Best Anime of November 2018 You Should Watch
Skull-Face Bookseller Honda-san
Another surprise hit from the fall season Skull-Face Bookseller Honda-San, also known as Gaikotsu Shotenin Honda-san, sports a simple but absurd premise. Honda is a skeleton who works in a bookstore and constantly has to deal with a variety of strange and wacky customers coming in, often with equally strange requests.
Honda-San sports an intentionally minimalistic visual design to help bolster the comedy, and it almost looks like a comic in motion. This is strengthened by the performance of the main character, as well as some hilarious side characters. The series sports a shorter runtime, about 15 minutes per episode, but each one plays out like a small vignette about Honda-San and his coworker’s lives at the bookstore.
In addition to some spot-on comedy, there are tons of manga and anime references thrown in, and there’s even quite a bit to learn about the manga industry and how a bookstore if run in the day-to-day operation. Honda-San is one of those rare shows that come along where every element seems to work in harmony, and it’s one anime that’s easy to pass up in the busy fall season, but you really shouldn’t let it.
You can catch the show on Crunchyroll with new episodes simulcasting on Sundays.
