You already saw this coming from the first episode.
Previously on Denki-Gai no Honya-san, It’s Valentine’s day again, and it’s Sensei who needs the most help to give her chocolates to people. Also, Director and Hio-tan are locked out of the store, so they rent a private room for the night, confirming Tsumorin’s belief that Director has grown more attached to Hio-tan than her.
Summary of Denki-Gai no Honya-San Episode 11 and 12
- We see Sommelier as a young boy, collecting ero-manga for his school friends. The class rep catches them, only to join their ‘posse'; the class rep turns out to be the ero-manga inspector. Then, Sensei is tested once again on her girl power, which has greatly improved since. Later, Fu Girl gets annoyed when she notices that Sommelier takes no notice of her, so when he hits his head, she kisses him.
- Later, in Episode 12, after a night out, Sensei gets too drunk and spends the night at Umio’s. With her head still in a spin over their feelings, she pretends to be more drunk than normal, which makes Umio feel worse. Then, everyone decides to have a cosplay picnic in an empty park, where they all decide to get drunk.
My take
- I’ve never been a real fan for flashback episodes/sections; even though they’re built to develop the story and get us to know characters better, I find them annoying because they sometimes distract us a little. The flashback in Episode 11 with Sommelier and the ero-manga inspector did just that I think. We already know Sommelier is a genius in choosing his manga. Okay, sure, we only found out who the girl was until about halfway through but, to be honest, I only saw Denki-Gai no Honya-san as a show set in the present. It’s the characters now that matter, not then. This might be just my own personal opinion, but it just was not needed.
- And of course we had to wait until the very end for the couples in this show to show their feelings. Episode 10 had Director and Hio-tan in a private room, Episode 11 had Fu Girl kissing Sommelier while he was asleep, and the finale had Umio and Sensei in that position we all know about in every romance anime. And of course, in a parody show like this, things go wrong. In this case, Fu Girl runs (presumably) across the entire city with embarrassment after that smooch of hers, and Umio decides to hide his otaku stuff to make his apartment look ‘normal’, which makes Sensei extremely uneasy. And yes I did giggle at both of those jokes.
- But one magnificent highlight here? It’s getting drunk. Alcohol soothes the mind, body and the soul. Can’t say myself though, because I can’t drink (because of my medication). It did only occur to me in the final episode that all of them save high-schooler Fu Girl are allowed to drink. That’s the thing when you see young-looking boys and girls in shows you just assume that they go to high school, are underage and whatnot. Umio, Sensei, Director and Sommelier all have their own apartments, and Hio-tan shares an apartment with her sister. So it was kind of amusing to watch them all get insanely drunk at the end of the show. The perfect way to end a show that has more than a few flaws, but is likeable at the same time.
Series review
Throughout the entire process of watching this show, I felt a lot of things. The first one was extremely negative. A large majority of otaku culture was being shown as ridiculous and stupid; a kind of freak show almost. I think later I realised it didn’t really apply because the show gradually (very gradually) got better, especially when the three couples started to form. And it was three couples that made sense too. There was the atypical one with the main boy (Umio) and the main girl (Sensei), there was the unexpected but rather adorable one with Director and Hio-tan, and the rather silly one with Fu Girl and Sommelier.
But one thing I didn’t see coming was Kameko. The most secondary character ever in any show, but Denki-Gai no Honya-san portrayed it so well. Because she was constantly taking the pictures, she was the one who didn’t want to be in shot and put on the pedestal like all the other characters were. And that’s why I grew to like her once the show finished. The heart-to-hearts she had every now and then were quite touching; it was as if she’d already accepted a life to be in the background, but it was a life she loved. As for my least favourite? Well now we’ve reached the end, it’s a tie…between Sommelier and the ero-book inspector. His own genius in choosing the perfect manga for people to read was something, but aside from that he did almost nothing. You could even say he was the huge guy with a huge heart. Yuk. And as for the ero-book inspector? Annoying would be an understatement. She appeared only a few times, and that was for the best, because if she were constantly around, the jokes about her actually loving ero-books instead of protecting them from the public would just disappear in an instant.
When I chose to do this show I was certainly expecting fun and frolics in an otaku store. I was disappointed, despite the fact that all this fun and frolics were there alright. Maybe it was just the fact that I didn’t find the vast amount of jokes funny. You can only have a certain amount of ero-book jokes before they get tiresome and boring. The same applies to those angel scenes too, which I found…strange. One example: Hio-tan tries to find a genre of manga she really wants to get into, but when Sensei helps her, she literally turns into an angel and ‘guides her’ to golden manga books. When jokes like these had to happen more than once in this show is a sign that the writers were running kind of low on how to poke more fun at otaku culture. And I haven’t even started on the ongoing torture that Sensei had to endure. To her, being a mangaka and living on instant ramen was more important than looking pretty. And so why she (and thus we) had to go through girl power trials that just weren’t funny. In fact some of them were almost insulting.
Have some more apples.
I am happy that this show this is over, I will admit that. If there’s a second season, I won’t watch it. I did say that, from the beginning, the show acted more like an adaptation of a 4-koma manga, well I still stand by that, even if the manga of this wasn’t 4-koma at all. So was this a worthwhile adaptation? Well, I chuckled somewhat, I thought the couples were cute, I grew to love Kameko, so yes……and no. After Glasslip I swore that I’d be very careful when it came to slice-of-life shows. Well Denki-Gai no Honya-san has reminded me of that lesson.
