The Fall Anime 2025 Preview Guide - A Mangaka's Weirdly Wonderful Workplace

NANA Futami is a rookie shōjo manga artist who is supported by her female editor, Kaede Satō, and her assistant, Mizuki Hazama. Even though NANA sometimes suffers from intense delusions due to (what she tells herself is) an occupational illness, she keeps working day-to-day with the help of those around her.

A Mangaka's Weirdly Wonderful Workplace is based on a manga series by Kuzushiro. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Mondays.

We all like to pretend that the media doesn't mess with our thoughts. That, somehow, we can perfectly separate fact from fiction. And while we may be able to do so on a conscious level, it's the subconscious that really gets us.

This is the malady that's constantly affecting our protagonist, Futami. She is so immersed in the shoujo manga world due to her work that she can't help but see her own life through that filter. This “occupational hazard,” as she puts it, places the object of her own affection, her editor, Sato, in the role of a romance heroine in her imagination. So when it comes to doing something as simple as mailing her editor late at night, she is bombarded by images of her interrupting Sato in the middle of some important love triangle scene—and worries that Sato would come to hate her for interfering, even indirectly. Thus, much of the episode is Futami constructing scenes in her head while her assistant, Mizuki, plays the straight man and attempts to bring her back to reality.

On the other side of the story is Sato. While Futami sees her as this ultra-professional editor who is giving her a chance to succeed despite her clearly being inferior to the other manga artist Sato works with, Sato is, in reality, a bit of a ditz. While she does her job and does it well for the most part—adjusting her life to fit her writer's schedules—she has a terrible memory. This causes her to forget things ranging from documents to giving compliments. It's a big weakness—one she knows she has but doesn't seem too troubled about.

And of course, there is one other big issue between the two: the romantic tension. While neither of them quite recognizes it, they care more about each other than they should based on a professional relationship alone. Will this blossom into something more as the series goes on? We'll have to watch and find out.

Have you ever had a goal? One that you go all out for, only realizing right at the end that you had been so busy chasing it that you never really considered what to do once you reached it? That's the issue Mizuki has been dealing with since before the start of the series proper.

Since she was little, Mizuki has wanted to be a manga artist—but that's the extent of it. She doesn't have any story she wants to tell or message she wants to pass on to her readers. She just wants to draw manga. While she's found success with her own SNS-published work, it's nothing but cute conversations and silly scenes—there's no greater story or thematic connection.

She discovers this gaping hole in her repertoire when talking with an editor who's excitedly scouting her—and runs off in shame because of it. Suddenly, she feels like a total impostor—having all the success other manga artists would kill for while having no story she's dying to tell. It's enough to make her want to give up on her dream entirely.

The ironic part of this whole scene is that an editor is exactly what she needs. In manga publishing, the editor is more than just a manager. They are the person you bounce your ideas off of—your greatest fan and harshest critic. Their job is to take your ideas and make them into something that will sell. If Mizuki is lacking an overarching story, an editor is the person to help with that.

Maybe, over the course of this series, Mizuki's interactions with Futami's editor, Sato, will allow her to realize this. However, for the moment, she has found the perfect job for herself as a manga artist bereft of ideas: a manga artist assistant. And while others may see it as a stepping stone to something greater, for her, it's the place she wants to be.

Despite having a protagonist who wrestles with overthinking and intense bouts of anxiety, I found this show to be surprisingly comforting. I love manga, and I have a soft spot for shows that delve into the behind-the-scenes aspects of creating manga. While this show doesn't look like it's gonna get into the nitty-gritty details of everything, it is a bit fun to watch a show about a young adult just overcoming the pressure of working in that environment. The fact that she shares anxieties with her editor, who is on the opposite end of the emotional spectrum, creates a fascinating dynamic that I wouldn't mind watching more of.

The humor is a little bit one-note, but I do think there are enough sparks of creativity here and there to help the show feel a bit more alive than it otherwise would've been. The obvious one was how our titular mangaka likes to imagine or make up scenarios in her head to avoid directly confronting people. I like the way the show translates those stories using manga panels, as if she is pulling on every cliché she can think of to fabricate a scenario out of thin air. I think it also helps that her assistant acts as the straight man to call her out on all of her delusions.

I'm seeing hints of a romance between our main character and their editor, but I can also see the show just teasing that rather than going all in with it. Besides, it would be a very peculiar conflict of interest. However, I appreciate the strong sense of camaraderie among all the characters. They may get on each other's nerves or not know how to talk to each other, but there is respect and appreciation for the work being done. If that coziness can last an entire season, then that would be ideal.

I don't draw manga, but I was surprised at how much I resonated with and related to a lot of the emotional struggles that were brought up in this episode. I think the mark of a good show about artists is highlighting the struggles that they go through in a way that any artist or creator can effectively relate to. This episode is divided into two parts, and it surprisingly barely featured our main editor character at all. This is more about NANA and her assistant, Mizuki, who gave us some more insight into her character outside of just being the straight man to her boss's eccentricities.

Mizuki also wants to become a manga artist, but doesn't know how to go about it. I like the show subverting expectations by originally making it seem like she was rejected when she was first asked to come in to meet an editor, only to be given a golden opportunity right then and there. Instead, she was overwhelmed by the sudden opportunity, started doubting her own intentions, and at the ripe old age of twenty, decided that she shouldn't advance any further than where she is. As someone who has seen friends be given opportunities and immediately crumble under the pressure, I totally understand what that is like.

I love the conversation that she has with our main character regarding what it takes to maintain that level of effort and quality. This transitioned well to the second half of the episode, which dealt with being overworked. Sometimes we push ourselves so hard or think about work to the point that we don't take proper care of ourselves. This episode is a perfect balance of practicing good self-care, both physically and emotionally. It's a fantastic episode that I feel like I could recommend to almost anybody.

Despite having no familiarity with the original manga, it became abundantly clear to me a few minutes into the episode that A Mangaka's Weirdly Wonderful Workplace is yuri. NANA Futami is obsessed with her beautiful, cool manga editor Sato in a way that defies any heterosexual explanation. When contacting someone late at night, most people would worry about waking them up; NANA fixates on the idea that Sato might be on a date. With a man. The horror!

But yuri so often tries to keep up a veneer of plausible deniability, so I didn't expect anything other than awkward anxiety that could be handwaved as admiration or a friend crush. But then, when Sato stops by unexpectedly, NANA snaps at her assistant Ha-chan, “What kind of idiot lets a girl she's not even dating into her house?” All I can really say to that is Harold, though I'm sure some people will come out of the woodwork to explain to me why 付き合う doesn't necessarily have romantic connotations and blah blah blah.

Yuri or not, this fall's second workplace romcom is a lot more charming than My Awkward Senpai, which, fun fact, has the same series writer. There's already solid chemistry in the cast, both in NANA and Ha-chan's partnership and NANA's massive crush on Sato. When you have an awkward, anxious mess of a protagonist, she needs a level-headed straightwoman around to play off her and pull her out of her spiral. NANA's worry about her email apologizing about being late, coming off as curt from being too short shifting to worry about a longer one, making it look like she's trying to make excuses was too real. Have I worked myself into similar lathers over equally basic communications? We don't need to talk about that. There are moments where NANA comes across a bit too much as a helpless baby instead of an adult woman, but then again, I've met manga artists, and it's honestly not that much of an exaggeration.

This is only Voil's second production, the first being Acro Trip, and they may prove to be a studio worth keeping an eye on. The animation isn't mind-blowing sakuga, but it doesn't need to be. The characters are sufficiently expressive and on-model, while the art is bright, clean, and never made my head hurt with glow filters, unnecessary gradients, or poor compositing. As the ensemble cast fills out, this may be one worth keeping an eye on, and you don't even have to worry about straining.