Hataraki Man Ep 5 - Suigintou emerges
This episode didn’t do much for me. It was bad, but it wasn’t a standout one. It follows Hiro’s junior coworker, Mayu. A eager junior editor who worked hard to land a contract with a rising novelist, who happens to be Mayu’s favorite author. It’s her dream to work closely with this author. Mayu does get the author to agree to write some stories that will be serialized in the magazine. Part of Mayu’s effort was getting the contact information for the author, but she losses the slip of paper that has the information on it.
In a search, she comes across another slip of paper that has someone’s goals written on it. Mayu realizes that the owner of the sheet is Hiro. No one else would be so cocky as to write out a goal of being a chief editor of a major magazine and leave it lying around. Even though she gets the contract, she’s transferred to a different assignment (a celebrity stakeout with Fumiya the grumpy photographer) due to her inexperience as an editor. Hiro gets the job of working with the author despite Mayu’s attempts at getting the job back. Because of her inexperience, Mayu is filled with self-doubt as her dream is basically crushed in front of her.
As Mayu deals with her dream assignment being taken away, Hiro is dealing with an author who is basically inexperienced in writing anything outside of the romance novel niche. Hiro has to struggle for a bit, trying to figure out how to work with this author when the primary market for the magazine are men. She eventually hits on the idea of having a romance story about a middle-aged man in a loveless marriage who falls in love with a younger woman. The story is a hit, adding men to the fan base of the author. Mayu eventually accepts the facts and in a meeting with the author, she vows to work hard so that she can gain the experience needed to work with her favorite author. As a token of this promise, Mayu keeps the sheet of paper that has Hiro’s goals on it.
That reminds me, I need to rewrite my goals. World domination is taking longer than I thought. In a flashback scene, Mayu meets the author for the first time at a book signing and goes into ballistic fanboy fangirl mode (It reminded me of several Star Trek conventions I went to. The horror, the horror. Some of those fans out there are fraking C-R-A-Z-Y).
It was nice to see Mayu fight and take her protests to the chief editor. But as the author points out, both Mayu and herself are trapped by the authors other books and Hiro offers a fresh perspective. Basically, an inexperienced editor and a author writing outside of her experience wouldn’t create a good story. It’s nice to see the show flesh out the characters. Like the last episode, were it focused on Shinji, (Hiro’s boyfriend) ends with a character vowing to work harder and succeed. And like me when my dreams/goals get crushed, Mayu turns to food, in this episode, anpan. Mayu isn’t the only one who has to sacrifice something close to them. Since Hiro has to give up several assignments to other editors, like that slacker Kunio, in order to work with Mayu’s author. And think of poor Kunio the slacker, having to work on someone else’s and not something that he wants to work.
And it’s official, I’m joining up with with the I Hate Kunio Brigade. Studio Gallop had better not make Hiro hook up with Kurio. That’d be easy way out and run a good show.
