Anime Review: Skull-Face Bookseller Honda-san
What sort of person do you think makes a good bookstore employee? If you’re thinking, “a kind-hearted, busty young woman who is really good-looking when she takes off her glasses and lets her hair down,” this probably isn’t the show for you. Honda is a mild-mannered fellow who’s hard-working, knowledgeable about the selection, is better at customer service than he allows himself to think, oh, and he’s also a skeleton.
This twelve-episode anime series is based on a manga by “Honda”, who is an actual bookstore employee somewhere in Tokyo. His pen name is written with the kanji for “book”, but “hon” can also mean “bone.” All the bookstore employees in the show wear masks or other head coverings, and are named after them, a clever way of avoiding embarrassing their real life counterparts.
The “Maru-Maru” Bookstore primarily carries manga, Japanese comic books, which doesn’t quite carry the same connotations that a comic book store would have in the United States. It’s also in an area that gets a lot of foreign tourists, and the combination means that Honda gets to exercise his limited English abilities. (In a bit of dark humor, his home area in the store is the foreign comics shelves.)
A lot of the situations Honda finds himself in will be familiar to anyone who’s worked retail, especially in a bookstore. A customer who doesn’t remember any details about what they’re looking for that actually narrow the search down; the “regular customer” who feels he shouldn’t be bound by the same rules as less important shoppers; and the sinking feeling when the cash drawer doesn’t match sales so no one’s going home until it does.
There’s also shout-outs to famous manga series many fans will recognize, the concern about carrying books that moral guardians might decide to ban, and Honda sometimes dealing with the fact that he’s both a manga seller and a manga producer.
The animation is extremely limited, so this is not a series for people who like fluid motion or changing expressions. On the other hand, the characters are likable and the situations relateable.
Recommended to manga fans and retail workers.
And here’s the anime opening!
