Atarashii Joushi wa Do Tennen wasn’t one of my top picks going into this season, but it’s not a generic bottom-feeder either.  In the first place in Abe Noriyuki it has a ridiculously experienced and reliably good director at the helm.  It also has a source material by Dan Ichikawa that’s placed highly in several award competitions, including a second-place finish in Anime Japan’s “Manga We Want to See Animated” poll in 2020.  As such it was sort of a deep sleeper for me going into the season (a season without a lot of those).

As with Overtake! (my main sleeper pick), it’s so far so good.  It took me a bit to be drawn into what was happening here (the whole kawaii thing thing seemed pretty heavy-handed at first).  But by the end of the episode I’d laughed several times, because a lot of the jokes are actually funny.  And the tone kind of wore me down, in a good way.  A good workplace comedy always has a leg up with me, and seinen is something I always want to see more of in anime.

Atarashii Joushi is the story of a downtrodden young salaryman named Momose Kentarou (Nishiyama Koutarou), who’s just fled a black company with an abusive boss.  He arrives at his new company terrified the cycle will repeat, and has a hard time getting a read on his new boss Shirosaki Yuusei (Umehara Yuuichirou).  But Shirosaki turns out to not only be a sweetheart but a total dojikko (“ドジっ子`”, not ” ドジっ娘”), whose fumblings Momose finds irresistible.

This is all played for cuteness, and as I said at first it was a bit much.  But there is a deeper idea insidiously creeping in – good managers get better results than bad ones.  This sort of thing is a huge social problem in Japan, no animanga invention.  Kindness works, and it perpetuates itself.  One of the reasons Shirosaki is such a good boss is because his own boss and now the section chief, Aoyama Mitsuo (Sugita Tomokazu) was a good boss to him when he was a rookie at the company.  It seems so easy – just be decent and pay it forward.  But in corporate Japan it’s very much the exception and not the rule.

But of course Enzo’s Hippocratic Oath of comedy is “first, be funny” – and My New Boss Is Goofy checks that box.  When Momose is doubled over in pain from anxiety (still thinking he was in trouble here), Shirosaki buys him PMS medication.  He wonders how old his former classmates are.  He mistakes “fertilized eggs” for cable, and when Aoyama once messaged him that he was worried about him floundering on a project, he sends him a photo of a flounder.  It’s all ridiculous of course, but when you love puns as much as the Japanese (and I) do, this sort of thing is chicken soup for the soul.

Because some will no doubt be asking, it’s not clear whether there’s a BL element here.  Shirosaki mentions having a girlfriend (that’s how he knew about the PMS meds), and I suspect if anything we’re in shounen-ai (age check) or bromance territory here.  A lot of series do this of course – give those who tune in (or read) for that element enough to let their imaginations finish the job, and leave it at that.  As long as the series is funny and charming I don’t much care, and so far at least Atarashii Joushi wa Do Tennen clears that hurdle pretty comfortably.