Working!! / Wagnaria!!

 

this post does not go through www.working!!, the predecessor of the original manga of working!!, where it is set in another restaurant with the same name with completely different characters. it will be discussed in another individual post once i have completed it.

this post, however, does contain spoilers of the later seasons of working!!. please read at your own discretion.

main information:

• genre: slice of life, comedy, romance, workplace (restaurant)
• season: spring 2010 (s1), fall 2011 (s2), summer 2015 (s3)
• number of seasons & episodes: 3 seasons, 13 episodes each + 1 45-minute ending episode
• myanimelist / anilist 

it's always fun to see a group of ensemble cast being in the same environment and see how well their chemistry goes. but for some reason, when the ensemble cast has members from both genders, they just HAVE to include some romance to one or more pairings. i guess this is also why i would avoid the romance genre unless the whole story goes around the 2 main characters (i.e. boy-meets-girl type of romance) and you don't even have to watch to know that the 2 are gonna end up together. i will discuss why i feel such discomfort towards this type of setting in the later paragraphs.

working!! goes through the daily workplace life of a group of teens and adults in a family restaurant, wagnaria, after taneshima popura (cv asumi kana) attempts to find new part-time waiters on the street one day and met takanashi souta (cv fukuyama jun), who eventually became part of the group. takanashi finds out that the restaurant is full of weird people, including shirafuji kyouko (cv watanabe kumiko), the shop manager that only cares about food; todoroki yachiyo (cv kitamura eri), the leader of most staff members who brings a katana along her side; the androphobic inami mahiru (cv fujita saki) that would hit every single male she sees; satou jun (cv ono daisuke), the intimidating looking chef that makes him look like he's from a gang; and souma hiroomi (cv kamiya hiroshi), who secretly has everyone's embarrassing childhood photos.

in short, i pretty much enjoyed my viewing experience with working!!, especially its atmosphere between the characters just feel so smooth and natural, and you can actually get to know every main character in depth by the different things they go through. in terms of character development, working!! has delivered quite a natural growing progress for each character that has their own stories, even the other characters would notice that they have changed over time as well.

working!! is also a fun comedic experience as the jokes don't come from gags, rather that you would find them funny after getting to know the characters and know that they would do something as stupid as this. even though in the later parts of the show it has its serious moments, the comedy would still tone down the seriousness to them, and it would still make me laugh, while the comedy itself does not present as insensitive to the problems depicted, which is kind of hard to maintain such a balance between being funny and serious, but working!! has accomplished it so well in my opinion.

the only problem i have with it, though, is the romance developed in the later seasons. as i mentioned in the first paragraph, when i see an ensemble cast with characters of both genders, they just always have to mix in some romance between one or more pairings, and sometimes i just either don't understand how the relationship bloom, or i feel like it would be better if the character ended up with another character. this reminds me of the american drama friends, where it is also an ensemble cast of 3 men and 3 women, but i did not understand one of the pairings in it, that also affected my watching experience at the later seasons of it.

back to working!!, the 2 main romantic pairings are satou x yachiyo and takanashi x inami. i loved satou x yachiyo, satou himself is already a charming character to me in this show, plus you can see how he remembers everything yachiyo says about the shop manager, and yachiyo started consider satou as her friend first then realized that she can like someone out of her comfort zone, i was so happy when i could finally see them end up together in s3. however takanashi x inami is the pair that i don't understand. takanashi might have helped inami with her fear of men that i can understand inami developing feelings for takanashi, but i just don't get the other way round. the whole "face your own emotions" thing at the near end almost feel like it is forced into the story in order to make the 2 end up together, honestly it would probably seem more natural if he ended up with popura since she's exactly his type of girl (fbi open up).

also the romance plot sometimes feels dragged long for no reason (this applies to both pairings), that at some bits i was feeling sort of impatient for them to confess their feelings towards each other. i would like to see more slice of life, episodic stories of the characters just like the main flow of s1, s2 was kinda ok although they started to put more focus on the romance, but in s3 it just totally became a workplace romance story. it's not like it isn't good to include romance in a story like this, but don't let it become the main focus, as i would feel bait and switched.

in conclusion, working!! is a fun experience if you just want to sit back and watch some people having fun and bonding over a commonplace (in this case, it would be a family restaurant), with a mix of some romance plots added. i am not a fan of mixing romance into slice of life, but i am sure that there's definitely its own targeted audience that like it.