The series draws to a close in much the same way it ran.
What They Say:
A blush-inducing, coming-of-age comedy about manga-loving book store employees!! The unique cast of characters — all hard-core manga fans and maniacs of some sort — work at comic shop “Uma no Hone.” On a daily basis, they display new releases, shrink-wrap comics, shudder at their lack of feminine qualities, question their love for porn literature…and basically have fun while working hard (?). Girls and guys call each other by nicknames and some begin to develop close relationships! It’s non-stop humor and romance in this book store rom-com!
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Over the course of its run, Denki-gai has had some cute moments to be sure, but it mostly played things very safe and kept to the simple humor. The focus on character moments through comedy worked decently with what it did, but it also kept things largely superficial with them rather than letting us really connect with them, which in turn would elevate the humor a bit more. Which is why the prologue to this episode is kind of surprising as we get a mostly lightly drunk Sensei essentially being walked home by Umi since he’s feeling responsible for her after everything. Of course, the only thing he can do is bring her home with him to make sure she’s okay, but she’s too out of it to think about it much and is instead just glad to see things going as they are.
Umi, of course, has to hide his copious amounts of pervy material in his apartment before she gets there. Which is a challenge enough in itself, though he does a lot in short form to make the place come across as normal. It’s familiar territory, but I’ll admit it played well and the cool air outside helped to reorient Sensei a bit after she puked hard earlier. There’s a lot of fun as the two of them spend time together while Sensei runs through so many situations in her head that it has to result in laughs, even if it’s familiar – including her laying her head on his lap to try and recover a bit more. While I don’t see much compelling about their relationship or potential, because both are really ciphers in terms of who they really are when you get down to it, there are cute moments here.
The episode does spend some time with the store workers as a whole this time around with a cherry blossom viewing picnic and that has its own cuteness as it goes on, especially with some of the more minor characters and their interactions. Drunk Hiotan hitting on Kantoku is, however, priceless. There’s some simple physical comedy throughout it and some light character moments, but since the show has avoided dealing with the cast outside of the main four in any significant way, it’s all very bland an uninteresting when you look at it as a whole since the characters don’t really mean anything. The show manages to close things out in this way for the most part with some decent bit, and an amusing credits sequence with what it presents for various covers and the like for things sold in their store, but it’s a show that really does end with a whimper rather than a bang. Which is no surprise.
In Summary:
Denki-gai comes to a close and the potential promise of the series from the start never materialized. While I enjoyed piece of it, the series mostly played things very safe and never really had fun with it all in a big way, instead opting to be very superficial with characters that you had no reason to invest in or, half the time, even bother knowing their names since nothing significant happens along the way. With a number of decent workplace comedies over the years, Denki-gai had a shot at joining those ranks with its bookstore setting and the kind of silliness and solid stuff that can happen, but it instead went in a way that was the path of least resistance to the easiest humor, though at least it wasn’t big on fanservice. But hell, that could have made it entertaining. I didn’t pick up many shows this season, but this one left me feeling like I made a bad choice.
Grade: C
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.
