badger11’s take on anime

Thanks to Arienai Fansubs for subbing this adult (no, not porn) show. I hope another season of this show comes. It’s one that I can easily recommend to people who don’t watch anime or think that’s nothing more than porn and robots. I’ve written a lot of notes (which I trashed) about the episode 10, trying to figure out what it meant to me. It focused on Hiro’s co-worker and occasional drinking buddy, Kaji. She’s the calm, always collected type (and the office beauty who seems to get away with things because of her looks).Everyone wonders how she can remain calm when the famous writer she’s working with is rumored to have been recently killed in a plane crash. We get hints that Hiro’s private life is starting to crash (a water pipe burst and flooded her apartment).

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Hiro gets a major assignment of her career when she gets put in charge of publishing a special edition of the magazine she works for. This edition covers the top 50 national leaders in business, education, etc. Unfortunately for her, she suffers a setback when one of the people, Mimura, she’s including in that suddenly dies from a brain hemorrhage at work. Like Hiro, he was a workaholic until he died at 45. Continuing with the theme of things going downhill, Hiro gets a, unheard of for her, cold and finds out that one of the five reporters working for her on this project is in the hospital (I wonder who has it worse, Hiro or the reporter). This reporter was interviewing 10 people, all of whom are now Hiro’s responsibility.

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I can’t recall when I considered an episode of a 12-part show to be a filler-like episode. Until this episode. It’s leaning towards that sort of a designation. Where episode 7 split the time between Hiro and her masseuse having to decide that they’ll have no regrets about putting all of their energy into jobs that they like, this episode doesn’t really have a lot to do with Hiro. Instead it focus’s more on Chiba, a salesman in the book division. One of Hiro’s ongoing assignments is to edit the work of an author. This work, called “54″, is being serialized in Hiro’s magazine. It’s been decided to finally publish 54 as a book an it’s Chiba’s job to pound the pavement and get it into bookstores. At first Hiro is thrilled until she finds out that 54 is going to have a limited release of 20,000 or so copies. Despite the popularity of 54 in the magazine, no one in the book division, including Chiba, is convinced that it’ll sell well. Chiba has no interest in the book and isn’t willing to put any more effort into 54 than he has to.

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This episode has Hiro and her masseuse feeling dissatisfied at their jobs. Hiro seems to suffering from a bout of journalism ethics when her latest assignment is to write a fluffy travel promo about Yakushima, a UNESCO World Heritage site. Where Hiro’s dissatisfaction comes from her latest assignment, the dissatisfaction of her masseuse, Midoriko, comes forced to get her clients in and out as fast as possible. She’s the spa’s most requested masseuse, so she gets the most bookings. Part of the problem is that she books some clients herself, adding to the clients booked for her by her manager. Since she’s so busy, she doesn’t get much time off, but she normally loves what she does. But the drawback to her workload is little time off and it seems that the workload and management’s pressure to turn clients over quickly is catching up to her. Midorika, who loves what she does and feels that she’s helping people is feeling conflicted.

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Pretty much another enjoyable episode. At the start of this episode, Hiro is getting ready for a business trip to Osaka when Shinji mentions plans for a wedding. Hiro freaks out and it isn’t until later on the train does she realize that he was talking about the wedding of a friend. Back at the office she finds out that a coworker, Yumi, is getting married. Yumi is pretty much considered the office flirt. Mayu mentions that the gossip has it that Yumi’s finance left his girlfriend of eight years to be with Yumi.

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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.

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