Gaikotsu Shotenin Honda-san is an anime short about a skeleton bookseller by the name of Honda-san voiced by Souma Saitou and his misadventures of daily life as a bookstore owner.
Now this kind of premise at first looks mundane but this being an anime adaptation of a web manga written and drawn by the author's own caricature who was a bookseller in Japan named...Honda, it gives us an insight to the life, trials and tribulations of a bookseller for comedic effect with his co-workers. From keeping book shelves tidy and organized to talking to foreign customers, otaku culture and how it affects sales and popularity of books themselves and how booksellers work with exporting and importing goods.
Gaikotsu Shotenin Honda-san's cast is fairly decent with our titular Honda-san having most of the focus but we also get to see his co-workers who like Honda are also caricatures of the real life Honda's co-workers but given stuff put on their heads to disclosure for obvious reasons. Gaikotsu Shotenin Honda-san's interactions and their own hang ups and comforts of working in a book shop also plays a hand in the anime short and is probably used for the best comedic effect especially with the character reactions as a result. LA's favourite character would have to be Okitsune voiced by Shizuka Ito and Houtai voiced by Eri Kitamura because of their personalities and their comedy bouncing well off Honda, especially from Okitsune as how much of a clashing of personalities Honda and Okitsune have yet works well anyways.
Gaikotsu Shotenin Honda-san's other interesting thing about it is well actually two things, one is the Engrish used and how it's used with it;s comedy but not in a way that it doesn't disrespects the foreign customers but to have fun with the situation Honda-san goes through (being in charge of foreign comics and all) and the situations Honda has with them are pretty funny especially with his reactions and how he handles each of those situations but the other interesting thing about Gaikotsu Shotenin Honda-san is how many references Gaikotsu Shotenin Honda-san does have and because they have the entire "change the name of that popular franchise name" or censor popular well known characters from both anime and Western media, it's nice when LA gets the reference and how that reference impacts the book shop as a result of it.
Gaikotsu Shotenin Honda-san's animation done by DLE was ok, this being an anime short and all but the animation is intentionally stiff with the characters actions at times but this being mostly a talking anime but nonetheless as stiff as the animation is it has this paper puppet-ting effect to it that gives it it's own charm as minimal of animation it gives itself of, though Gaikotsu Shotenin Honda-san dabbles in the over the top reactions from the characters faces as stiff as it was and the reactions are priceless but nonetheless the character designs are simplistic yet strikingly bizarre and the backgrounding is minimal but expected. DLE's animation is sparse but fair in this regard.
Voice work, well there is a decent large cast but again LA will bring up Shizuka Ito and Eri Kitamura again but also Souma Saitou as Honda was pretty well done giving him some inflection and giving Honda some great reaction as much of a character with skull for a head he has, still works!. Nonetheless from Yoko Hiakasa, Akemi Okamura, Ayumu Murase and Yuuko Sanpei, the voice cast was great and made the character reactions all the more better.
Gaikotsu Shotenin Honda-san was probably LA's favorite anime short for Fall 2018, for such a simple premise of the daily life of owning and managing a bookstore, it shown off all the intrinsic, trials and tribulations and heck STRESS it takes to own and manage one all the while making it comedic all throughout it's run time. Gaikotsu Shotenin Honda-san is a great anime short and LA will give it LA's mark of approval to watch it, mundane yes, but watchable and funny?, HELL YES.
