While certainly not as interesting as a good bout of action or an isekai adventure, everyone grows up and gets a job. However, that doesn’t mean that everything fun about life dies. Instead, comedy anime set in various workplaces can show that jobs can be fun too. If the work isn’t the fun part, then at least the co-workers can provide a little entertainment.
If you are looking for workplace comedy anime recommendations to help you cope with and unwind from the less fun realities of working, then give these series a try.
Workplace Comedy Anime
Skull-Faced Bookseller Honda-san
Like its title so helpfully says, Skull-Faced Bookseller is all about a bookstore clerk named Honda that deals with the strange literary desires of customers all day.
As the series is somewhat autobiographical of the author’s own time working in a bookstore, all the characters are turned into animals or caricatures. It allows identities to be protected as the interactions range from harmlessly mundane to incredibly strange with the eccentricity turned up for comedy.
Life Lessons with Uramichi Oniisan
Anime makes work life in any profession look so much more fun than it probably is. Life Lessons with Uramichi Oniisan reminds you that much of what awaits you in adulthood is disappointment.
The series follows the host of a children’s TV show who is internally struggling with his adult failures that led to him abandoning his aspirations of becoming a gymnastics coach.
Sometimes that darkness leaks out in front of the kids or in his interactions with his co-workers.
While Life Lessons with Uramichi Oniisan is a comedy, if you are an adult, some of the statements can sting a little more than they should.
Working
Taking place in one of Japan’s family restaurants, Working details the daily lives and interactions of the staff. The series really showcases how tight-knit a group of employees that spend enough time around each other can be as they all become increasingly intertwined in their personal outside-of-work lives as well.
While light on much storytelling other than slice of life, Working follows a larger cast of fun characters in an easy-to-like, relatable service setting.
Ojisan and Marshmallow
There is actually quite the growing number of workplace romance anime out there as adults realize that most love connections as an adult will indeed probably happen at the office. However, Ojisan and Marshmallow doesn’t follow a heart-throbbing office romance, unless that throbbing is coming from an imminent heart attack.
Ojisan and Marshmallow follows a woman who has developed a strong crush on her older, overweight co-worker. Not believing that such a cute girl could ever be flirting with him, he brushes off her attempts to woo him. This means her flirting and tempting him with his favorite food, marshmallows, goes comically, sadly unrequited.
Amagi Brilliant Park
Imagine being asked to a theme park by a cute girl. Sounds like a date, right? Amagi Brilliant Park is about a boy who gets tricked into going to a theme park for what he thought was a date only to discover that he was being roped into a management job.
Amagi Brilliant Park is about a high school boy trying to help a floundering theme park attract customers before they are shut down. However, he isn’t just trying to help people save their jobs, but instead, this series is actually a reverse isekai as well as workplace comedy.
The workers after fairy folk who depend on energy from happy customers to live, making lives on the line for their revitalization project.
Blend S
Blend S follows the recent new addition to the staff at a theme cafe where each of the female waitresses role-play a specific personality type. For the main character, she is actually a nice person, but looks unintentionally menacing when she smiles. However, the cafe hired her to play a sadist persona that fits well with her smile, but is a difficult fit given her normally sweet disposition.
Blend S is a treat for those who enjoy the different “waifu personas” found in anime – like the tsundere, the imouto, or the trap. It twists all that up for comedy by having the characters actually be quite different from how they present themselves in the cafe.
Servant X Service
Compared to many other series on this list, Servant X Service is a workplace anime that is a little low on the comedy. In fact, if it wasn’t for the small humorous interactions that we have each day being so fun to watch, this series might not be able to be called a comedy at all.
Servant X Service doesn’t highlight working in a government agency by making it eccentric. Instead, it is just about the excited newly hired employees of the Heath and Welfare Department in local Hokkaido government.
It’s cute and realistic characters carry the comedy, but the series does provide a more realistic – if sugarcoated – glimpse at government work perhaps in hope to tempt younger anime fans into considering it in the future.
Denki-gai
Similar to Skull-Faced Bookseller Honda-san, Denki-gai follows the daily work life of employees at a bookstore. However, instead of being plagued by a series of eccentric customers, Denki-gai slots the employees as the eccentrics.
The series is framed as a shy teen getting his first part-time job at the bookstore, so of course every other employee has the biggest sort of personalty to make him feel extra uncomfortable. However, the comedy in Denki-gai ranges from big personalities to typical otaku jokes so that the jokes never get too stale.
Heaven’s Design Team
No one is immune to the workplace grind, not even heavenly entities. Heaven’s Design Team is about the bureaucracy of heaven where not every angel is minding heaven’s gates or raining retribution on sinners. Instead, you get a glimpse at the less-famous heavenly entities at work in the background as they invent many of the animals we enjoy today.
Heaven’s Design Team is essentially an idea-pitching room. The employees of the department pitch their ideas for animals, and their co-workers discuss why – or why not – those ideas are not viable on Earth.
The series is fun comedy, but also surprisingly educational as to why some animals exist from an evolutionary standpoint and why some fantasy creatures could never exist and thrive in an Earth ecosystem.
Snack Basue
If you were looking for a workplace comedy anime that is a little more comedy and a lot less actual work, Snack Basue has got you.
Snack Basue follows the two waitresses of a small bar tucked into the back streets of Sapporo. They get a solid cycle of returning customers that allows the pair to build up a rapport and relationship with them.
Of course, everyone from the waitresses to the customers are all some form of scummy degenerate – which is the basis for the comedy. If you don’t mind an above average amount of perverted comedy (without any ecchi) in your workplace comedy, Snack Basue is the series that doesn’t take itself too seriously for you.
Miss Kuroitsu from the Monster Development Department
Like Heaven’s Design Team, Miss Kuroitsu From The Monster Development Department is another fantasy take on workplace comedy. This time, it follows an employee who works at a corporation that is also an evil organization trying to take over the world. You know, like Google or Amazon.
The series follows a researcher who is often forced to do field work, like coming up with and testing new combat monster designs. However, it is usually her eccentric superiors who bring most of the comedy to this workplace.
The Devil is a Part-Timer
What could possibly humble a demon lord more than being sent to our world with no magic? It turns out being broke-ass broke and having to work a minimum wage job is a pretty good at humbling both people and fantasy beings.
However, The Devil is a Part-Timer may start off about watching a demon lord comically ride the cash register at a legally-not-McDonald’s franchise, but it grows above workplace comedy in to a pretty interesting fantasy plot and romance. It definitely has more actual plot going on than many of these other series, that’s for sure.
I Couldn’t Become a Hero, So I Reluctantly Decided to Get A Job
The title of this series pretty much sums up what it is about. The world used to train potential heroes to fight the demon lord, but when a demon lord was defeated, the world didn’t need heroes anymore.
For the main character, who was a hero-in-training when the demon lord fell, he decided to get a job at the only place that would hire someone with no other marketable skills – a floundering department store.
There, he ends up developing an increasing pride in the quality service he offers, even if it means lower profits compared to other chains, while developing a relationship with a new employee who turns out to be the Demon Lord’s daughter living in hiding.
New Game
New Game combines two things that usually have some appeal to anime fans – cute girls and game development.
While not every anime fan is a also a fan of gaming, chances are pretty high that the two interests overlap. New Game follows a girl who lands a job at the game development company that makes her favorite game. She suddenly finds herself surrounded by the passionate people that all make it happen.
While New Game has a very Cute Girls Doing Cute Things approach to the workplace and game development, it makes for a fun way to explore the subject without being too serious about it.
Aggretsuko
Most of the above workplace comedy anime like to pretend that going to a job every day is fun. While that may be true for some people, most people will find that working actually isn’t very fun. If you are lucky, you will find it bearable. If you are not lucky, then you will find a lot to enjoy in Aggrestuko.
This short-form anime explores the miserable office life of the main character, a red panda woman who has to endure thankless work, overwork, and misogynistic comments. She does have one outlet, though. Singing death metal karaoke that she writes about her day.
As its short 2-minute episodes leave limited time for complex narrative, this series goes heavy on the comedy and light on any actual plot. It is definitely not for those who don’t enjoy death metal, however, since each episode ends with it.
Do you have more workplace comedy anime recommendations? Let fans know in the comments section below.
