Review: Hataraki Man

 

Episodes: 11

Genre: Drama, Manga, Romance, Seinen, Slice of Life
Release Date: 13.10.2006 - 22.12.2006
Studio: Gallop
Author: Anno Moyoko

Summary: Based on the manga of the same name by Anno Moyoko, serialised from 2004 in Morning.

Matsukata Hiroko is a 28 year old editor. She puts all she has into her work, and is known as a strong, straight-forward working girl.

She smokes too much, works too much, and never has time to eat anything else then junkfood. However, when it's time to get a story done, she switches into Working Man mode where she works three times her normal speed, and all thoughts of life's necessities disappear.

Despite Hiroko's success at work, her life lacks romance. Too bad her boyfriend is an even bigger workaholic than herself.

All of us grow up and in the end we have to enter and make our way through society. The thing is, how will we approach work? Will we do it because we simply have to do it, without other feelings involved or we do it because we love it? Work is divided into these two categories like people who work are divided into another two categories: people who hate their work but have no choice but only to do it and people that love what they work.

Hataraki Man proves that loving what you work and getting way too involved in it will affect the relationships with other people. It shows that work, carrier and achievements or promotion is not the only thing that makes a person happy. For our main protagonist, Hiroko, it proves to be something that brings self satisfaction and a dose of accomplishment, but only until she realizes what she loses because of her passion for work.

Working as an editor at a important company named Jidai, she is nick-named by her mates "Hataraki Man" because of her other personality that popes up every time she has an idea and she is willing to do everything so that her article will get wrapped up and prepared to be approved.

This show not only presents her as a person and her work place, but the relation with her boyfriend and her relation with her other working partners. Also it shows how other people cope with their work places. We see different types of jobs with different types of people that have to pass through many problems at their work places.

In contrast, nowadays without having a workplace, it's kinda hard to maintain a relationship but the opposite might happen too. Having a work place the time that a couple can spend diminishes drastically to the point where couple routines are already out of the question.

This anime sends a message to all of us. It is important to do our job with all our heart but not to get too involved in it otherwise it will affect your personal life. I think that this show is especially intended for the Japanese community, especially for those that already entered in society and experienced their first work place. It is also helpful for those that did not enter yet in the society so that they could learn from it. It has a doze of morality and something that is worth thinking at least twice.

Story-wise and character-wise, pretty much pointless to go through explaining. Other than presenting the daily life of the main lead, the lives of the side characters and the way they deal with their personal life in contrast with their work is pretty much all this has to offer.

Animation wise, nothing that is worth mentioning, nothing that was impressive, I liked the outfit and clothes of the characters. As a whole nothing seemed out of common. Sound wise, pretty much forgettable.

I strongly believe that this show was made primarily to show how the Japanese society works nowadays and how do Japanese people approach their work place, it has a moral meaning and not something that was meant to bring profit, so I somehow commend this idea of not being too "commercial" (damn my music tastes have a mirror in anime as well). It's hard to recommend this one. I would like to recommend it especially to a more mature audience, it is not bad if a more younger audience watch this because they might learn something from it. More experienced anime fans might find this one sort of interesting.

Story: 8
Animation: 8.5
Sound: 6
Characters: 9
Delight: 8

Overall: 8

Be sure to check your blood pressure after you finish writing.