Hello and welcome to week 3 of Honda-San! This time around we have real people, more customers and an official best girl! Lets jump in!
This week Honda-San dived a bit farther into the business side of things, showing us both the sales-people and the horror of pushy Japanese businessmen. Despite how bland business can often be in anime, Honda-San did a good job with it here. There was a good balance between actual educational content and humor I found. For instance I had no idea that the little pamphlets and additional cards and such were made by the salespeople. Yet Honda-San still found time for humor in all of this with Pest-Mask being this cute manager girl and then a terrifying section chief. I have no idea how Honda-San managed to make a mask representing death for a couple centuries a cute girl, but it did.
Now for specifics, what I was most surprised and interested by was that Frederic Toutlemonde was a real damn person. And he is legitimately important. Just go look up his Linkedin profile for proof of that. It’s very interesting to me that not only did they manage to get him in this anime, not only to voice himself, but that a Frenchman is a head of publishing in Japan. Truly, I want to know how his life lead him there, and how he felt voicing himself in a booksellers anime. It was just so random that I was immediately curious, focused on what was going on. Once again Honda-San manages to teach me about book publishing with comedy. By the way, the shounen he wanted to place next to One Punch Man? Most likely Radiant, since it was written by a Frenchman. The more you know!
Not everything was great this week though. As interesting as the business side of everything was, I come to Honda-San for comedy. I enjoy learning, but laughter is what I want my main takeaway to be. The funniest part of the episode was the terrifying French customer with very specific tastes.The recommendations, the joke on someone looking for a Shoujo manga and settling on Berserk. Those are the sorts of absurdist comedy that I come to this series for. I hope that Honda-San moves closer towards customer or employee interactions. Keep the business aspects, but cut down on it. Make it one of the shorter skits near the end, with the main ones the customers. For example, Lantern or Pest-Mask’s interactions with the Salespeople were the funniest, because they focused on comedy instead of education.
This isn’t to say I am not enjoying Honda-San. Its greatest strength is just how short it is. At 11-12 minutes an episode, it fires off a mile a minute and is over before it runs out your patience. One of the greatest weaknesses of comedy in my opinion is that it has to always be changing. A comedy show can’t just keep telling the same joke over and over again like Grand Blue last season. It has to change it up. Honda-San gets around this by just cutting the episode length so you don’t get inundated with it and grow tired of it. It’s basically the saying “Distance makes the heart grow fonder”. It finishes up, leaves us with good memories and a chuckle or two, and comes back next week. Just long enough to watch while riding on the train or getting lunch.
But what did you think of Honda-San this week? Enjoy the business aspect? Or did you want more comedy like me? Let me know below!
P.S. Pest-Mask is best girl, fight me.
I also agree, that seeing jokes lines over and over again will only hurt the anime. worst viewers will only remember that anime that uses that joke first first.
I think I might want to give this anime a try, I also like business thoughts at the same time the comedy. I’m always a fan of your blog sir! I really like the web design very satisfying and simple.