As we pay a final visit to the restaurant for this season, the staff is troubled over the possible departure of one of their own. Will the Wagnaria family be splitting up?
What They Say:
“Farewell Popura”
Is Popura thinking about quitting the restaurant!? Rumors run rampant and the staff preps for the worst. It is up to Maya Matsumoto to make things normal.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
They have been teasing us with it all season long, and now we have it: the first lines spoken by Maya Matsumoto, the only “normal” person working at the restaurant. Once she gets talking, she gets in quite a few lines, obviously having been saving up her lines for a while. Maya may be normal, but she takes it to an extreme, as she is extreme about her being normal. (Thus, she is not really normal either, and just as quirky as the rest of the gang).
After some time spent watching her and seeing her view of her coworkers, we come to the great crisis of the final episode for this season: Popura is worried about her future, as her classmates are starting to go to cram schools to prepare for college entrance exams. Sota and Sato are worried about Popura’s future as well, as Popura manages to write on the Breakage Report Sheet in the staff room, which was deliberately placed above the level where Popura’s short arms and legs can reach. As she successfully writes on the sheet, she triumphantly declares that she has grown taller, much to Sota’s dismay. For it is Sota and Sato who seem to be affected the most by the possibility of Popura’s departure. Sota only joined the restaurant because of Popura, and Sato would be without his chew toy, figuratively speaking, if Popura left. He even tries out teasing Matsumoto, but it does not work out at all.
In the end, of course, everyone gets the wrong idea about things, as Popura’s worrying about her grades and her future misleads Yamada into reporting to everyone that Popura is on the very doorstep of quitting the restaurant. Just when some “normal” perspective would be useful, Popura runs to Matsumoto, who bluntly and sensibly tells Popura that it’s normal to quit only if one’s grades are already headed downward, which isn’t the case with Popura yet. Crisis averted, so it would seem.
Season Retrospective:
Over the course of this season, Working’!! has followed its regular formula for comedy: bring on the regular cast of characters, throw in a strange curve ball, but then have things work out so nothing changes, while providing a few laughs along the way. It is a relatively successful formula most of the time, offering some nice light workplace-themed comedy over the course of the season. It is not without its faults: there were times where they lingered a bit too much into the important thread of Mahiru Inami’s fear of men, which is exacerbated by her monstrously inhuman strength, which she directs against all males. Frankly, it would be nice if that little plot thread could be tied up and disposed of. Otherwise, we had a couple of new additions this season, including the clueless Kirio Yamada, a high-school boy looking for his sister, who may or may not be Aoi Yamada, the runaway-turned-trainee at the restaurant, as well as the first real appearance of the lost Mrs. Otoo, wife of the rarely present manager Mr. Otoo.
On balance, this season continues the light comedy of the first, and fans of that first season can probably look back contentedly on this one as more a seamless continuation than a sequel of any sort. The comedic core is retained, and the antics of Sota, Popura, Inami, Yamada, Yachiyo, Kyoko, Sato, and Soma will probably continue at some point in the future, as this is a franchise based upon a changeless, eternal present that can be revisited again and again. For the moment, the restaurant is closed.
Grade: B
Readers Rating: [ratings]
Streamed by: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Apple iMac with 4GB RAM, Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard
