I bet you all forgot that I would be blogging this, because I sure did. This episode probably would have gone unblogged as well if it hadn’t been for Claymore being late (Eclipse’s TL is apparently having some hardware problems).

But what better day to do a Doujin Work post than today, August 17th in Japan, the opening day of the 72nd Summer Comiket!

Episode Rating: 7.5/10

Najimi’s part time job is going well, the concept for her next manga is finished and her second doujinshi event is fast approaching. However, she feels like there’s something missing, something to bring out the passion and motivation in her, Tsuyuri suggests getting a rival.

The scene cuts to Tsuyuri and Justice on the train, Justice looking noticeably depressed. Tsuyuri asks what’s wrong and Justice tells her how he saw Najimi and Hoshi together at a love hotel district checking into a hotel together. Tsuyuri probably knows that there’s a logical explanation to the situation, but as always, chooses to toy around and add to the misunderstanding instead.

The three of them along with Sora get together at Najimi’s place to help her with her manga and Tsuyuri takes the opportunity to throw out some easily misunderstood conversation like “Two people doing it together is more fun that doing it alone” and “When three people do it, it starts to get a little abnormal”.

When they notice that Najimi’s manga has a couple going into a hotel together in one scene, Justice loses it, calls Najimi a pervert and storms out. After he leaves, Najimi explains the reason she went to a hotel with Hoshi was so she would be able to draw a hotel room in her manga and reassures Sora and Tsuyuri that there’s nothing going on between them.

Justice decides that he’ll deal with Hoshi the only way he knows how, through manga, and decides to write a 500 page manga on the beauty of pure love. He ends up having to call Najimi and Tsuyuri for help because he is sleep deprived and nowhere near finished, but they prove to be of little help and he has to finish it by himself in the end.

At the next doujinshi event, Najimi meets another artist on the same level as her (read: absolutely talentless) and a rivalry is born. The two take a look at each other’s work and though they are polite and supportive on the surface, they both laugh at the lack of talent the other has on the inside. And so the race is on to see who sells the most manga that day, but with their status as unknowns and their lack of talent, it’s a challenge that in the end will probably be decided by the sale of a single copy.

Meanwhile, Hoshi is looking for Najimi’s booth when he sees a huge shipment of doujinshi come in, which turn out to be Justice’s. When the two catch each other’s eye, Hoshi ends up running away.

When Sora calls Justice and explains that Hoshi and Najimi took pictures when they went to the hotel, but didn’t explain that there was nothing perverted going on, Justice loses it and goes after Hoshi, chasing him everywhere what looks like an attempt to beat him to death with a copy of his 500 page manga.

Thoughts

As I noted in my first impressions post for Doujin Work, it’s not exactly what I would call laugh out loud funny. It relies on basic humor often centered around misunderstandings and bad timing on the part of characters. But even so, it has a sort of “so stupid it’s funny” kind of charm that I happen to like. Also, by restricting the show to 15 minutes per episode, it prevents the show from feeling like it’s dragging on forever, unlike a certain food animu that is often hit or miss in that regard, although it has been getting a lot better lately with the addition of several awesome side characters.

Tsuyuri was pretty funny in this episode, but I feel like she’s becoming a one trick pony. All she’s done in these past 5 episodes is sit there like a stoic android non-chalantly saying things that start/add to misunderstandings mainly between Justice and Najimi. It’s funny, but it’s getting a little old. But in that sense, I suppose you could say the same about any of the characters, they all have rather two dimensional personalities (and character designs, lol).

As for Justice, he continues to be a complete pedo. How old is he anyways? Najimi can’t be much older than her early twenties and Justice, who looks like he’s in his mid thirties, obviously has the hots for her. But then again, he said they were childhood friends, so maybe he just -looks- really old, but is around the same age as Najimi in reality. But still, the same excuse can’t be applied to Sora.

I wonder if Doujin Work will remain random until the end, in true 4koma style. Judging from the ‘plot’ so far, and the fact that there are only 7 half episodes left, I don’t see Doujin Work working towards developing any substance, let alone a conclusive ending. But I suppose that’s for the best, I can’t imagine Doujin Work doing so, what keeps it from failing is the fact that it doesn’t take itself seriously.

I really need to find the manga though, apparently its leaps and bounds ahead of the anime in terms of hilarity. Unfortunately it’s not licensed, and my first pass at searching the intertubes has produced nothing D=

Side note* Sorry for the downtime yesterday, animeblogger.net and all the blogs hosted on it went down for about 6 hours last night. This was supposed to be posted yesterday, when the Comiket comment made a little more sense, but meh, it still stands.

~ Shirukii ~