Working!!
The most obvious question to ask about Working!! is where it sits with regards its contemporaries. The easiest answer is: somewhere between Azumanga Daioh and Minami-ke. This puts it in an odd position where its intended audience is concerned for it's not surreal enough to garner a cult following and not accessible enough to be immediately appealing. Sure the idea of a violently androphobic girl is quirky, but the restaurant setting is littered with customs and rituals that are foreign enough to be disconnecting. The series then occupies a middle ground, rarely laugh-out-loud hilarious but frequently inspired, inventive but tends to grind its best ideas, fulfilling and satisfying but lacking the spark that would elevate this beyond a fleeting curio.
When Sota is recruited on the street by the diminutive and infectiously cheery Poplar, he is inducted into the world of the Wagnaria restaurant. Staffed by a cast of misfits which includes a layabout, parfait devouring manager, Kyouko, an overprotective sword-toting waitress, Yachiyo, the ordinarily demure but in fact freakishly strong Mahiru, and Hiroomi whose talent for leveraging information about his co-workers provides him with an easy day's work. Sota by comparison adores small and cute things but after being repeatedly punched by Mahiru, vows to cure her of her androphobia. Meanwhile all manner of shenanigans transpire in the restaurant starting with the adoption of Aoi, a wayward teenager who the head manager, Hyogo, meets on his travels to find his absent wife. And despite what the quiet Maya may claim, she is just another one of the varied and off-beat employees that make Wagnaria so eclectic.
