Weekly Jidai editor Matsukata Hiroko is a super hard worker, and her coworkers refer to her as a Hataraki Man (a “working man”). When the chips are down, she goes into man-mode (/cry) and her testosterone levels explode off the charts. This allows her to work super hard at 3x normal speed. While she’s killing herself to write great articles, however, her new coworker Kunio Tanaka takes it easy and goes at his own pace. We also briefly meet coworkers Kaji Maiko, Nagisa Mayu, as well as bosses Narita Kimio and Umemiya Tatsuhiko.
Of course working so hard that she collapses in her living room at night has consequences. Both Hiroko and her boyfriend Yamashiro Shinji seem very loving, but can barely spend any time together. They also have not sexxored in over 3 months =(. To keep herself busy, Hiroko manages to stumble onto a scintillating story about misappropriation of funds, as the foreign minister’s secretary blows the whistle. When Hiroko misplays the story, however, the foreign minister uses the secretary as his goat, and Hiroko starts getting threatening calls. Fortunately, with encouragement from her boss, Hiroko is able to achieve man-mode again and write an awesome story that pins the blame on the minister without exposing her source.
Although I had a hard time believing how nice and supportive the top editors were, I really enjoyed this first episode. You wouldn’t think a series about someone else working would be interesting, but I could really relate to quite a few of the situations. On the other hand, I tend to take a similar attitude to Tanaka, as work is rarely worth ruining your life over.
I’m afraid that we’ll find out Shinji is having an affair on those “business trips”. However, I get the feeling that Umemiya may get some totally awesome lines in later episodes!
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8 Comments
I love how everyone watches her as she changes into Hataraki Man and the other girl in the office gets all wet. It makes me chuckle. I like Hiroko’s character, and in fact know tons of people just like her, with the same mentality about life. It’s just kind of funny to see it in anime, where it’s rare to see people concern themselves with such “trivial matters” as doing well at your job when…you know…they could be saving the world or something with special powers and the like.
wHAT KIND OF MAN DOESNT “SEXXOR” HIS WOMAN IN 3 MONTHS? IS HE GAY? whoops caps lock on. . sorry.
How does increasing her testosterone levels make he write better or faster, sounds kind of suspicious to me. Glass ceiling justification or something like that? Though i guess I cant say anything about it without watching it.
I’ve heard that it does nothing in the short term, but taken while training, the testosterone can really help boost your endurance. I suppose that might sorta make sense… except not really in this case.
I like my shows to have tons of hero worship, haha. I have yet to encounter this in real life.
They insinuate he is just too busy, but I suspect he is getting some on the side. That or man-mode bothers him… but he would like it if he was gay… ok, now I am just getting confused.
I was kinda hoping that we’d see some sort more flashy FX when she went into Hatakari Mode. I found it funny when the editor described her as the type of person who runs to catch a train even when there’s still plenty if time left.
You can even win the Tour de France with the help of testosterone. I wouldn’t recommend this to females though unless you’re hardo lesbian. I kind of wonder where she gets all the testosterone from if she rarely sexx0rz… Or maybe that’s the reason? Does she have any breast hair? Well, that could be cute but I’ve never heard of the term “cat breasts” so far. Oh well, we saw them in Thundercats.
I just read this comment again and I can’t stop laughing hahahaha!
Hiro is kind of woman I like.