Egao no Taenai Shokuba desu.

A Mangaka's Weirdly Wonderful Workplace — Truly, the life of a mangaka has its ups and downs, but it's, by all means, weird and wonderful for a rather hectic workplace.

If you know me well, I love exploring niche topics that are rarely shown in any medium, anime or otherwise. It's just so fascinating to learn from someone else's or some others' POV of jobs or roles that you don't really get to experience as a normie, even if ambitions do get in the way of dreams that have, on one or more occasions, made or broken you at that. And certainly, the lives of authors ... are no different at all, who are at the very creation of the worlds and characters that we can both experience on a love-hate basis. This is especially so for mangakas (i.e. manga authors), whom I feel have the hardest role as compared to novelists, who have only the writing aspect to matter (with the occasional illustrations that are always handled by someone else), with the mangaka having to do double duty with both the story and art itself.

And it's this setting that's the courtesy from the long-awaited return of mangaka Kuzushiro, since the adaptation of the Spring 2014 4-koma Yuri short series of Inugami-san to Nekoyama-san, to come back more than a decade later for yet another adaptation, with this Fall season featuring one of his more recent works, Egao no Taenai Shokuba desu a.k.a. A Mangaka's Weirdly Wonderful Workplace. And if you thought that was more than enough, there's the Yuri series of the mangaka's latest work, with Amayo no Tsuki a.k.a. The Moon on a Rainy Night, that's having an anime adaptation in the works, and with the manga having the best reception thus far of his biography, there's a lot to rejoice about for future Yuri anime going forward.

But back to the aforementioned show, where it truly IS the eccentricness of a mangaka's weirdly wonderful workplace...and no, I'm not making this up. A mangaka does not live on an island alone; he/she needs a team of people that can work as buttery smooth as possible alongside the mangaka themselves, because one haywire, and it could send the conveyor belt derailing to quite the catastrophe. This is very much the case for the fledgling mangaka Nana Futami with her shojo-centric manga "To Subaru", which centres around a teenage boy playing shogi, alongside her assistant Mizuki Hazama and her editor Kaede Sato, who supervises her at their publishing company Clover. And to say that there's not one day in which Futami is so overstressed about her own work that it worries both her assistant and/or editor, the Hitori "Bocchi" Goto-inspired lookalike is pretty much her usual personality of a nervous wreck who overcomplicates situations a wee bit too much, and Hazama always has to bring Futami back to reality. But that said, as much as Futami is a competent young mangaka at that, having realized her dream just out of high school alongside Hazama, who's her partner-in-"crime" to follow in her footsteps, these two can harbour quite the yuri relationship that's all hearty and wholesome...lest the lesbian vibes keep coming (since this is a trait of almost all of Kuzushiro's works).

The life of a mangaka is no easy feat at that, and for the many who keep trying, failing, and getting up again, it's one major test of will, to see how long just these people can hang on for dear life, in both the ups and downs through the manga creation journey. And for Futami, having already been defeated once by Clover's other editor, Masayuki Toda, who is devilishly unrelenting for his inflexibility, unsupportive nature, and forcefulness, which relapses her to being taken in charge by Sato, it's truly for the best, as editors are the ones next to the assistants in terms of understanding the mangaka under their belt, and the relationship between Futami and Sato is one like hell on earth but can also be very kind and supportive at times despite her serious demeanour. And like fellow friends in the industry, supporting one another can be the basis of "life and death" of not just the people around them, but their defining mangaka careers as well. One example of which is Arisa Nashida, who debuted before Futami, but like her editor Ren Takizawa, she and the former once worked for her as her assistants during her mangaka days, which, for some reason, were axed and relegated her to being an editor. These two young women also share an "intimate" relationship, but on a bigger scale since Takizawa is said to have been a very popular mangaka back in her young days, but it's also the fall from grace that helped shape Nashida's life as a growing mangaka at that time also, other than her persistent drunkness being a factor of her personality, as well as her cockiness through her complicated feelings that more often than not piss Hazama off. Alongside the other cast of characters that would help define Futami's life as a growing mangaka, the aforementioned "weirdly wonderful workplace" becomes a "she/her" pronoun that is all sorts of fun...if you can embrace the idea and put yourself in the shoes of how mangakas work in the first place.

For only the 2nd mainline production series since its creation in March 2022, the rookie studio Voil still has aways to go, but with this show, they've expanded their reach to delivering quality shows, even at the most bare-bones and miniscule, and it truly shows the calibre and potential the small studio has going forward. Even the music does fit the mood with the OST, and it's all the better for it. And if you know any better, any HoneyWorks Anisong is going to be great, and in this case, the OP featuring HaKoniwalily is just a vibe. Put that together with Sizuk's ED composition alongside Nagi Yanagi for the vocals, and this is a magical ride of a comic book coming to life.

Egao no Taenai Shokuba desu a.k.a. A Mangaka's Weirdly Wonderful Workplace, is a pretty niche show by its mangaka formation standards that'll alienate most viewers even trying to get some media literacy about how the job and roles are for a career that's all about storyboarding alongside arts and crafts. But if you fancy some story creation that's not all just for the Yuri vibes alone, then the anime is definitely right up your alley.

You don't need a plot when you're a mangaka (a la Bakuman); all you need is just a hinge of motivation to keep going and make the story you want to create. And that is the life story of mangakas and the workplaces themselves, which can be quite the uncanny, but delightful place to work in.

Over the course of the last few years, there has been an increase in yuri content. Kuzushiro is a mangaka who has made a lot of Yuri or Yuri-Adjacent Works. This series, "A Mangaka's Weirdly Wonderful Workplace" is one of those. It focuses on Nana Futami who is a mangaka. One thing that should be mentioned is that this series works as a comedy with the themes in the mangaka industry. Futami herself feels very much like Bocchi from "Bocchi the Rock" being very introverted and being very overreactive. If that type of comedy does not suit you, this might be a series you will ... enjoy.

With that being said, after the comedy, the characters are really a shine to them. The anime focuses on each one, making them feel alive, but also looks at their own issues in the mangaka industry. Futami as a new mangaka, Satou as an editor, Mizuki as an assistant, etc. This is the core of the show. If you like shows that are very character-driven, you will love this one, I would say.

It is worth noting that it looks more like the roles of characters in the manga industry. This series doesn't spend much time on the creation of manga itself. So if that is something you are mostly interested in rather than the role in the industry, this could be a disappointment. Of course this could be highlighted more in the future content since the manga is ongoing. But this series absolutely does an outstanding job at reminding you that it is more than just the mangaka that is responsible for the creation of manga. At the same time, it shows the effect that manga can have on a person.

Now on the production side, we have a new studio named Voil. The show ended looking better visually than I expected. Not anything groundbreaking, but pretty solid for a seasonal anime.

Should you watch this show? Well, if you like Yuri or CGDCT's series, you will very likely like this. If you like character-driven series and/or an inside look into the manga industry, then I would also say it's worth a try. It's not anything groundbreaking, but it's a very solid show with good execution on a topic we rarely get anime about nowadays.

I started this anime expecting it to explore the daily struggles of female mangakas, their rivalries, backlash, and creative hurdles, similar to how Bakuman handled the industry, not necessarily as a direct copy but with enough depth to be engaging. While the all-female cast is refreshing, the constant quips get old quickly, and there’s almost no focus on the manga they’re creating nor the challenges they face beyond occasional delays in submissions.

The characters are decent, but the show lacks a core plot or clear goals for anyone. It feels like the same episode over and over, with the main character, Futami, being introverted and struggling ... to finish on time, only to be snapped out of overthinking by her assistant, Ha-san. This pattern makes up most of the show, with side characters who add little to the story besides filling space. Overall, this anime was a huge disappointment, and I’m dropping it and it definitely is not worth the time.