Hasebe’s range of secret skills start to come to light.
What They Say:
In a certain ward of a certain city in Hokkaido…The ward office where Yamagami Lucy has been hired employs many unique characters on its staff. Yamagami and her colleagues are full of energy and secrets as they’re hard at work (?!) in this workplace comedy!
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
As time has gone on a bit at the ward office, things are progressing about as one would expect. Sadly, everyone has pretty much set into their routines and their personalities have defined them as they are, which makes life difficult for their supervisor as Ichimaya is wondering if he’s being a proper instructor for them. His own issues of self worth come into play here when it comes to how he feels less than reliable when it comes to being someone they can come to for help, but as we see with his interactions with Yamagami here, he’s getting to be kind of self reflective and not realizing the problems that his employees are actually having. O course, when his younger sister keeps showing up and they try to deflect her a bit, it just makes things worse in general.
One of the fun gags of the show involves Yamagami early on as she ends up getting into a bit of trouble that she isn’t aware of where her bra hooks are off and that has her causing a potential for trouble amongst the others. While Hasebe is going to tell her outright, everyone else tries to figure out ways to tell her discreetly so that it doesn’t embarrass her or cause any additional trouble. The internal dialogue that the cast has as it goes on is just a lot of fun to watch, especially as the guys take one approach and the girls another, all while wondering whether Hasebe will just apply a blunt approach to it all. It lets them all shine in their own ways, and highlights Yamagami’s oblivious nature just a bit more, and makes for some good silliness.
Getting to know the characters is a good part of the fun here, which includes some time where we see Yamagami and Hasebe together in a way that’s intriguing, but also new aspects of Hasebe and who he is, which includes being really good with kids and a spot of ventriloquism that comes as a surprise. When it comes to Yamagami, we also learn something very important about her that’s utterly adorable and hilarious as it turns out lightning and thunder freaks her out to a huge degree. When Hasebe stumbles across her as it hits, her reactions are priceless and the way he massages the situation for her is just adorable. It’s another one of those small moments that helps change perceptions about the young man and his ways that were set up during the first couple of episodes.
In Summary:
I’ve enjoyed this series a good deal in its first two episodes as workplace comedies can be done in really fun ways. And it’s an underserved area of anime since so many shows focus on middle and high school characters. Here, we get to see more Hasebe and who he is as there’s really a main focus on him, but it draws in Yamagami a good deal as well to play off of him while others have smaller but very fun roles in association with both of them. There’s a lot of cute short stories spread throughout the work days here and this ward continues to just be a pleasure to watch due to the people involved. Good, simple clean fun presented in a great way with lots of laughs and grins derived from it.
Grade: B+
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Apple TV via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
Nice review, eventhough I’m still trying to at least like Lucy.