Fictional Review: Working'!! and the Slice-of-Life Genre

Having added an apostrophe to its title (and logo!?), Working'!! is back for its second season.

Continuing the titling convention used in the second season of K-On! (aka "K-On!!" - the two exclamation points referring to it being the second season), Working!! (in which the first season already included the two exclamation points) recently began its second season under the name "Working'!!" - and yes, the apostrophe is not a typo.

Watching the first episode of the new season was a bit of a challenge for me, as the fansub group have upgraded their offerings to 10-bit video encoding, which even the latest version of VLC (1.1.11) does not yet support, displaying only a blank green screen of sadness where the video should be.  Updating to the latest CCCP codec set and opening the video with Media Player Classic fixed the problem for me.  The increase in the depth of visual quality between the encodes I'd in the previous season, which was presumably 8-bit, and this one is striking, as even backgrounds seemed to pop with definition and character:

I'll admit it: the depth of detail on the candy display here made my jaw drop the first time I saw it.

The story picks up pretty much where it left off in the first season, following the employees at the Wagnaria western-style restaurant as their eccentricities complicate their working lives.  If you're new to the series, the second season isn't where you'll want to begin watching, as many of the character's behaviors may seem inexplicable without the benefit of background exposition.  If you're a veteran of season one, though, watching the new season is very much like returning to school - and a familiar lineup of friends and acquaintances - after a summer break.

The girls and surrounds of Wagnaria look especially sharp in 10-bit video.

Working'!! is firmly entrenched in the comedy/slice-of-life genres, the latter of which being, as far as I'm aware, far more prevalent in Japan (particularly in anime/manga form) than it is in the West.  The slice-of-life genre is characterized by light plotting and characterization built on a milieu designed to evoke and emulate everyday life.  From a Western viewpoint of characterization and plot work, the slice-of-life genre should be fairly one-dimensional and uninteresting.  Yet examples of this genre (of which K-On!! is another recent exemplar) have an almost inexplicable allure that draws you into the uncomplicated storyline, and invests you emotionally in the relatively simplistic characters.  Whereas western storylines tend to use conflict and pain to induce audience members to invest emotionally in characters and plot, slice-of-life works focus on evoking a kind of warm appreciation - the Japanese expression, which defies complete translation, is mono no aware, or what I would call the sweet evanescence of all things - for the mundane, the familiar, and the familial.  It flies in the face of everything I learned about fiction writing in college - yet it works.

Part of the reason this entry is a "Fictional Review" as opposed to a "Stories That Matter" review is because  it isn't really the story that matters in slice-of-life works.  And though the characters themselves can gain a strong following, I think it ultimately is the work's ability to evoke a familiar milieu and distill it down to its most essential elements that makes this genre work as a form of storytelling.  K-On!! evokes the high school milieu, in particular the notion of a small group of close friends united by common interests (a common and ubiquitous trope in real life) and intensifies the experience through the rich interactions of members of the KeiOn Bu.  Likewise, Working'!! evokes the milieu of part-time working and the relationships a person builds with his or her coworkers, and magnifies those elements through the potentially over-the-top yet endearing qualities and behaviors of the Wagnaria staff.

Though I'm a dyed-in-the-wool anime and manga otaku, what intrigues me the most about a fictional work like Working'!! is how it shows that there can be more to storytelling than the traditional and overarching motivators of conflict and pain.  While I would still maintain that conflict and pain are essential parts of storytelling, and that even slice-of-life works like Working'!! cannot succeed without including a little bit of both, what this series demonstrates is that there are other methods of building a report with an audience.  It shows that the palette of colors that a fiction creator has at his or her disposal is larger and more varied than depicted by traditional viewpoints.  Mastering the techniques that underlie the slice-of-life genre is essential not just to aspiring anime makers or manga artists, but to anyone looking to deepen the emotional impact of the stories they create.

What do you think of Working'!!, the slice-of-life genre, or the role that familiarity or identification plays in storytelling?  Feel free to voice your thoughts in the comments below.