Fall 2018 Anime Review : Skullface Bookseller Honda-san

If you don't know yet, I love reading books especially when I went home from working or anything with train and thus developing a skill of reading books while standing up in a moving train. And I am not talking about e-books, I am talking about real physical books which you acquire from a bookstore. Bookstore is probably a place I love so much that I could spent my day off there if I don't have anything else to do. Being surrounded by books feels like a heaven for me. But how about people who works there? People who have their everyday life surrounded by books? Skullface Bookseller Honsa-san gave us an insight of how the bookstore works and how is it like to work on such place. Not just that, this anime gave us a working place jokes those are funny because of how relatable the jokes to our working life and so many reference jokes here and there.

What I really like about this anime is how they present some mechanism within the bookstore that might applied to the nearest bookstore. I love to get new knowledge of something I never know before and this anime presented the information with funny presentations of author's own depiction inside his head. And because this anime revolved around bookstore that specializes in manga and comic, there ought to be many reference jokes. I love this anime's reference jokes as they all well placed and played as a huge punch line for what happening in a certain scene. From censoring book publisher names to a very must be there JoJo reference, if you love reference jokes as I do, you will love this anime so much. Not just that, Honda-san everyday life as a bookstore employee is a relatable one for anyone who works as a regular employee in some retail shop. It is shown very deeply that the author must have been working there for real to manage to express those feelings to us.

While the animation is really limited, the atmosphere of this anime gave out that the animation is intentionally doing that to further make this anime interesting. I really love the character designs for this anime though. Since the author seemed want to make everyone anonymous, he depicted them by stuff that really out of my head. I think the move is very creative as it makes diversity among the characters while make the characters anonymous at the same time. Section Chief Armor's character design might be the one I love most. Since, it originates from the manga, I think it is a huge kudos for Honda-san.

Overall, this anime is a very interesting anime to watch as a quickie because one episode of this anime only span for ten minutes. And because of the short span, I think that's why Skullface Bookseller Honda-san could live up its humor as it is not overstaying its humor and comedy. Sometimes we just need short sketches to make us laugh in between our busy times, right?

Honda-san in my local bookstore...

(This review was previously written in MAL : https://myanimelist.net/reviews.php?id=297129)