Kyuujitsu no Warumono-san

Are you tired at your unloved job? Do you want to take a vacation? Or maybe you also want to relax watching anime? Then Mr. Villain's Day Off will be a real silver mine for you, and if you also like pandas, it will even become a gold mine.

The Slice of Life genre has been changing the concept from anime to anime for years, but the essence of the genre remains the same - to relax the viewer and take his mind off the murders, fights and other elements show's on which you need to focus and turn on your brain. There are works ... such as Tanaka-kun, which are full of everyday routine, and in their center of attention are the most ordinary schoolchildren, and around the "plot" reigns carefree school atmosphere and various funny situations. However, some authors have picked up on a detail that makes Slice of Life even more comedic, as was the case with Great Teacher Onizuka. The detail lies in the conflicting image of a bully or villain and everyday life with the same funny situations. So starting in 2018, a manga started appearing on the Pixiv website with the title Mr. Villain's Day Off and its writer was Yuu Morikawa, a young mangaka who loves quiet stories, such as his work The Night and Noon's Delicious Time about two different people living together.

Back to Mr. Villain's Day Off, it's pointless to write about the plot, it's not important. The protagonist is Warumono-san and he is a general of the evil forces that seeks to destroy all mankind and take over the Earth. But not today! After all, the forces of evil also have days off, and even the most badass villain needs a rest. The show itself is a "situation comedy", a show consisting of a large number of short films unrelated to each other in terms of plot and meaning. It is a set of cute stories that make Warumono-san gradually realize the beauty of human society, its love and happiness, and the villain himself becomes comfortable with it. In addition, the villain's heart is enslaved by...PANDA PANDA PANDA PANDA. Watching this show be ready to die from the cuteness of pandas, the abundance of which is many times more than the number of animals on Discovery. Even the absolute evil will melt at the sight of pandas, and this is a fact. The humor here is quite the opposite, so if you expect the same humor as in the famous Gokushufudou manga, you won't find it here, because Mr. Villain's is just a nice show with a calm atmosphere and cute pandas.

In addition to Warumono-san and the pandas themselves, Yuu Morikawa gradually introduces us to three types of secondary characters. These are villains like Warumono, such as the jolly Rooney or the powerful Trigger with a talking name. There are also people called rangers, referring to the Power Rangers series, and these guys live a peaceful life but do not forget to fight evil, their names are based on the color of the suit Red, Blue, Black, Pink and two little Green. Also in each episode there are ordinary people, thanks to the influence of which Warumono becomes more human.

The duo of two studios Shin-Ei and SynergySP turned out to be quite good, which is to be expected. The director of the anime adaptation is Yoshinori Odaka, a man who started out directing some episodes of Naruto and Teacher Onizuka and ended up with the abysmal work on Bem and the Mr. Osomatsu parody. Let's consider it a redemption of sorts, though it doesn't take much talent to create an adaptation of a show of this format.

The music in the adaptation is fairly calm. Ivudot's opening Yūho splash screen is too quiet, unlike Glasgow's Kyūsoku Jūden closing splash screen, as if, lol, they were really confused. It's also notable that the opening splash screen starts right at the beginning of the episode, which is consistent with the content of multiple short films in one episode.

I'll finish my review with an interesting fact about pandas: The panda's main occupation is eating. This process takes about 12 hours each day. If, while eating, you want to watch a quiet show and just relax without getting into the plot, I'll re-recommend Mr. Villain's Day Off.

They say that evil never sleeps, but that's not always true. Whether it's spent sleeping, eating ice cream, or watching pandas at the zoo, even villains trying to take over the Earth need some time off from all of that. That sentiment is best demonstrated in the anime "Mr. Villain's Day Off", the subject of today's review. I didn't watch it back when it was airing, but I had been hearing about it quite a bit; thus, I eventually decided to give it a watch. If there's one thing I can take away from this anime besides the whole "needing to take some time off" ... thing, it's that pandas are cute, although that's something I already knew.

The premise of Mr. Villain's Day Off, or "Kyuujitsu no Warumono-san" in Japanese, is pretty self-explanatory. The titular Mr. Villain is a general for an evil organization plotting to exterminate humanity and conquer the Earth in the name of their home planet (which I don't remember if it was even given a name), fighting against a group of Rangers who aim to protect the Earth. (Yes, Rangers as in Power Rangers.) However, most of the anime doesn't focus on these battles between the Rangers and the organization; instead, it is a slice-of-life focusing on the general's time off of work and how he spends it. A common way for him to spend his days off of work is using his annual pass to the local zoo and watching his favorite animals there: pandas. In addition, we sometimes get to see his interactions with other characters whether at work or on his days off, including those with the Rangers.

As you can see, it's the kind of anime that puts a character who is normally in a villain role into that of a protagonist. That being said, to sort of steal a quote from the movie "Wreck-It Ralph", just because he's a bad guy doesn't mean he's a bad guy. He doesn't want his work and private lives to intermingle, he can't help but take multiple pictures of cute animals at once, and he just wants to spend his precious time off of work relaxing; I'm sure we can all relate to all of that. Plus, he has displayed multiple acts of kindness throughout the series, such as when he helps the Red Ranger - who is his enemy, mind you - find his way on the multiple occasions when he gets lost. I think Red Ranger's nickname for the general, "nice guy from the Evil League", really says it all.

In regards to the other characters....well, it's not like I'm not quite as interested in how they spend their times off as the general, but none of them are really bad characters. Sora and Mugi, a pair of twins who combine together to make the Green Ranger, have a pretty sad backstory, so there's that, at least. There's also Trigger, one of the general's coworkers who has a grudge against him, and I'm still not entirely sure whether he amuses me or annoys me. One character that I wish we got to know more about is Hiroki, a child who the general meets at the zoo. His dream is to become an animal doctor, but his mom tells him that he can't do it; I really wanted to see him show his mother that he really is capable of what he wants to accomplish. Other than these characters, I was, unfortunately, not too invested in any of them.

Right there, in that last sentence, lies the main problem of Mr. Villain's Day Off; it's not incredibly interesting. Sure, it's a slice-of-life anime that is not meant to have a real story to it, but you could at least make the supporting characters more memorable than they already are. Although I wouldn't say I'm a tokusatsu fan, it's also a bit of a disappointment for tokusatsu fans who want to see some cool action scenes between the Rangers and the evil organization and don't really care for what happens inbetween the battles. That being said, if anyone who's like that is able to sit through the entire series, they are rewarded with a full-blown battle scene between the Rangers and the evil organization in the final episode. This battle scene doesn't have spectacular animation, but it's campy enough to be a fun watch regardless.

What I said about the animation for the final episode's battle scene can be said about the animation in the rest of the series, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Shin-Ei Animation and SynergySP worked together to give viewers some solid animation with some solid color design; it's nothing thrilling, but it suits the vibe of the anime very well. Speaking of vibes, I have to mention the opening theme, "Yuuho" by Ivudot; the backing track for this song sounds to me like it could be heard on a lo-fi hip hop playlist, and the vocals are pretty good, too! Oh, and the ending theme, "Kyuusoku Juuden" by GLASGOW, is pretty good, too. Even the voice acting was pretty good, and I especially want to give a special mention to Nao Touyama, who voices a convenience store clerk named Yamano who appears a few times in the series; she does a good job at making her sound enthusiastic!

I may have said some pretty negative things about Mr. Villain's Day Off, but I do think it's on the higher side of average. If you want a nice slice-of-life anime to watch on your day off, you could do much worse than this. At least you'll get to see some cute anime pandas!

The main issue with this show is the lack of character development or meaningful interaction with the characters. Rather than say that the characters in this show have any sort of personality, they are more like mere plot points in order to progress with the story; a convenient way to pivot the focus of the main character.

If the cast of side characters on both the side of the heroes and on the evil faction were more developed and had more screen time, then this show would actually be pretty good. The problem is that it's mainly Warumono carrying the show with rarely any meaningful interaction ... with the rest of the cast, and the fairly simple, boring, and predictable setups for a lot of these scenes don't carry the show enough for it to be this simple.