Comments on: Hataraki Man: slice of the work-life balance

By: Martin

Martin — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 17:17:46 +0000

@Hanners: I’ve yet to be fortunate enough to work in an office and do that sort of work for a living, but I found it surprisingly easy to understand. The way that the ‘woman in a men’s world’ thing was shown but not over-stated was also very well done.

@ghostlightning: go watch. Really! Given your time of life I’m sure you’ll appreciate as I did. ^_^

@gaguri: slice-of-life seems to be becoming a bit of a dirty word these days but in cases like this it’s wholly appropriate, and in a good way too. The number of relevant and true-to-life issues that are crammed into that one set of episodes is impressive too. I’d love to read the manga and see how it ends…

@usagijen: …which brings me neatly to this! By all means give translating it a go – I’d certainly appreciate it. Chances are the anime will make you more eager, because you’d be dying to know how all the characters get on after the events of the series!

By: usagijen

usagijen — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 18:39:25 +0000

;_; * incoherent rambling ahead *

I hate myself for not being EAGER enough for this. I told myself so many times that FOR SURE, I’ll be able to relate to this, and even volunteered to translate the manga for entropy (to continue where they left off, since they’re having a hard time finding translators), but I can’t seem to find the motivation to translate (partly because it’s not that easy to translate, mostly due to my laziness). Perhaps watching the anime will finally get me zealous over this? yes, no? x__x;

By: gaguri

gaguri — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 12:04:22 +0000

Hataraki Man is just about everything you would want from a slice of life. It’s funny in not so typically anime-ish way, it feels realistic, natural, no feeling of fabrication, perfectly paced for you to follow with ease, solid and consistent visuals, great writing, wonderful voice acting, etc etc.

“if I were currently in a job that meant more to me than something that merely pays the bills maybe I’d thimk differently though”

haha…that seems to be mindset of 95% working people.

By: ghostlightning

ghostlightning — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 11:44:23 +0000

Oho! Very interesting! I will watch this sooner than later. Thanks for the post.

By: Hanners

Hanners — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 11:25:21 +0000

I watched this series over a pretty short timespan myself recently after numerous recommendations, and aside from the refreshing focus on older, working people, I really enjoyed the depiction of Hiroko’s job – Having worked (albeit briefly) in a journalistic capacity for an online publication, I found myself nodding and smiling wryly at the all-nighters to meet deadlines, having to take on others projects and/or jettison your own, changes to plans for articles you’d nearly finished and so on. They really got the whole thing spot-on.

That aside, I think anyone who works in an office will probably relate to the personality clashes and frustrations of working with other people, and the show as a whole pretty much captured the Zeitgeist of modern workplace culture in numerous ways. The series manages to balance its “woman in a man’s world” concept against that wider depiction pretty well on account of Hiroko’s character; she’s a woman who can hold her own against the guys, yet despite what her work colleagues think there’s a very obvious feminine side to her. I’m not sure that their “Hataraki Man” nickname for her is derogatory or pro-masculinity; if anything it’s more a simple recognition that she can does away with a lot of female stereotypes. Anyway, that aside; great post, very good series.