Fall anime season 2016’s WWW.WAGNARIA!! is based off of a previous anime, Wagnaria!!, a slice-of-life comedy about a restaurant. While not a direct sequel (it’s based on a webcomic spin-off of the original), WWW.WAGNARIA!! takes Wagnaria!!’s premise and runs with it: normal-ish guy works at coffee shop, interacts with the humorously freakish employees who run it, mildly zany hijinks ensue.
The character design and animation on WWW.WAGNARIA!! is only serviceable at best. The cafe is bland, the main character is bland, and the most distinctive character is a silver-haired, silver-eyed waif who looks like a ghost. (The reveal that she could see ghosts was not a shocker.)
But episode 1 isn’t really interested in breaking the mold on lighthearted hijinks anime. It’s not about stunning character art, or world-changing plot, or vibrant coloring, or even the best jokes in the world: it’s about setting character tropes up fast and snapping them into quick comedic beats.
Since WWW.WAGNARIA!! is based on a 4-panel webcomic, episode 1 is divided up into a number of loosely-connected flashes of humor. The character pieces are set up as quickly as possible to get to the interaction-based jokes, playing a lot on Daisuke’s shock, horror or bewilderment.
A lot is dependent on trope choice: the rich girl, the psychic girl and the tough but smart girl are all good premises for a quick joke. The boys are less flashy: there’s the poverty-struck boy whose dad is in debt to the rich girl, two sympathetic smilers in the kitchen, and the idiot manager, all who are good for a joke or two.
WWW.WAGNARIA!! episode 1 starts out with more hits than misses as it churns its joke machine, but towards the end of episode 1. the jokes get less amusing. There’s an extended Valentine’s chocolate gag that falls really flat, but that feels like the nature of an anime based off a 4-panel webcomic. You can’t win them all.
A point in WWW.WAGNARIA!!’s favor: you don’t need to know anything about the original anime it’s based on or the 4-panel webcomic spinoff to enjoy it. It has no continuity with the anime it’s based on, making it very accessible. I wouldn’t recommend WWW.WAGNARIA!! as an absolute must-watch, but for a bit of light, dumb fun, it hits the spot.
WWW.WAGNARIA!! is available to view subtitled on Crunchyroll at 12 PM every Saturday here. Are you adding it to your fall anime season 2016 watch list? Feel free to discuss WWW.WAGNARIA!! in the comments section below.
