English Dub Review: Africa Salaryman “Africa Play-by-Play Commentator”

Overview (Spoilers Below)

It’s time for an office-wide stress test. The new guy, Ninja Crane, doesn’t know what that entails, so Lizard does his best to explain it to him. Toucan—who is an idiot, by the way—thinks Lizard’s explanation borders on harassment and makes him apologize to the rookie. However, it’s revealed that Crane is actually afraid of Big Cat’s “resting terror face.” Remember this fact, it comes into play later.

A week after the stress test, they have a company-wide physical. After we learn Toucan’s poor eating/living habits have him flirting with diabetes, a realization about Big Cat is unearthed. The monstrous cat is afraid of needles. At first, he blames the affliction on a distaste of blood. But he doesn’t mind gory movies or when Lizard has his tail constantly ripped off. Turns out, he’s afraid of the needle’s tiny prick. A “professional” gazelle nurse manages to draw a sample even though she is terrible at her job.

Later on, Ninja Crane is messing up in a big way. He’s sending emails meant for his mom to important clients. To help whip the kid into shape, Toucan holds an impromptu game show. The rules are simple—whoever acts the most like a functioning adult is the winner. Lethal Hamster loses right away because he’s a damn psychopath. And while Bigs and Lizard do okay, Crane is the clear winner.

Now that he’s doing better at work, his home life becomes problematic. First off, it turns out the guy can talk—so those Wile E. Coyote signs are complete bullshit. Secondly, the bird doesn’t give a damn about office work and instead dreams of being a YouTube star. Not a bad goal in and of itself—office work does suck, after all. But to obtain such success, he puts his coworkers on display without their permission. For most, he catches them doing very embarrassing things. He even got footage of President Turtle entering a hotel with a Rabbit prostitute (I wonder who finished first)! To embarrass Big Cat, however, he only needed a single photograph of his “resting terror face.” I told you that running gag would come back around!

While the office erupts into chaos, Crane receives a text informing him that he made over one million dollars in ad revenue from his videos. Pleased with himself, Crane gets away with his hijinks and is one step closer to quitting his terrible cubicle job.

That is, until Big Cat’s daughter, Shishimura, comes across the video. While she’s always annoyed by her father’s antics, nobody messes with her family. And so, she finds that dastardly bird and chases him all around the city in hopes of sinking her teeth into the bastard.

Our Take

Dammit, Crane! We already are surveilled enough by the NSA, technology companies, and other corporations hoping to get their hands on our sweet, sweet data. There’s no reason for you to add to that pile of rubbish for your crappy little YouTube channel. I don’t even know how you got that advertising money since you intentionally defied the YouTube terms and services. I smell a lawsuit coming your way, bucko!

I’m guessing it had something to do with the madness running rampant in this episode, but Toucan was relatively normal and his in-your-face attitude was contained for the entire twenty-four minutes. Be careful what you wish for, folks. Birdy is not nearly as interesting a character with his wings clipped, and he brought the showdown with him. Even his game show host persona didn’t wow the masses as it should have. It was funny when he read the letter to his mother out loud—a running gag that actually worked—but otherwise, he merely played an eccentric straight man.

It’s been a while, Big Cat; so nice to have you back. For weeks we’ve been living the lives of Goose, Honeyguide, Caracal, and Honey Badger without checking in with the main cast as frequently. And when a character like Big Cat was included—for example, in the speed-dating sketch—he served as Caracal’s exposition mouthpiece and not the scene’s driving force. Marching in crazy, eccentric character after crazy, eccentric character isn’t always going to work. Oftentimes you need grounded characters to heighten the more lively ones; otherwise, we’re just watching avant-garde silliness.

At some point—and there’re only two episodes left, so I don’t foresee this happening—they really need to flip the script and do a full African High School Girls episode with the Africa Salaryman crew showing up only in the post-credit scene. But since that’ll never happen, at least Shishimura and Gorimi’s shenanigans played into the greater story for a change. The last time that happened was in the “Africa Mascot Characters” episode, and it worked just as well.

Wait a second. How many stars did I give the “Africa Mascot Characters” episode? Oh, only three stars. Yeah, on second thought, it was probably crap.