Bored At The Bookstore? Just Add Monsters

Skull-Face Bookseller Honda San Episode 11 Review

Skull-face Bookseller Honda-San takes its viewers to an alternate setting this week for the first story where we see them selling books to yokai. Honestly, other than pushing the scenario to the extreme with one of them losing an arm to an angry customer, nothing seemed all that different to their normal day to day.

All of this made me wonder why we were bothering, and then I realised this anime doesn’t really have anything left to say. From the start it has just been about the day-to-day of working in a book shop and the different scenarios faced by the workers as they do their jobs and interact with customers, and what became fairly obvious by the sequence in the yokai world was that any point that was to be made through this has already been made.

That lack of new material became even more apparent in the second story where we did return to the normal book shop but we see Honda getting abused on the phone by an irate customer and then meeting a calming and healing customer who loves books and thanks him. Again, there’s no new material here and nothing more to be said.

With one episode left to go I’m actually glad this one has come to the end of its run as I’m fairly certain I don’t have much investment left in it. That said, in small bits and pieces this show has been fun, it is just that I’m not sure it ever had enough to carry a full anime season even as a short anime.

Thanks for reading
Karandi James

Consider supporting the blog by: