Mangaka san to Assistant-san to - Review

Mangaka-san to Assistant-san is a 12 episode animated adaption from the completed manga series by Sentai Filmworks. Each episode of the show is 12 minutes long made up of a collection of small segments, similar to The Daily Lives of High School Boys or Seitokai Yakuindomo.

Story

Mangaka-san to Assistant-san is first a foremost a comedy, the general premise is the story of a manga artist and his harem of female assistants, editor etc. This isn’t at all original, but in practice this doesn’t hinder the show. Romance may be apart of the show, however it is not it's strength nor it’s focus. Aito the main character is a pervert and spends his days either drawing manga or hitting on his main assistant Ashisu or who ever else decides to come over. The short, sharp style of the jokes plays well with the different characters and make for very light hearted entertainment. The majority of the series is a collection of separate scenes with no real development and focusing on humour, nevertheless at times there are extended situations that pack character development and general plot development into the show.

Characters 

The characters in Mangaka-san to Assistant-san are all very entertaining and diverse enough to keep situations largely unpredictable. Aito is a very simple character, he is a pervert that is very caring in his own way, however his attempts at being caring can often be misunderstood. Ashisu and the rest of the side characters are surprisingly well written for a comedy. At first manly of them seem to be very simple characters, yet as the series develops lots of back story is shown in the series that makes you care more about the character. Considering that the entire length of the series is around 144 minutes, this is quite impressive.

Art and Animation

The art and animation is honestly nothing special, the art is drawn nicely and gives the series an identity and the animation is nice and colourful. The animators would often have a freeze frame style moment highlighting different reactions to a situation, each character has their own colour and although it is a small detail, it was effective in emphasising the reaction of characters.

Music 

The music in the series is similar to the art and animation in that it is not really anything special, but not bad either. The opening and ending had a nice sound track and the background music was often used effectively.

Conclusion 

Mangaka-san to Assistant-san is an enjoyable little series that is about as light hearted as they come. The show is constantly funny without you really having to pay much attention and it is all packed into a 12 minutes episode meaning that you don’t really have to set much time aside to enjoy the show. I give the show a 7.5/10 a nice enjoyable series that is not a must watch, but is still a worthwhile experience.

-PandaSlayer