Africa no Salaryman (TV) [DUB]

Africa Salaryman’s premiere is the kind you get every season, which presents the goofiest material in the dumbest possible manner, albeit with enough effort and shameless abandon that you can’t help but respect it. Though the series’ workplace comedy vibes and anthropomorphic cast bring Aggretsuko to mind, I’d argue that Africa Salaryman has a bit more in common with the likes of Pop Team Epic, which was also a preposterous load of nonsense that was way more polished than it had any right to be.

The difference with Africa Salaryman is it’s use of CG animation for it’s characters isn’t quite as snappy as PTE’s; the lion, toucan, and lizard that form our main trio of hapless losers all have the loose-limbed motion-captured feel that I associate with virtual youtubers more than anything else, and it means a lot of the comedy at work here is a bit more banal than I might have liked. Lion is a big softie who struggles with how intimidating he seems, Lizard is the perpetually bemused straight man of the group, and Toucan is just…well, he’s just the worst. I suppose I can’t fault Hiro Shimono for giving Toucan the exact same screechy energy as Zenitsu from Demon Slayer, it’s just that it’s easier to root for a well-meaning but stupid coward than a feckless middle-aged twerp. Either way, the sitcom-y bits this trio get up to are inconsistent but mostly entertaining; I didn’t much enjoy Toucan’s douchey insistence on embracing his road-rage instincts, or his off-putting interaction with the highschool girls on the train, but the running gag of him repeatedly ripping Lizard’s tail off as a distraction technique was pretty funny.

It’s the brief flashes of manic brilliance that stick with me the most, really, especially when Africa Salaryman decides to get really wild with its animation techniques. The opening Lion King Parody was a clever way to start things off, and the trippy sequences that accompany Lion’s catnip trip or Toucan and Lizards office shenanigans do a lot to breathe unique energy into an otherwise predictably madcap sitcom. While I think the series as a whole would do a lot better as a short-form comedy (I feel like I’m saying that a lot these days), I have to admit that Africa Salaryman amused me more than I ever expected it to. I don’t know if this is going to be my go-to comedy of the fall season, but I can see myself checking in with it every now an again, if only to see what creative kinds of madness the animators are getting up to. You can also free anime watch online and free download in this site.