WATASHI NO YURI WA OSHIGOTO DESU!

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MANGA ComedyWatashi no Yuri wa Oshigoto desu!

REVIEWS

• 

  Mcsuper

  39/100
  Yuri Bait? Real Yuri? Let Me Guide You Through It.

  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 to said 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.

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• 

  ZNote

  28/100
  Selfishness, misery, and selfish misery are what’s served.

  

  There is no requirement for romance elements in media to be “wholesome,” nor that it needs to be something life-affirming. However, Yuri is My Job! is resoundingly successful at making it seem like the dynamics of a yuri relationship, even a playacted one for the bemusement of the patrons in the show’s café, is the most misery-inducing thing on the planet for virtually everyone involved. That’s not to say that affection, romantic or platonic, cannot bring sadness or complication, because it’s a given that that’s a possibility. Rather, the setting for this anime engages in an aggravating pageantry. As the characters act out the Liebe Academy “Girl Mission School on a Hilltop,” the café acts as a nexus between acting and reality. Real-world romance and romantic feeling, insinuation, and possessiveness manage to make their way into the café’s world, while the café’s world of audience-pleasing Class S theatre makes its way into the outside. In theory, the divide between the fiction and the reality alluringly muddles to the point where it becomes a question of how much is sincere versus what is just for show, and whether what we see are just friendships or something beyond, or neither. In practice, it creates in its wake a mutually-parasitic cycle, culminating in a joyless, melodramatic black hole.

  I cannot be wholly cruel to this series, though – the notion of a self you perform that can be turned off at-will as soon as the patrons are out of sight offers an interesting spin (something any actor or actress knows quite well). The eye-rollingly refined behavior of the café’s characters is something that Yuri is My Job! wants you to realize early on is completely false as a part of making its eventual melodrama work. The illusory world of the café and the theatrics it provides would, initially, seem like a perfect fit for Shiraki Hime. A master of the façade, she has successfully bamboozled her own classmates into framing herself as the enviable girl, popular and chic.

  It all disguises the rather unfortunate truth that she ultimately puts on her façade for the purposes of striking it rich, living the lavish lifestyle with a handsome millionaire and never worrying about any materialistic pleasures being out of her reach. It’s only when she injures the manager of the Liebe Academy that she is roped into its shoujo manga-esque world, and headfirst into its frustrating, duplicitous workers. Lies and betrayals underlie all the relationships within the show, both occupationally and in reality, leaving those relationships to fester even when the narrative implies that closeness will eventually come. It dips its toes into the unlikability lake too deeply.

  

  (Hime’s initial impression as a detestable gold-digger cements the unpleasant tone early, culminating in characters feeling either “the right to be miserable” or the audacity to assume that you can actively interfere in someone’s affections when, at times, it’s not warranted)

  In turn, the few occasions in which the characters seem to have achieved a genuine connection or mutual understanding ring hollow. The café job as both a setting and as an actively-practiced profession create a narrative imbalance between its pageantry and the attempts to cultivate something earnest. The former dominates the latter. Because of this, there is little reason to believe that anyone will necessarily change for the better, or that the new threads will succeed. For as much as the Liebe Academy story can serve as a metaphorical ground for the characters to explore their feelings, the dramaturgical emphasis of the show itself is on maintaining the status quo, keeping the café and its environment effectively in stasis forever. As such, the main inclination left behind is that the same misunderstanding mistakes or miseries via lying or secrecy will keep occurring again and again.

  Much effort is poured into doing essentially everything possible except for actually asking questions point-blank, making the scant times this does happen a small oasis in an arid desert. It’s this ability to be candid or upfront that proves impossible since nearly each character is, in some manner, selfish and clings to mindsets or perspectives concerning one another that they either acknowledge are painful or don’t see what the problem is. And since romantic and platonic affection is one of the main ingredients within, these mindsets tinge Yuri is My Job! with a mean-spiritedness in such a flavor that drains its melodrama of any alluring spice.

  

  (Just about every insinuation that could be construed as platonic or romantic yuri is depicted as twisted or misguided, to the point where it’s unintentionally alienating)

  I began this review by stating that “There is no requirement for romance elements in media to be ‘wholesome,’ nor that it needs to be something life-affirming.” I sincerely believe this to be true. But it should, at the very least, be in service of something. Yuri is My Job! serves up an aggravating cast in a setting that traps them, an unpleasant experience even when it lets you know it’s in on the plastic veneer inside joke. In the midst of its metacognitive awareness, it forgot to have a worthwhile reason to be fun or dramatically engaging.

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• 

  RebelPanda

  70/100
  Charmingly self-aware, mismarketed, misunderstood, and well worth a second chance.

  Yuri is My Job is a charmingly self-aware romance with a pretty clever twist. It gleefully makes fun of tropes, cliches, and stereotypes associated with the girls' love genre—then subverts each one. The satire seems to have flown over the vast majority of viewers' heads, unfortunately. Upon first impressions, it appears to be a one-note comedy, so I initially dropped it, but humor is not its main strength.

  I.e., fine comedy, great drama.

  People seem to have missed the point that the Café Liebe, where most of the anime takes place, imitates the traditional girls' love genre known as "Class S" (Maria-sama ga Miteru, Oniisama e…). The characters are merely actors in this themed cafe putting on a show for those enticed by melodrama and queer longing. Quite literally, the anime mocks viewers of the genre in a toying manner so as not to condescend and with passion for the genre's pedigree. It's a genius idea to juxtapose a parodied version of typical girls' love with the drama that plays off-stage, classic queer romance themes with a modern twist…

  …And no, it is not queerbait.

  There's plenty of explicitly lesbian love to go around, none of that beating around the bush are they/aren't they BS. It's not some crushing depiction of homosexuality, either. For every heartbreak, there is levity—you can always see the light at the end of the tunnel.

  Themes fittingly revolve around hiding one's true self. Each of the four main characters, Sumika, Kanoko, and Mitsuki, but primarily led by Hime, have a persona they choose to show the world and one they hide. Throughout the series, their true identities become apparent, challenging their ability to balance life acting in the cafe with turmoil in the real world. Flashbacks to before the characters met at the cafe do not come off as heavy-handed and provide a relatable glimpse into their pasts as well as round out their present personas. Their motives and character arcs flow naturally without over-relying on narration or exposition.

  Don't expect tons of animation because the production is lightweight, but the direction is solid. It is nicely storyboarded, frequently employing the traditional shoujo flower frames during cafe scenes for an over-the-top effect. Adding to that extravagance is the abundant expressive character animation. One thing I really admire about Passione and Studio Lings' work is how even though there are a lot of faces to draw in the cafe, the artists never resort to 3D models. It simply wouldn't have fit the cafe's aesthetic. Drawing each patron adds to the immersion, showing their excitement and shock as they watch Class S madness unfold. I liked how the understated piano enhanced dramatic moments, and swelling strings punctuated the more pivotal scenes.

  Shoujo and Girls' Love anime tend to be known for melodrama, and Yuri is My Job has a healthy dose of exaggerated emotions. Placing Class S situations into a workplace environment just feels right. The stress of juggling customer service makes the conflict between coworkers all the more intense. The stress reaches a fever pitch when Hime and Mitsuki squabbles outside of work impact their schwestern (little sister) act in the restaurant. Every minor element of body language or suggestive language evokes extreme reactions. However, the writer never relies on contrivances to fuel melodrama. If Shinkai and Okada come to mind when you think of melodrama in anime, this will feel different. Although lacking in bombastic set pieces, stunning animation, or over-the-top climaxes, the drama in Yuri is My Job won't leave you feeling cheated by cheap tricks.

  Though the satire doesn't go nearly as far as the superb Yuri Kuma Arashi, it handles drama remarkably. It would've found an audience here if it wasn't mismarketed as a gag comedy. I'm glad I gave it another chance because it's worth a second look. Yuri is My Job presents a fine balance of comedy and great drama, exploring themes of identity and the challenges of balancing personal and professional lives. With its solid direction, expressive character animation, and fitting classical score, the anime delivers a satisfying showcase of explicitly queer romance. Although casual viewers may feel out of the loop, fans of drama and girls' love will see its merit.

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