Salaryman Kintaro: Damn It Feels Good to Be a Gangst... I Mean "Real Man"

*This review is in memory of the legendary Masami Suda, who was character designer for this anime, as he passed away earlier this same month.*

In the annals of manga history, Hiroshi Motomiya is definitely a perfect example of an understated legend. Born in 1947, his debut serialization, 1968's Otoko Ippiki Gaki Daisho, would become the first true "hit manga" in Shonen Jump (without needing to be infamous, ala Go Nagai's Harenchi Gakuen), inspiring the likes of Masami Kurumada & Tetsuo Hara to become mangaka themselves, & each would create their own direct homages to Gaki Daisho, at some point in their respective careers. Meanwhile, the likes of Buronson (Fist of the North Star), Yoshihiro Takahashi (Ginga -Nagareboshi Gin-), Tetsuya Saruwatari (Tough), Tatsuya Egawa (Golden Boy), & Akira Miyashita (Sakigake!! Otokojuku) all worked as assistants for Motomiya at one point or another, giving all of them early starts to their own respective iconic careers. As for video game fans, Motomiya also has some relevancy there, as his studio Moto Kikaku is best known as the co-creator & co-owner of Capcom's Strider franchise, while Motomiya's Tenchi wo Kurau manga is the basis for numerous games Capcom made, most notably 1992 arcade beat-em-up Warriors of Fate. Finally, even at the age of 74, Motomiya is still making new manga to this very day, usually focused around the ideal of being a "real man", i.e. being an inspiration to others by being a respectable, honest, & earnest person who doesn't allow being taken advantage of.

In short, while he may no longer be your favorite mangaka's favorite mangaka, he still might just be your favorite mangaka's favorite mangaka's favorite mangaka!

"Brings a whole new meaning to the phrase 'office power politics'!" - Foutz.net

After leaving Shonen Jump in 1987, following a ~19-year run with the magazine, Motomiya moved 100% into making manga for adults, and would strike gold when he debuted Salaryman Kintaro in the pages of Young Jump in 1994, becoming one of Motomiya's "masterpieces", alongside Gaki Daisho & the multi-part Ore no Sora series. While the series ended in 2002 after 30 volumes (his longest single series), Motomiya would occasionally return with new stories in Young Jump, namely 2005's Salaryman Kintaro: Money Wars Chapter (4 volumes), 2009's New Salaryman Kintaro (7 volumes), & 2015's Salaryman Kintaro at 50 (4 volumes). If you are curious about reading the manga, it is actually currently available in English officially via Manga Planet, which is putting out three new chapters every week; as of this review, it's just shy of halfway through the first series. Salaryman Kintaro would receive two different J-Drama adaptations, one in 1999 starring Katsunori Takahashi (who would later also portray legendary office worker manga character Kosaku Shima) & the other in 2008 starring Masaru Nagai, as well as a 1999 live-action movie based on the first J-Drama directed by Takashi Miike, which amazingly enough actually saw official English release in 2004 by Pathfinder Home Entertainment under the name "White-Collar Worker Kintaro"! However, this blog is primarily focused on anime, and luckily Salaryman Kintaro did indeed receive one of those, as well.

In early 2001, a TV anime adaptation of Salaryman Kintaro would air on BS-i (marking only the second TV anime adaptation & [so far] the final time a Motomiya manga would be adapted into anime, in general), but unlike most anime didn't look to have aired on a traditional weekly basis. Instead, all 20 episodes were aired from February 18 to March 18, literally just four weeks, and I can't find exactly which day each episode aired. If I had to make a guess, I'd say it aired on weekdays, likely after adults got home from work, because you don't exactly make an anime about an office worker for otaku. Bizarrely enough, this anime would then get licensed for English release by ArtsMagic (a.k.a. ArtsmagicDVD), a UK-based company that initially started off releasing various yakuza movies by Takashi Miike, before then moving over to a trio of early all-CG anime movies. So from 2005 to 2006, ArtsMagic released Salaryman Kintaro across five sub-only DVDs, in both North America & the UK, where it quickly gained critical praise by all manner of sites that covered it, both anime-focused & not; ArtsMagic filled the inside cover of nearly every DVD with tons of pull quotes. Unfortunately, ArtsMagic still decided that releasing an anime aimed precisely at adults, preferably those who work in office spaces, was a sound business decision, so it obviously didn't sell at all (even at a $25 MSRP for each DVD), with not even a bizarre "Young Japan" double-bill re-release of the first four volumes in 2008 (each with a different live-action movie, which doesn't sound like something any of the Japanese licensors would have approved of) doing anything to help. In fact, Kintaro was considered the "freebie" of this re-release, meaning that ArtsMagic couldn't even give this show away; this is right up there with ADV Films' infamous "Buy One, Get One Free" coupon for Aura Battler Dunbine! Oddly enough, there is still a working website for a company called "ArtsmagicDVD" (with the same exact logo, but a different top level domain), though it's exclusively for seemingly random documentaries & makes no reference to ever having released anime, so who knows if it's even the same company.

However, there have been plenty of perfectly good (or even great) anime that have bombed when released in English, so was the Salaryman Kintaro anime truly worthy of all the critical praise it received?

"As if someone took the popular British sitcom 'The Office'
& smashed it face first into a copy of 'Lone Wolf & Cub'." - Movieweb

Kintaro Yajima used to be the leader of the Hasshu League, a 10,000-strong bosozoku gang who ran roughshod throughout the Kanto region, but things changed when he met Akemi, a blind woman who he fell instantly in love with. Kintaro cleaned his act up, disbanded the Hasshu League, married Akemi, became a fisherman, & the two even had a baby boy, Ryuta... Only for Akemi to die while giving birth, with her last wish being that Kintaro become a salaryman who can provide for their son; she's sure he can make being a salaryman just as cool as being the leader of a biker gang. It's been two years since Akemi's death, & through a bit of amazing luck Kintaro manages to find himself back in Kanto with a low level job sharpening pencils at Yamato Construction, one of the top three housing construction companies in the area, after saving Chairman Morinosuke Yamato himself from death. Kintaro's decidedly straightforward, blunt, & non-traditional way of being a salaryman puts him at odds with President Oshima, who wants to take control of  the company from Chairman Yamato, and later Kintaro has to deal with other situations while rising up the ranks, like overseeing construction of a new tunnel at Mt. Kousei & dealing with a rival company in Hokuto General Construction in the Tohoku region.

Salaryman Kintaro definitely fits into the mold of titles like Great Teacher Onizuka or Ultimate Otaku Teacher, which follow characters who are arguably wholly unqualified for their positions from a resume-level perspective, yet are able to succeed because of their non-traditional means, as a way for their creators to essentially point out flaws in their respective institutions. I'd also put The Gokusen here, but that lead is actually 100% qualified for her position, & just has unfortunate (yakuza) baggage. This is shown instantly in the first episode, as Kintaro shows up to his first day of work via police car (because he fought some ruffians the night before), only to be greeted with his old Hasshu League guys in full regalia, as they all wish to see Kintaro off the only way they know, which instantly puts him on the wrong foot with some at the company; his ponytail, white headband, & literal baby child strapped to his back also don't help. However, despite being told to do nothing but sharpen pencils or make copies of papers, Kintaro takes his job 100% seriously, to the point where he starts making friends with some of his co-workers because of just how well he does his job, and how he doesn't treat it as something that's beneath him. His past as a biker gang leader also results in things like one of the office ladies (a.k.a. an "OL") swooning a bit over him, as she was a fan of his during her college days, while an after-work incident with some yakuza results in the leader of the group bursting into Yamato Construction the next morning, only for Kintaro to decide to speak with them himself... and find out that the yakuza leader is an old Hasshu compatriot. Once they each realize who the other is, the yakuza peacefully pull out, out of their leader's continued respect for Kintaro.

"I could easily recommend Salaryman Kintaro to novice anime viewers
as the first one to watch. It's that good." - EMVG.net

And that perfectly ties into the kind of "real man" Kintaro is: Someone who has no problems telling things like he feels it is, regardless of who it is. A low-level salaryman is still important to the overall chain of command, but at the same time the higher-ups should be people who are willing to be there when their employees are in trouble, much like how a parent looks out for their children. For example, also on his first day, Kintaro calls out how everyone leaves the elevator whenever Assistant Director Yusaku Kurokawa enters, whereas Kintaro stayed on for the ride, only for Kurokawa to state that the employees do that of their own accord, and that he is perfectly fine with sharing an elevator with others, if they wish to, since no man is a mountain & instead people have to be able to work together. This, in turn, makes Kintaro decide to cut his ponytail off & remove his headband, because Kurokawa is a "real man" who he feels is worth working under & should be treated with respect. Since Kurokawa demanded that Kintaro clean up how he presents himself, Kintaro obliges, and after hearing that Kurokawa might be considering resigning, Kintaro makes a gift to see Kurokawa off with. That being said, much like some of Onizuka's actions as a teacher aren't things to literally imitate in real life, Kintaro's actions, while morally right & thematically strong, do tend to focus on either taking no crap or can be taken as a bit flippant, and honestly are not recommended to be imitated in real life, as they are shown on television.

For example, Episode 4 is mostly about explaining how Kintaro & Akemi eventually got married by way of Kintaro encountering a former Hasshu member, and while the show does a nice job of having Kintaro almost instantly accept his old friend as a drag queen/trans woman, it does also explain that Akemi was raped behind Kintaro's back by some of his subordinates, followed by her attempting a failed suicide. This is handled by Kintaro having his gang do a "mega-run" throughout all of Tokyo, with Akemi riding with Kintaro. The idea is that Kintaro wants to show how much Akemi means to him, that his gang also cares deeply for her well being, & that even all of the other Tokyo gangs wind up joining the Hasshu League in solidarity BECAUSE of how important Akemi is. The intention behind this entire moment is honest, pure, & means the absolute best, but it does admittedly treat something as serious as rape & attempted suicide a little bit too loose, especially when Kintaro refuses to punish the guys who raped Akemi when they admit fault after the mega-run, stating that it doesn't change the fact that he loves Akemi with all his being. It's definitely a bit of give-&-take with stuff like this, as while Akemi being blind doesn't 100% define her character, she is also dead before the story begins, and while it's neat to see that the Yamato family's maid, Harumi, is partially-deaf (& looks similar to Akemi), her relevance ends really early on, as she's just another person who Kintaro inspires to advance on in their own lives. That being said, it would be awkward if Harumi had become Kintaro's new love interest, what with her looking like Akemi & all, so maybe that was for the best. Meanwhile, Kintaro eventually finds himself a proper love interest in Misuzu Suenaga, the proprietress of a hostess club in Ginza who's a widow with her own past, namely that her husband was a well-respected political figure & the she has a child of her own, the 14-year old Mimi; later on in the manga, beyond the anime, Kintaro & Misuzu get married, and have a daughter, Miki.

"Has a mixture of love, humor, violence, respect, inspiration and honor that
I don't think would ever be possible to achieve in a live action show." - Rouge Cinema

As for the plot of the anime, it's really split up intro three main arcs/problems: President Oshima's attempt to wring control of Yamato Construction, seeing the completion of the Mt. Kousei Tunnel when it's being lead by the rowdy Hitotsubashi Corporation (due to unpaid owes from Oshima), & taking on Hokuto General Construction, which has both its hands in corruption with City Hall as well as the assistance of some yakuza. So as to avoid wandering too far into spoilers, I'll focus mainly on the first arc when covering how the anime works & its themes. In particular, Kintaro himself unknowingly set the idea of a coup against Oshima into motion, after inspiring co-workers Tanaka & Maeda into living life for themselves, rather than remain mere drones of the corporation machine, following the incident with the yakuza. You see, while Oshima (a former member of the Ministry of Construction) is responsible for making Yamato a success, it was solely by focusing primarily on public work job acquired through connections with government officials. While the financial success is great, almost none of the actual salarymen really like Oshima, so morale is down whenever he's around (while it's excellent whenever Chairman Yamato is around), and there is the worry that Oshima's connections are only good as long as he has good relations with the government; should those dry up, the company could fall into ruin, since it's mostly eschewed the private sector. In fact, Kurokawa's planned resignation is solely a move by Kurokawa himself to help keep Chairman Yamato in control for as long as possible, as he's the only director who's 100% against Oshima taking control from the start. Over time, the anti-Oshima faction within the company grows, but what's most interesting about this ties into easily the most unique aspect about Salaryman Kintaro itself: Kintaro's inherent ability to inspire people to action, but without needing to lead them directly.

Early on, when Kintaro's nothing more than a literal human pencil sharpener, he simply does his job & doesn't proactively do anything to go against Oshima; it's only when trouble comes about, like the stuff with various yakuza, that he actively fights back. In fact, Kintaro doesn't really know anything about Oshima's plot to take control of the company for a good while, though he quickly dislikes his President's attitude toward the employees. However, it's through Kintaro's interactions with his co-workers that he (accidentally?) inspires each of them to be more self-reliant, which in turn makes Tanaka, Maeda, Mizuki (who's also Kintaro's neighbor), Ishikawa (a computer expert who initially was afraid of fighting back), & even Chairman Yamato decide to take a stand again Oshima. Kintaro never actually encourages anyone to fight back, but his mere ideology inspires them to be more than just cogs. In fact, during the entire board meeting climax with Oshima in Episode 7, Kintaro is fighting a yakuza on the roof, because of a completely unrelated incident that was all Kintaro's fault, yet everyone acknowledges that it was Kintaro's straightforward & honest attitude that got them all to make their moves.

In short, "Everybody Loves Kin-chan", except that I mean it literally, and not in a sarcastic fashion.

"Possesses a genuine vitality sorely missing from a lot of anime these days...
and I'll certainly be tuning in for more." - Anime Research

Following that arc, which is easily the longest in the series, the rest are rather short, with Mt. Kousei only being three episodes & Hokuto Construction being the last four. Meanwhile, the remainder are one-to-two-episode stories establishing other aspects of Kintaro's life, like meeting Misuzu, visiting his hometown to see his mother's grave & meeting his father (an ex-yakuza who took a 20-year sentence fall for one of his men accidentally killing an innocent), finding a new rival in the ambitious (& conniving) Section Chief Seiji Takatsukasa, & being transferred to the Tohoku region in a new workplace in Kahoku, Yamagata. However, to match with Kintaro's rise up the corporate ladder, these other main arcs get to showcase Kintaro's abilities as a more direct leader. For example, when the Mt. Kousei tunnel gets hit with a landslide, Kintaro's the first one the run in & see what the condition of the tunnel is like, see if there's any workers he can save, & then return to give exact & immediate orders to everyone else, so as to not just prevent the tunnel from suffering massive damage, but to also prevent any loss of life; it's later revealed that he stayed up every night while overseeing the tunnel to research such accidents. Meanwhile, the Hokuto Construction story arc focuses on things like prearranged bidding (a very Japanese bit of City Hall business, apparently), said bidding being about who can go the lowest without going below the (secret) floor price, and how Kintaro takes on the idea of corruption between government & businesses, where one company can reign supreme & get pretty much any job it wants by having the bureaucracy simply decide the lowest price for them... all without any of the competition knowing that this is what's going on.

While not exactly an equivalent to something like Office Space, Salaryman Kintaro is still a series focused on combating the idea of "Salaryman Syndrome", the idea that white-collar workers are nothing more than cogs in a larger machine that are meant to simply do their jobs without making much of a fuss, usually because they're almost guaranteed permanent employment to start with. While he says that he'd love for Yamato Construction to be where he spends the rest of his working life, Kintaro is the kind of person who would never allow himself to be called "corporate livestock", a "dog of the company", or a "corporate soldier", and would never want to see any of his coworkers commit "karoshi", or dying from overwork & stress; that said, the anime does show salarymen working overnight a handful of times, which isn't cool. Sure, Kintaro's actions obviously enter into the realm of "power fantasy" for your average office worker, but Motomiya's general concept is that people who work in an office environment should still be their own individual selves, and not lose their own sense of identity to the drudgery of the workplace, particularly the ones that you might have heard of in Japan. Whereas Office Space uses its black comedy to satirically tear apart the bureaucracy of an office workplace, Salaryman Kintaro instead tries to instill the sense that it should, & maybe could, be fixed in some way. That being said, they are each tackling a different country's style of office culture, so they aren't quite 1:1 for a comparison. For example, Kintaro would see no need to beat up a printer in the middle of a field, since he can just punch a corrupt bureaucrat, if need be.

That being said, Kintaro himself isn't some badass know-it-all who knows how things should "really be", and even up to the final episode is being taught by his superiors; Hiroshi Motomiya is smarter than that.

"One hell of a ride... A title more anime fans should be watching." - Anipike

Salaryman Kintaro was animated by J.C.F. (Dai Yamato #0), which is generally known as an assistance studio first & foremost, so it's no surprise that this anime looks rather workmanlike, when it comes to the animation itself. While the overall product doesn't tend to look terrible, though there are some moments where the animation gets notably chintzy, there's really nothing more I can say other than "it gets the job done". In that regard, it made sense to hire Tomoharu Katsumata (Mazinger Z, Arcadia of My Youth), as he's been working with anime all the way since Toei's first TV series, 1963's Ken the Wolf Boy, so he knows exactly how to work within limitations while still allowing a work to deliver what's needed. The main focus for this anime was to be a straight adaptation of Motomiya's manga, whereas the J-Drama had changed some things around, and series composer Sukehiro Tomita (Macross II & 7, Hell Teacher Nube) looks to have done so well, as even by simply checking the (rather literal & straightforward) chapter titles over at Manga Planet shows that the anime follows them in exact order, with almost every episode even being named after an exact chapter; likewise, the anime looks to cover up through the end of Volume 7 exactly. There's no doubt that the story told here comes from an old-school mangaka, and even though some concessions were made to make it more contemporary, like showing cell phones & laptops that are more in line with 2001 than 1994, it still feels like a Motomiya creation, at its heart.

As for character designs, we have the legendary Masami Suda (Fist of the North Star, Sakigake!! Otokojuku), who sadly passed away from prostate cancer earlier this month at age 77. A master of "manly" character visuals, Suda was the perfect pick, as while Motomiya's style may not be quite as stereotypically "manly" as the likes of Tetsuo Hara or Akira Miyashita, it still harbors that same general aesthetic, and Suda likewise conveys that feeling well, especially with Kintaro himself. For music we have Kenichi Kamio, who's scored some anime before but is actually primarily known more for his video game music, such as in Breakers, Phalanx, Countdown Vampires, & the PC-Engine port of Valis II. Unsurprisingly, there are some tracks that actually feel like they'd fit a game more than a dramatic anime, but overall Kamio's score isn't anything really remarkable. It's not terrible, and there is a sort of "Theme of Kintaro" that's almost really memorable, but overall it simply does its job at matching or heightening the scenes that they're set to. What IS memorable, however, is the OP theme, "Jikuu ~Toki no Sora~" by Yumi Matsuzawa, a really upbeat & fun song that matches the series' theme of being able to rise up past your past mistakes & continue forward as a new person, similar to Kintaro himself. Meanwhile, the ED theme is "Heaven ~Boku no Naka no Tengoku~" by Kiseki Takahashi, who might actually be an executive producer for CIA, Inc., a brand consultant which is part of the production committee for the anime; places online in English say "Norishige", but all I've found in Japanese is "Kiseki". If Takahashi is truly a producer by trade, then I must say that he's a surprisingly good singer, because he delivers a really good & relaxing ballad for the show that balances well with Matsuzawa's more energetic song; he even wrote the lyrics, too!

"It's easy to see why Kintaro is such an icon in Japan" - Trashcity

This brings us to the cast, with Kintaro being played by Taisei Miyamoto, a stage & TV actor, with Salaryman Kintaro being his sole time as a voice actor. However, Taisei had previously played the main character of the live-action movie adaptation of Shin Otokogi, another Hiroshi Motomiya manga, so the man should know how to portray a "real man" like Kintaro. Thankfully, Taisei does an excellent job, making Kintaro sound absolutely believable, both in his kind & more comedic moments, as well as the main hard-edged & tough-guy moments, and he even manages to avoid having that awkward cadence to his delivery, unlike the majority of "special guest" castings that I've seen & covered in other anime; Taisei Miyamoto could have continued being a voice actor, in all honesty. However, Taisei Miyamoto is really the standout performance, since Kintaro is meant to be the large personality that looms over all, so the rest of the cast, though overall very good, don't really get a lot of moments to shine in a large fashion. That being said, Atsuko Tanaka (Caster in Fate/stay night) & Ryoka Yuzuki (Satsuki in Kill la Kill) pair up well as Misuzu & Mimi, who both have their own affections for Kintaro, Kiyoshi Kawakubo (Guame in Gurren Lagann) & Nachi Nozawa (Cobra in Space Adventure Cobra), who have both sadly passed away, are enjoyable as Chairman Yamato & Kurokawa, & Masako Joh (Mone in Gintama) makes Ryuta such an instantly lovable little boy, as the character does speak more & more as the story advances. The rest of the notable cast is rounded out with the likes of Kousei Tomita (Kahoku Sub-Chief Igo), Nobuaki Sekine (Mizuki), Takeshi Watabe (Oshima), Tomoyuki Kouno (Tanaka), & Koichi Nagano (Maeda), among others.

Finally, each DVD contains two really cool extras: "Quizzing Katsumata" & "Quizzing Nakano". These are 5-part, candid interviews with director Tomoharu Katsumata & producer Toru Nakano in which they talk about various subjects, and it's not solely about Salaryman Kintaro. For example, Katsumata talks about his early days in anime, how he entered the industry (he exclusively refers to Hayao Miyazaki as "Miya-chan", which is amazing), what he felt about the previous J-Drama adaptation of Kintaro (both he & Hiroshi Motomiya himself weren't fans), his feelings on the-then larger usage of CG over hand-drawn animation, & how he wished he could make a second season, if only to adapt the scene where Kintaro & Misuzu make love in the middle of the desert; "What a story, Mark". Meanwhile, Nakano explains how he was a fan of the manga & was actually the person who got the anime into production (Bandai hired him to help cast a video game adaptation, which got him into contact with Shueisha & Motomiya, so he made a pitch to them), how budgeting for anime works (80%-90% of it goes to "labor", as he put it), & how he wished Kintaro had a larger budget (though he didn't call it "unsuccessful"), among other things. When totaled, Katsumata talks for roughly 35 minutes & Nakano gets 23, both of which are full of cool bits of information, and I applaud ArtsMagic for including these with each DVD release, as these kind of candid interviews aren't common for anime releases.

In the end, the Salaryman Kintaro anime is truly as excellent as the many pull quotes ArtsMagic used indicated, though it's certainly not without its hurdles. For those who prefer watching anime that can amaze & awe visually, then this show will do absolutely nothing for them, as it's rather workmanlike & doesn't aim for anything that can even remotely be called "visual splendor". However, if you can get around or accept that, plus an honestly unremarkable musical score, what you'll find is an extremely entertaining series focused around a main character that truly defines the core of the show's general themes. Kintaro himself absolutely makes the show, and while the means he sometimes uses are definitely not intended to be followed, it's what he stands for that should be adhered to. I wouldn't necessarily agree with EMVG.net & say that this could work as someone's first anime, but with anime fandom only getting larger & more notable in North America, the relevance of a series like this, which is obviously aimed mainly at adults who now work in a similar environment, only becomes more & more obvious, and I think there's still more than enough here for younger fans to find some enjoyment in it as well, since Kintaro is always cool to see in action.

Luckily, since the show looks to have been an utter bomb in English, the DVDs actually remain rather cheap, as of this review at least, with Volumes 1-4 all going for ~$5 over at Amazon currently, while the 5th & final Volume is sitting at just over $11. Don't even bother with the "Young Japan" double-bills, since they're actually less common in general, and you can't even get the last DVD that way. Would this ever see a license rescue in North America, however? Quite honestly, I highly doubt it, both due to the show's relatively stark niche, and the fact that its production committee was quite large (seven different companies!), so bringing them all together is probably just a bit too much to ask for; not impossible, mind you, but just not likely.

Anime © Hiroshi Motomiya/Shueisha・TBS・Project Kintaro (TBS, BS-i, 81 Produce, Third Line, CIA Inc., Shueisha, Bandai Visual)