Yuri is My Job!

Facades are something people use as their armor to shield their true selves from the world around them. One can fake being a happy, giddy person, one can fake whatever emotions they want, but for the main character, Shirasagi Hime, she pretends to be the “perfect girl”, the most likeable girl in the entire world, so she can get with a good-looking millionaire, the ideal husband. One day however, she runs into the manager of a peculiar cafe, and to repay her debt for injuring her, she must work in this cafe until her injury is fully recovered. Now, you can guess what happens tosaid injury… Now let me take you on a journey through my experience of “Yuri is My Job” through three stages: The initial intrigue, the frustration, and the acceptance. To start this journey, we start with the initial intrigue, where Hime has to work at this cafe, where its theme is an all-girls academy where there are hierarchies, complex relationships, and many rules to adhere to in order to entertain the customers. In short, the customers simply watch all the employees yuri-bait each other. A cafe built upon yuri-baiting, how fun am I right? Hime struggles at understanding her role in all this, and the other employees run out of patience despite not teaching her anything? Truly reflective of a typical work environment, right? Then comes the frustration. There’s a level of drama in this show that is shown through the character interactions. Eventually, the line between work and life gets blurred, and the employees start taking everything very seriously, forming relationships among themselves through sisterly bonds and the like. A friend of Hime’s gets dragged into the mess as well, and it turns out she’s obsessed with Hime. We get some backstory of all the characters, with drama so mind-numbingly baffling, which also ended up making the workplace very tense. Virtually everything in the backstories were based on misunderstandings, and we’ve seen our fair share of shows like, for example, “Rent-A-Girlfriend”, “Girlfriend, Girlfriend”, or “Nisekoi”. All these trashy harem or romcoms just got on my nerves, and this show also made me quite angry at points. Now, I’ve watched a solid amount of anime. At some point, even such trashy shows can produce an amount of fun, and hating things isn’t that fun, so I decided to accept it for what it is, a trashy show. I ended up liking it, and thought that it provided a very solid form of ironic entertainment. Seeing the interactions between the characters, the misunderstandings that built, the needless drama, everything just became a comedy for me, so I just revelled in the ironic beauty of it all. Why be so negative about things? All in all, I seemed to enjoy it. This show isn’t good, but you can’t deny there’s entertainment there to be seen. Not only is the setting interesting, but the characters all have distinct and interesting personalities, ranging from a character who lies all the time, to an obsessed girl that has likely thousands of pictures of her best friend in her phone. Isn’t it all so entertaining? Who am I kidding? This review was filled with lies. The three stages are just me catering to the masses who enjoy this stuff. This show isn’t good, and its attempts at drama are absolutely abhorrent and contrived. The characters are basically completely unlikeable, with the “yuri” being completely off the deep end with how inaccurately portrayed the romance is. What’s the lie? What’s the truth? What to believe? In the end, that’s what Hime’s character is, a girl with a facade so strong that any attempt of trying to reconcile with others seems hardly believable. In the end, the truth lies somewhere in between all the chaos, just like my opinion on this show.

Watayuri is a tough one, I really want to like it since it’s yuri, but the melodramatic and shallow story really make it hard for me. The show does have signs of promise, particularly towards the end once characters started getting their backstories fleshed out, but it’s too little too late in my opinion. Most of the show feels like cheap drama for the sake of drama. My biggest issue with this story is that literally every issue in this series could be solved if the characters just acted like normal human beings and spoke to each other about how they feel. The drama feels soforced and the jealousy plotline between Kanoko and Hime was dragged out entirely too long. It really brings down the show. I know it’s anime, and you have to have some drama for tension and stakes and all that, but come on, at least make it believable. The characters hold grudges and beef over the dumbest things. Ayano and Hime’s relationship drama was the fakest stuff I’ve seen in a long time. We get 6 episodes of Ayano being a tsundere to hime and downright cruel at times simply because of a misunderstanding from elementary school??? Then, not to mention the Kanoko yandere plotline which dragged on for ages. Her toxic obsession with Hime was kind of cute at first, but as episodes went on it really got irritating and the explanation for it was subpar. In this case, it doesn’t help that the cast is so small and the story is so contained. Most everything in the show takes place within one room in a cafe. There’s no room for world building literally and figuratively. The world feels so claustrophobic and that was one of my biggest issues with it. I haven’t read the manga yet, so I’m not sure if the world opens up as things progress, but that would be my biggest criticism of the world in addition to the overdramatic characters. Being a yuri, it goes without saying that romance is a big part of the story. I think the romance in this is pretty subpar. Even with the backstories, I felt it left something to be desired. It just didn’t feel like there was enough meat or substance to really justify the extent to which these characters are in love. For a fantasy story that’s ok, for a slice of life romance drama story, not so much. It’s not all bad though, I did enjoy large segments of the show. Even when I was laughing out loud about how stupid the characters’ motivations were, I was still having fun. I think the story does have potential, it just needs more time in the oven to cook. I don’t think this is a must watch, but it’s not one that I regret watching if that makes sense. If you’re into Yuri, give it a shot, see how you like it. Just keep in mind what I’ve said about the writing and you shouldn’t be too disappointed. Watayuri gets 7 out of 10.

Yuri is My Job! is complicated because I feel like the base story basically has nothing going for it and the 'thing' that starts the story is hilariously terrible. But there are some decent elements underneath that, you just need to be a little patient. But does it pay off? Story: Yuri is My Job! is the latest in the Girls-Love series which kind of has a similar setting to Maria Watches Over Us, which is a really old series that takes place at a super catholic school. I say "sort of" because our cast of characters aren't actually at a school.They all work at a café where they role-play as students at a school. It's here they both role play, all while serving their customers casual café food and drinks. I'm just going to say it - the beginning is borderline terrible. Hime Shiraki, a student at a nearby school, has this dream where she wishes to marry a rich boyfriend and basically be a gold digger, while putting on this cute façade. One day, she bumps into Mai Koshiba, knocking her down and injuring her hand. When Mai explains that it's broken, she basically makes Hime work at her maid café where they role play as catholic students at an academy, Café Liebe. The entire thing is pretty much as ridiculous as it sounds, and it doesn't get better when you're actually viewing this happening in front of you. The entire series basically takes place at Café Lieve, where Hime is "hired". After the series finally gets going, many of the happenings at the café actually aren't half bad. There are mini-elections, different uniforms for the summer and even some conflict in between our characters' shifts. Our cast play it off pretty well and even if none of this is technically 'real', it was believable enough that it didn't bother me too much. We also get some pretty heavy insight into one of our characters, Mitsuki Yano, and this was easily my favourite part of the series. It was well told and pretty realistic. In between shifts, there isn't a ton going on with our cast. Most of it revolves around Hime and one of her classmates, Kanoko, but those moments tend to be pretty brief. Pushing a different setting would have been nice, especially because the audience knows that Hime isn't exactly the most innocent character early on, but the absence of that didn't feel problematic. The way the series ends is definitely questionable, as it leans into some fan-servicey moments very randomly when the rest of the series was pretty tame. It almost feels like this series could have ended one or two episodes earlier as this felt like a bit of a different arc, especially because outside of Mitsuki's brief arc, any character interactions between her and anyone else felt minor. Still, the series keeps this light mood throughout most of it, and acts to play as a fun series. (5/10) Characters: Hime's big thing is that she wants to marry into wealth by putting on her cute façade, and this kind of thing really doesn't jive with me. What's somewhat ironic is that it lands her this "job" early on, and part of that feels like well placed karma. The serious flaw in her character is that it doesn't ever really feel like she grows as a character in the totality of the series, which is disappointing when she's literally the main character. Her co-worker, Mitsuki, really doesn't have a ton going for her either, again, outside of the short arc she had of her in the middle. It also feels like her personality was all over the place, and we really didn't know much about her, or any of the café workers. It would have been nice to know the 'real' her because it does feel like something's there. Kanoko is one of Hime's classmates, with Hime really being her only friend. I tend to like the shy types because there's usually something there and even though she does have a reason to be in the story, she doesn't do anything with it. She has some minor conflict later in the series, but it's mediocre at best. Mai is the manager of the café and never really falls into the likable range for me. By the middle of the series, you question how truthful she is being about her hand, and her personality never shines through, Sumika and Nene are two other workers, but both didn't add much for me either. (5/10) Art: This series actually looks pretty nice when all is said and done. Due to the light nature of the series, everything remains light and there's a certain polish that I can appreciate at most every time. (8/10) Sound: Much of the music matches the tone of the series well enough, even if I wasn't a huge fan of it. Neither the OP or ED are within my style of music preferences, but they were again, fine for the series. Voicework was equally fine, thought I felt like basically the whole cast outside of Sumika sounded way to similar at times. (6/10) Overall: Yuri is My Job! really doesn't have a ton going for it outside of some sorter arcs in the middle. The cast aren't all that likable and the setting being the same over and over again really doesn't push the plot forward at all with these characters. This series is just kind of there, as the plot and characters never develop enough for me to recommend a watching. (5/10)

“Damn those crazy girls really dispute herself more than my almost divorced parents” -a friend of mine And that's kinda the main thing that I have against Yuri is my Job!, I mean, it has Yuri in the title, that's a pretty convincing argument, but nonetheless, the girls can't seems to stop having drama, I don't know who put the comedy tag on this, but I would definitively replace them with the drama tag, that sounds way more fine for what this is, which is something that's somewhat good, I did liked it for the most parts, but this anime can be very infuriating at thesame time, let me explain. For the story, I would say it's generally a great concept, who wouldn't love a cafe where highschool girls RP as students from a german girls school and do yuri-bait in front of customers drinking their tea, Das ist gut. Only negative part is, as I said before, those crazy bitch who can't stop gibbering around without an ounce of thinking. It always seems like the problems they have towards each other could have been solved if they talked seriously without TREATING THE OTHER AS A BAKA (doesn't really happens but the idea is very funny and do the same purpose lol). Man, if Mai were to buy the service of a professional mediator at episode two when the useless drama starts to happens, we would have had like the enjoyable parts of the anime (which is like 10%) kill the other 90% of shitty ass drama that are just a bunch of maliciously written by the author that makes the situation grow bigger that it ever needed to be, while in the end the girls could just have asked how the other is feeling (how romantic) and it would have been fixed in two minutes (magical~). But as I said, it's not all bad, that's why my rating isn't that low, I do have mixed feelings about this, but I guess if you overlook the glaring flaw (that you might be enought of a schizo to like) you can see a very neat anime with cool characters (while they aren't fighting hehe). Also, the line between yuri-bait RP and yuri is quite small in this anime, which is enjoyable for any connoisseur of this genre. Then for the visuals and more, it's very solid and that's a great point that enhance the best parts of the anime. The colorful drawings that pops into your retina with the green uniform are stunning in contrast to all character hairs, it's beautifully done. Of course, since the anime is mainly inside the same area, which is the Liebe Cafe, the background isn't very diversified, but I don't think this opts out something because there is a clear purpose for this and it's still great. BUT WHAT'S MORE IMPORTANT TO TELL ABOUT THIS ANIME IF THE STUDIO(S) THAT ARE ANIMATING IT ! There's Studio Lings (who literally has only two entries so let's not talk about them sorry for the people working there) and Passione, FUCKING PASSIONE. If you don't know them, they do very good anime of culture, which surprise me looking at this inoffensive anime, and after looking at 12 episodes, they really went chill on it, tho they had sometimes their fun times with the very small ecchi sparkled here and there, good stuff. This studio + yuri in the name convinced me to watch it, so it worked. As for the sound, I don't have much to say, OP and ED were pretty generic or a bit below average. In short, this anime has a big flaw, that makes you want to punch your monitor at the characters, but the theme and the idea are actually quite fire if you want something fun and enjoyable to watch if you're a maid cafe fan (pretty similar in concept) or a yuri fan. I would still say to maybe try a chance at it, and when episode two appears you'll see if you can bear it for another 9 episodes or so. It's very unfortunate to see how much greater this neat anime could have been if it was always like the episodes where nothing dramatic happens (thrilling right ?). In the end, I'm happy because it has gay girls in it and very cute Hime-chan.