Reviews

Dec 24, 2016
WWW.Working!!, new characters, new antics, same old WAGNARIA.

Let's get right to it with it's characters.

The characters really felt like the original series character just with differing quirks and because of the very near similarities..BULLETPOINTS TIME!!!!!

*Daisuke Higashida & Hana Miyakoshi (Yuuichi Makamura & Haruka Tomatsu) - Are effectively the same as the main characters from the original Working! of Souta Takanashi and Mahiru Inami, just replace being afraid of men and lots of punching and trying to cure that with trying to make GOOD chocolate, the "pain" with how horrible Hana's cooking is and trying to cure that.
*Shiho Kamakura & Yuuta Shindou (Sora Amamiya & Kensho Ono) - Shiho is essentially Hiroomi Souma from the original just change "blackmailing his co-workers" with "money bribing" mainly towards Yuuta as Yuuta is his childhood friend and he owes debt to her thus causing the rift between them, but Shiho's antics is more brutal compared to Hiroomi's antics.
*Sayuri Muranushi & Masahiro Adachi (Yoko Hisaka & Kouki Uchiyama) - Feels like Jun Satou and Yachiyo Todoroki especially in the "will they, won't they", just replace Jun's utter shyness to Yachiyo to Masahiro being utterly terrified by Sayuri's change in personality from her ghostly default and as a parallel, Sayuri carries knives similar to Yachiyo's katana wearing.
*Kisaki Kondou & Kenichirou Sakaki (Nana Mizuki & Kousuke Toriumi) - Is Kyouko Shirafuji and Hyougo Otoo, as Kisaki and Kyouko both effectively don't do any work (Kisaki through MANY excuses, Kyouko because she's the manager), they are also the deadpan honest as hell character telling the obvious to the rest of the cast, Hyougo and Kenichirou are the effectively the heads of their respective restaurants who can't control the rest of the core cast members and have no power even though they have the highest rank.
*Takuya Kouno (Hiro Shimono) - Feels like a mesh of both Hiroomi Souma in vocal personality but have the appearance similar to Jun Satou, it gets even similar as he's a chef just like the original characters, he's "inspired by", but his true comedic value comes from his misunderstandings of the various things that occur in WAGNARIA, making him a rather deadringer for Popura Taneshima in the original in terms of comedic advice.
*Miri Yanagiba (Momo Asakura) - Is Aoi Yamada but slightly less like her, they are both truants in most cases and likes to jab at thier main male characters
*Rui Nagata (Ari Ozawa) - Feels like she's the closest character that comes close to Popura Taneshima, they are both love interests to the main male characters and occasionally misunderstands things especially concerning their love interests.

The two new characters that seem entirely new are Kouki Saiki voiced by Yoshimasa Hosoya, a 20 year old college student who was born and raised in a different country, thus he can't speak Japanese. If LA had to say, he's a bit like Kirio Yamada from the original, just merely for the fact that some of their actions causes some unpredictability with their random quirks.

Now since we're done with similarities...LA's favourite character?...Sayuri...just Sayuri, she has the best comedic skits (along with her comedic timing with her "change of appearance" running gag that almost never got old) and her mysteriousness along with her voice actor Yoko Hisaka just made her LA's favourite character from EPISODE ONE.

For the most part, there are three main comedy skits within WWW.Working!!, Miyakoshi and Higashida's chocolate transporting into "Valentine World" (effectively nearly dying and getting advice from St. Valentine chibi), Sayuri and Adachi's romantic relationship with Sayuri surprising smiles and Adachi general obliviousness and finally Yuuta and Shiho's debt owing and bribing. For LA and that comedy is being subjective and all, LA thought that Sayuri and Adachi's comedy was pretty diverse by using the their relationship and their actions as driving points to both both their relationship and bring out their comedy at the same time. LA thought that Yuuta and Shiho got stale by the halfway point and what with Shiho's sadism towards Yuuta was slightly too harsh for the sake of "comedy" but thankfully it got better later on. Finally we have Miyakoshi and Higashida's comedy in which LA thought it was the average one out of the three, it wasn't too bad but it fell into being stale as to how repetitive they took it, Miyakoshi's obliviousness and personality and Higashida's non-changing expressions and deadpan snark was probably what kept this comedy skit from being overdone.

From the major comedy skits, LA will quite easily say that the rest of the characters are more or less catalyst to restart the same comedic skits for the major players, it becomes somewhat worse as the minor characters hardly have impact towards these characters unless the major comedic skits intertwine with one another to start another catalyst. Higashida's parents, to Takuya Houno to Kisaki Kondou and Kenichirou Sakaki very quickly loses any kind of screentime besides being for character jabbing but nothing for impact towards the comedic skits, LA knows it's not entirely important to focus on these characters, but it just felt like wasted potential to interact these characters with one another more instead of just "being the catalyst".

In terms of animation, once again done by A1-Pictures, the animation in the character designs goes two ways, due to it having chibi designs for the comedic punchlines to just some moments of it just being chibi just because, but LA can give these chibi designs some slack as it really is a slice of life comedy anime. The more detailed character designs are pretty well done and compensated for the chibi designs as well. Nonetheless the animation is "ok" at best for a slice of life comedy anime and not much to talk about other than that.

In terms of voice acting, LA will say this, as much as Miyakoshi's genkiness and obliviousness was close to an annoying feature but an odd charm to Haruka Tomatsu and really LA would have to give Haruka Tomatsu LA's favouirte voice actor from WWW.Working!!, Shiho and Sayuri (Sora Amamiya and Yoko Hisaka respectively) gave a typecasted performance and all the rest of the voice cast did pretty well with what they were given...again not much to talk about besides Haruka Tomatsu really.

The comedic skits resolution also have some widening scale of satisfying to anti-climax during the final episode, mainly the satisfying resolutions going to Sayuri & Adachi along with Yuuta and Shiho's were pretty much worth it, the only one that felt anti-climaxed and forced was Miyakoshi and Higashida's..but this is merely LA's perspective so it'll probably be different for others nonetheless.

WWW.Working felt like it fell into the same pitfalls and strengths the original series went through to the point LA could say nothing but it just felt like WWW.Working had new characters, new skits but same old WAGNARIA, it has it's flaws and strengths and it balanced out that WWW.Working didn't succeed or fail to it's original series, it's essentially the same thing under differing characters and their crazy repetitive antics. If you liked the original series, then have WWW.Working a try to see the same thing really.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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