A Mangaka’s Weirdly Wonderful Workplace is a workplace comedy anime that follows the daily life of Nana Futami (Yūko Natsuyoshi), an up and coming mangaka working on her debut serialized managa, “Dear Subaru”, Currently, Nana works alongside her assistant Mizuki Hazama (Miku Itō) and editor Kaede Satō (Sora Amamiya). Grateful to Satō giving her a chance, Nana has an extremely strong attachment towards her editor, bordering on infatuation at times. As a result, she frequently overthinks how she should communicate with Satō, resulting in some whacky scenarios. This is first demonstrated when Nana finishes a storyboard at around 2 AM and she worries that sending the drafts at this point in time would somehow offend Satō, leading Hazama to try and convince her otherwise.
At least for the premiere, the main gag of this series is Nana screaming over whether or not she’ll make Satō mad. I enjoyed it for some of the crazy thoughts that pop in her head. For example, when Nana has to submit her storyboards, she jumps to the conclusion that Satō is busy partying and that sending the drafts would interrupt that. This is despite knowing that Satō is someone who keeps her walls up but Nana can’t help it because she’s anxious and she admires Satō so much. It’s a pretty solid running gag. That said, I can’t deny that the gag involves Nana yelling a lot. I can see someone getting sick of it from day one and it could very well get stale for me as well.
Regarding Nana’s costar and crush, I like Satō well enough. Her more subdued and stoic demeanor is a fun contrast to Nana being a nervous mess. Perhaps the most clever use of the character is how she actually kind of shares the same issue as her client. There’s a couple of scenes where Satō worries if she’s giving enough positive feedback to Nana and she thinks long and hard on how to rectify it. She doesn’t panic to the same extent as Nana but it does appear that the feeling is somewhat mutual and that’s a more interesting route to take than if Nana’s overthinking was entirely one-sided.
Oddly enough, the most entertaining character so far is Hazama. She generally acts as the straight man to Nana’s antics (pun not intended) and it’s a lot of fun watching her try to reason with Nana even as her patience starts to wear thin. Another good addition to the cast is Satō’s junior editor, Shiori Asakura (Iori Saeki). Her first time meeting Nana is funny enough and I really like that the character helps Nana in better understanding Satō (which might not have a permanent effect on the plot but it’s definitely something Nana needs). The only side character I didn’t get is Masayuki Toda (Jun Fukuyama), a senior editor at the company Satō and Asakura work at. Admittedly, this guy only has one scene but I’m not sure what the point is to have him speak so harshly about Nana’s work, especially given that Nana is fairly new to business. I guess later episodes will elaborate on his role.
Overall, this seems like a fun show to watch for the season. There’s some potential cracks to the execution and I can see some people getting tired of the show’s shtick from the get go or over time. At least for me personally, there’s enough humor that works in spite of that asterisk so hopefully things will stay that way for a bit longer.
Watch A Mangaka’s Weirdly Wonderful Workplace on Crunchyroll
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