave personal feelings out of a work environment because she...stayed over at Aito's and, uh, did nothing in a situation where she could do nothing?) - perhaps the point of that was to be comedic, in which case it's no surprise that that may be lost on one not sold on the show's comedy. I don't expect development that's particularly meaningful from a 1-cour comedy with 10-minute episodes, but it could at least be interesting in that department. Sena is basically the same character as Mihari, sans backstory, but she also acts more childish and is weak. Sena and Mihari both have a crush on Aito for whatever reason, by the way. Rinna is a super cute girl who is completely incompetent and instantly loves Aito for no reason, and we are supposed to enjoy her stupidity because it's cute, apparently.

You might notice that the characters' personalities, sans Rinna, are a little inconsistent. This is not a bad thing on its own, but the problem is that we fail to see how the different aspects to each characters' respective personalities feed into one another. That is to say, it is not so much that the characters have many facets to their personalities as it is that they feel like different people when the situation calls for it. The characters' personalities were not handled with much finesse in this regard.

To the show's credit, it did at least show the audience that writing and illustrating manga is no easy task. Aito often has to pull all-nighters in order to get his manuscripts done (I don't get how he pulls off playing gal games for 10 hours on certain days though). Sahoto also has to try over and over to make her debut as a professional mangaka (I wonder how Aito managed, though, with how incompetent he often seems in the storytelling department). As you might guess, however, the execution still leaves much to be desired and it doesn't succeed in giving the show any flavor. Also, since the focus is on the comedy, this aspect ultimately isn't even that important.

I watched the first two episodes with some folks on that rabbit streaming thing very late at night, and I watched the rest of it a few days later when I was half-asleep at 4 a.m. and felt that I wouldn't be able to comprehend anything else I tried to watch. I would only recommend this show under similar circumstances to those, but even then, there are still better options out there. I did not expect much, but I still felt underwhelmed in my semi-braindead state.

Note: I said nothing of the audiovisuals in this review. That is because they are just unremarkable and therefore not worth mentioning. But I guess I did mention them after all, so there you go.

The anime should have been named
"Young Harvey Weinstein: The Manga Artist"


Think of all the possible ways someone can behave inappropriately in a work place, this anime has probably got it

Intentionally Fondling your assistant's boobs. Check
Taking off the assistant's clothes while she is sick and passed out. Check
Repeatedly commenting about your editor's boob size. Check

... Things like this happen several times in every episode and are presented as "Jokes".

There is only ONE "joke" in this whole anime and the punchline is MC Sexually harassing someone.


Characters are truly terrible.
MC is one of the worst part of the show. If we take out the weird mannerisms and slapstick he could easily be the villain/rapist in a hentai.

The rest of the cast is the collection of a generic cookie cutter harem members.

There is nothing worthwhile in this show. Don't waste your time on it

You know, Comic Artist and His Assistants was so close to being a recommended anime for me. It's both funny in sad in its all too real portrayal of the modern Japanese man; awkward, anti-social, unable to properly talk to women or distinguish fantasy from reality. it could have worked as either a lampooning of the ecchi genre or just straight up ecchi with social commentary and I would have lauded it as one of the more standout horny comedies. It was so close. But the problem is it wants to sexualize women who look prepubescent in the creepiest possible manner. It's one thing to ... take an adult woman who is five-foot-nothing and lacks large... tracts of land, and sexualize her. It's not unheard of in real life and women like this deserve a chance to be represented in adult media. It's another thing to put said woman in little girls' dresses and treat them like children while also sexualizing them. Because now you have unlocked some uncomfortable fetishes that shouldn't be animated and streamed to the public. Hell, they even sexualize one of them before we realize she's an adult.

If this had stuck with being a parody or at least set up boundaries to not cross then it would have been great. It has the setting and it has the humor, it just can't stop stumbling over its own shoelaces. Especially when it gets to the OVAs, which trucked along fine until the fifth installment, which should be sent in a rocket ship to the moon. I have nothing else to add to this the way most reviewers do. The animation is standard for the era, the characters are all stereotypes of the genre, the show is overall brief and can be blown through in roughly three hours (OVAs included). I just wish it hadn't gone in the direction it went in.

Mangaka and assistant san would've probably been a decent anime if it was a normal short form like 3-5 mins each but it’s 12 mins each which for the concept I felt that there wasn’t enough in the anime to warrant that length as it's basically just him taking advantage of the girls who work for him and using hexual sarassament as gags maybe for a super short anime that would be funny somewhat, but it gets dragged out and repeating the same jokes just like what senko san and other ecchi comedy anime do that lack substance.

I didn't think much of this anime ... when i first started it, it was typical. As I saw more of the anime, I got really tired of the gimmick of overly ecchi situations all the time which got really overdone and because of this there wasn't much story to be had or any enjoyment for me as I got tired of the main character. Aiko, our protagonist has got to be my top 10 most annoying characters I've ever had the pleasure of watching and what also rubbed me the wrong way was the obvious lolicon scenarios that kept creeping into the show which I do not like.

For a short anime of 12 minutes an episode, it somehow wasted most of the anime with its generic scenarios. Which is very impressive for a short anime, even the mc voices get on my nerves. If i could give the enjoyment a 0, I defo would. This anime is disgusting and dreadful, 2 hours I will never get back. I found the first few episodes decent but the degenerate loser mangaka made me hate this anime, with the anime having actually decent waifu’s for the ecchi anime; taking bakuman and making it lewd only gets you so far as a gimmick it’s alright but unless you are really into these types of ecchi anime it’s terrible for someone who likes comedy as it beats comedy like a dead horse. This is a bigger waste of time than watching shounen fillers, save your brain cells and avoid this anime.

I think this is less Harem/ecchi fantasy, and more shallow anime with no emotion characters or any meaning, I get this after the actual introduction of characters,
A world where rejection and isolation is praised then a loud scream and bang which I don't find funny I find it sad.

So for the story it is a slice of life with constant bad jokes,
nothing original very plain and boring.

The art is acctualy enjoyable with average defining and less so with movement.

The characters have a good design, but are all a blank slate with no personality ... in the same empty basket around the same feeling, just like drawing neghbours as a background then zooming in.

I did ejoy a few laughs at some first scenes but that after that very few and far in betwen.

Overall i'm very bored after 6 semiepisodes and don't recomend it, i find the claimed genres misleading: a poorly attempt at them badly executed,they should be more focused if they can't handle some complexity.