Apathy seems to have been a trendy topic for anime the past few years, culminating in 2012 with Hyouka’s Oreki whose, if you’ll forgive the pun, entire driving force was to pursue a languorous existence, free of exertion. Denpa Onna to Seishun Otoko (Electrowave Girl and Youthful Boy / Ground Control to Psychoelectric Girl) may have preceded Hyouka by a year but nevertheless rails against this trend of laziness, ironically doing so in the most languid and nonchalant way possible.

It doesn’t start as such. The first episode is, for the lack of a better phrase, very SHAFT, by which I mean very Shinbo. It’s sparkling, protractedly verbose and cut together with just enough self-assured rough edges to be purposeful.

It’s pretty terrible.

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On the surface Working`!! has very little going for it. Sliding off the back of the first series the second introduces no major new jokes or any characters of substance, the animation is scrappy and there's no drama that isn't wholly manufactured. Telling then that the most exciting part is when Matsumoto - the eternal cameo - is gifted a voice and takes part, albeit in a small way, in the ongoing story. Against all of this, somehow everything clicks together and works.

This is mostly thanks to a core set of characters which play off each other very well, making sure that no personality (foibles and all) is allowed to dominate. So the sparky Taneshima remains the most enjoyable character thanks to her indomitable good nature, but her clashes with Satou are kept spaced apart, providing brilliant but occasional visual humour. Likewise Takanashi, who exists on the knife-edge of creepy and eccentric, interacts more with Satou and Souma now and his baffling relationship with Inami is kept restrained.

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Unimaginative. Tired. Bland. Tedious. Insipid. The list of derogatory descriptions for Kämpfer is lengthy but suffice to say the utter lack of inspiration the series demonstrates is quite staggering. Cherry picking the most aggravating elements from other shows and combining them into a thoroughly banal presentation of gender swapping and fighting females which, on the face of it, is a combination ripe for exuberance.

The opening scene is enough cause for one to turn off and continue no further: a luminous red-head shooting at a fluorescent blue-haired buxom female running and darting about conspicuous trees while her clothes are seductively shredded. Were it not for the next scene, a comparative master class in introductions, the series would be starting off at the very bottom of the entertainment hill. The inaugural episodes oscillate from apathetic combat to surprisingly gratifying school humour and only seems to hit its stride in the third which introduces a plethora of débutantes eager to ravish the goofy protagonist who woke up one morning a different sex than that which he went to bed.

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