Hidarikiki no Eren

I wholeheartedly recommend this to everyone (who worked or will work in their lives or wants to achieve something 'more' in their life. )

This show is not the flashy shounen anime with an amazing fight in episode 19 (demon slayer). It's a representation of real life, going through Koichi - the main character's life, striving to be a genius artist as his peers, leading to the most realistic self-realization towards the end of the show, that most of us normal folks should get to understand too as soon as possible in our lives.

After working at a similar place as Kochi, meeting similar people, going ... through similar events, I can tell you, it was a hard watch, it even made me cry at one point. But just as the anime was turning a new leaf in the show, my life did too over these past weeks too, making this show even more realistic for me.

The characters are great. They all have their own flaws to the point of being even hate-able, but at the same time they are all fully humane, have their motivations and thoughts very well rounded out.

The story is eventful, but for people who didn't experience the current toxic work culture we have in our world or the struggle of feeling average, it might be a bit boring.

It is totally different from most anime, that evokes very different feelings and way of entertainment, but a very good watch with characters and situations that many not very young people would easily identify with.

Eren the Southpaw tries hard to be a love letter to ordinary people who will never become geniuses. Like its protagonist Asakura (not Eren - this is not Attack On Titan!), it's never short on ambition or guts. But the end product? Kinda mixed.

When I first encountered Eren the Southpaw while browsing the seasonal lineup, the title misled me into thinking it was a boxing anime. However, the synopsis talked about designers in workplaces, which seemed right up my street. So imagine my surprise when I picked it up only to be greeted with a cold opening involving a punch up, or rather a one-sided ... beatdown that looked like it was taking place in some yakuza den rather than a boxing ring. I was so confused - what the heck is this show?

Turns out the synopsis was accurate - this show does indeed for the most part tell the story of designers and artists working in offices. It's just that the mature premise is executed with all the angst and drama of a young adult novel.

Despite going into Eren the Southpaw with low expectations due to the unimpressive ratings, I found myself rather enjoying it. Because underneath the questionable execution lies something very human at the core of the story. I appreciated its exploration of themes such as the pain of living as a tortured genius who yearns to be ordinary, and whether someone ordinary could produce works of genius through sheer force of will and hard work. Its messages are often inspiring: it's okay to not be the one under the spotlight, and instead be the one in the shadows holding the light that shines on others; it's okay to give everything in pursuit of excellence, even if ultimately you fall well short of genius. That said, the messages can get a bit muddled at times, like that one guy who not only lacks talent, but has a condition that holds him back, and yet he still worked his way to the top. Oh, and he also accuses someone of slacking off, which makes no sense given everyone in this show is working their arse off.

A lot of the portrayals of workplace dynamics also feel somewhat real. If you've spent any significant amount of time at a corporation, you'll recognise familiar personalities among its characters, like the ruthlessly ambitious corporate ladder climber who takes credit for their minions' work, or the thoughtful, quiet employee who's too agreeable to contradict the loudest voices in the room.

The issue is that very often, these characters are taken to such extremes that at times they become self-parodies, or they possess a skill so extraordinary that it's practically a superpower. Take for example Akari the supermodel: she knows the exact quantities of nutrients her body needs, and has calculated the precise moment of her career peak, as though she's some kind of sci-fi-level supercomputer oracle. This sort of character wouldn't look out of place in a stereotypical shounen, but does in a show that's mostly about salarymen.

This criticism also extends to how Eren the Southpaw resolves conflict: the show has only a single gear, and it's the top one, where everything feels a bit overwrought, a bit too dark. Once disagreements start, cue angry faces, screaming, shouting, and torrential tears cascading like Niagara Falls. A lot of this is happening at the workplace and I'm just not convinced it's all believable. Sure, Japanese workplaces are infamous for being so intense that working to death is common enough to secure its own vocabulary ("karoshi"), but it's hard to tell how much of the toxic work culture in Eren the Southpaw is realistic when it so frequently wanders into unfeasible territory in other respects. That yakuza-esque scene I mentioned at the start? Turns out it was nothing more than a disagreement at work!

Like the portrayal of conflicts, the writing also has this one device that it employs over and over again: the non-linear narrative. As far as I can tell, there is no "current" timeline - the entire series consists of a patchwork of fragmented narratives that jump around constantly. It's as though Eren the Southpaw was directed by someone in film school who'd just been blown away after encountering this trick for the first time in Baccano or Memento. Every character backstory, every mention of something that happened some time ago is immediately followed by a heavyweight time jump punctuated by a dazzling title card displaying the year (confusingly, you also get an occasional flashback without that visual cue, so you don't immediately realise you're watching a flashback). One episode also had a time jump that spent about 10 minutes reshowing something we'd already seen, despite not appearing to be a recap episode. This results in a narrative that feels messy, aimless, and disjointed; the story feels harder to follow than it should - this is a workplace anime, not a brain-bending mystery for fuck's sake.

However, there is the occasional payoff when the show revisits a previously unremarkable line or scene, and through newly acquired context I'd suddenly grasp its full meaning, and it'd be like a ray of sunshine piercing through the clouds on an overcast day. And that's no fluke: for all its shortcomings in execution, Eren the Southpaw consistently demonstrates an ability to execute a climactic scene. The series boasts many memorable scenes (often set to a recurring, thumping backing track) that are positively crackling with electricity, like when the titular Eren sees Akari on the catwalk, or when Asakura tries to provoke a timid client into offering up her true opinions. These moments can get the pulse racing and make the narrative payoff feel satisfying, despite all its missteps.

And so, Eren the Southpaw ends up as a strange mirror of its own story: its unevenness signals a work of a journeyman rather than a genius, but it tries hard, and undeniably earns its moments. It's an interesting show that I certainly enjoyed more than I was expecting. Serious shows set in workplaces aren't all that common, and Eren the Southpaw is a passable contribution to this niche.

Personal rating: +0.5 (decent)

Unlikeable people being annoying for 23min x 12 eps. What it talks about ought to be relatable and particularly aimed at me, as I appreciate stories about losers, but the story never convinces you of this struggle or places you on grounds to relate to you. You are just told over and over that there is a Genius Over There, and the Person Over Here is a talentless loser. Down to the final episode, the loser is both inspired by a genius he cares about and beaten up by a genius he doesn't care about. If you look at them from afar, there is pretty ... much nothing different in how they abuse the MC or how close they are to each other (not close at all), but one is a girl he met as a student and the other an old man from work.

Akari is an interesting character, but also goes nowhere. From her first minute to her last minute, she only repeated the same few things. If this was about her journey maybe there was room to actually care about her conclusion, but as she is an accessory to Kouichi and Eren's (badly told) story, the turns she goes through mostly fall flat.

Almost unbelievable that this has the same writer as Adult Wars, but some of it might have been lost in the adaptation to anime. Some themes are shared though, so I can imagine this was the "test pancake" for the actual good version of the story. Can't think of a single good thing to highlight about this anime, but Adult Wars is pretty good, so it's better to skip this and go read it.