Hataraki Man Ep. 1-3

Matsukata Hiroko is an editor in the weekly Jidai magazine. She’s referred to as “Hataraki Man,” being that she works extremely above the normal when she’s on work mode. She makes it sure that she writes a great article. She won’t stop until it satisfies her. The first episode is like an introduction about her character. She’s got a boyfriend although they barely see each other, it seems due to work. (No sex for 3 months already even.) She gets to write an article about a minister. She’s very much pissed off because they shortened her interview time. But the minister’s secretary calls her and gives all the information she knows about him. Not very good information though. She writes this article and publishes it. She started getting threatening calls. The minister then accuses his secretary of all the things said about him. So as not to disclose her source, she writes another article.

Episode 2 is about Stakeout Man — Sugawara Fumiya. He’s a photographer for gossip columns in the magazine. His job is to get racy photos of an Olympic athlete and her coach (who’s got an afro and a sideburn *lol*). His first stakeout attempt is a failure. In his second, Hiroko goes with him. Mostly because she wants to find out why Sugawara dislikes her a lot. Sugawara doesn’t seem very friendly around with the girls. He finds them, I think, annoying. It’s probably because of the ladies he has dealt with in his work. Their stakeout wasn’t successful and Hiroko was still unclear of Sugawara’s attitude to her. Sugawara though was able to figure out why he dislikes Hiroko.

Ramen Man, episode 3 of Hataraki Man, is Kubo-chan. He helps Tanaka write an article about ramen which is supposedly for Hiroko to work on. She was so pissed that he had to continue to write about it. Hiroko dislikes him a lot for being so laid back and isn’t that much resourceful. For example, instead of looking for a ramen expert himself, he just asked Hiroko. In the end, Hiroko told him to talk to Kubo-chan. Kubo-chan’s work is more about food and erotica. I didn’t expect that Hiroko and him to be close. I mean, Kubo-chan looks like the type Hiroko would dislike. They’re close since they got in weekly Jidai at the same time and there isn’t much to worry about him when it comes to work-related information.

I’ll definitely watch the rest of this series. XD Even moreso after hearing Sugawara and confirming that Kazuya Nakai (he also did Mugen’s of Samurai Champloo) who voiced him. Based on ANN, this series will only have 11 episodes. Anyway, I like how realistic the story is… All of us get tired of all those magical, fighting, etc. type of anime, right? Hataraki Man sort of reminds me of Genshiken. Please don’t ask me why. Ahh, why are the good animes short?

Btw, I don’t think I’ll be able to post screencaps because I’m getting the HD version of this series from Arienai Fansubs.