On Inami Mahiru and the Cast of Working!!’s Threat Level to Society (1/3)

I’ve meant to write this for a really long time, years in fact, and just never did. It’s kind of a big task and the few times I tried writing it all out it became massive in size – so here, I’m going to try cutting down on it while hitting all the key points. Another issue I ran into was feeling like it wasn’t adequate at getting across what I wanted – so I’ll be trying my best to get it down well here, and just putting it out there as is. I still might forget or miss things as I’m working off memory of the discussions I’ve had about it in the past, if that happens just use the comments.

THIS WILL BE LONG and as such will be broken into a three part post. I’ll likely repeat myself a lot too, it’s a habit. If you don’t care please don’t waste your time reading through all of this. Fair warning.

So what’s the point of this? A lot of people hate on Inami in Working/Wagnaria, or hate on the show BECAUSE of her without even having seen it. I’ve had a lot of discussions with these people, most are trolls (just like JC Staff haters) who just jump on the bandwagon (no surprise, given much of these discussions were done on /a/), but a few have actually gone into it further and more seriously with me – those are who this is for, and the reasoning they brought up will, to the best of my memory, be replied to here. Basically, the goal of this is to raise awareness of two things – just how non-threatening Inami is, and at the same time how dangerous much of the rest of the cast actually is. She’s just hated on because she’s popular – and moreso because the director of the anime put her in the spotlight more than she was in the manga. Though, for the record, even in the manga she is clearly the main story element and has more focus than anyone else.

Of course, disliking her just because she isn’t fitting to your tastes is fine, but claiming it’s because of anything else usually ends up with people blatantly ignoring the canon facts about her and the rest of the characters. The problem is, basically everyone who dislikes her hates her for all these bullshit reasons with no backing and no real reasoning to them – and if you talk to them enough you’ll quickly realize; they hate her because she’s the main female character and also is the clear winner of the ‘romance’ in the show with Takanashi (I wouldn’t call him a win). It’s just fanboy bullshit, which is fine if they’d admit that instead of throwing around blatantly made up bullshit about Inami. Just basic jealousy over a character taking precedence over their favorite one.

This is to provide Inami with the defense she deserves from the inaccurate purposeful misinformation and baseless hate that she so greatly ends up getting simply for not being the most generic lead female imaginable – which is what, clearly, everyone wants instead. This is ALSO to point out the fact that she is far from dangerous compared with the rest of the cast and to showcase the hilariously ass backwards logic people try to use as “factual information” against her – and how contradictory and ironic it all is onto itself.

First off, two important points to get out of the way right off the bat;

1. Inami is not THAT strong. Her strength is very exaggerated for comedic effect and because it’s an anime, and even within that exaggeration she still isn’t that powerful when hitting people – they rarely get anything from it, at most having a very short lasting swollen face for about 10 seconds to indicate they were hit at all. This isn’t Lou Ferrigno smashing your jaw off, this isn’t Touma breaking the illusion of a little girl by assaulting them yet again, it’s just a young girl who is stronger than most girls and often has the jump on you. She is not strong in the general sense – just compared to a normal girl her shape, size, and age.

2. I brought up “comedic effect” and “because it’s anime” knowing a response I often got when discussing her. They’d pretty much say it’s not and that through various scenes it’s shown to be serious (even if slightly exaggerated) – BUT at the same time they’d tell me that Satou, Yachiyo, and plenty of the rest of the staff’s brutal violence and threats of such ARE just exaggerated for comedy and due to being an anime. You don’t get to selectively use logic – it’s either all exaggerated or none of it is, and both options that are possible at all end up the same way; proving Inami is far from dangerous, especially compared to her fellow cast members who almost all have dangerous psychological issues or physically are known by canonical information to be much more violent, strong, and a bigger threat to those around them.

Now, into more in-depth stuff;

“She has this fear, but instead of admitting herself into a mental hospital or therapy like she should be required to by law she goes out in public and assaults men” and/or this direct quote “She’s a bitch who should be in a mental institute.”

The series itself points out how obsessively she goes out of her way to AVOID any contact with men as well as makes sure to clearly inform anyone who will be around her often at all of her issues. She’s never, not a single time, “gone out in public and assaulted men” in any routine way in the entirety of the manga or anime. Actually, she goes as far as not going outside or shopping or anything when it’s likely busy and thus hard to avoid men, she also takes dangerous ways to and from work and school for others safety. She goes all out for those around her – including strangers – so there is no reason she could ever be deemed as a threat.

As for “required by law”? That’s ridiculous and would end up with a mental institution system more broken than our current prison one. Androphobia is a REAL PSYCHOLOGICAL DISORDER, one of which has never gotten anyone forced into any sort of mental institution, at worst you’d be suggested to see someone – which is a good idea for any mental issues. Actually, the fact is in the real world people with disabilities not only aren’t thrown in crazy houses, but almost every modern government has a system in place to FIND JOBS FOR THESE PEOPLE. Meaning her situation would be no different than it is now, given Wagnaria willingly took her in knowing her problem, the same way a government placed job would have been. Hell, given their hiring pattern, they probably are one of those job locations open to helping people recover from psychological issues.

Funny thing is, if you actually know anything about psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists, or how mental disorders like these are dealt with – the EXTREMELY likely outcome of seeing one would be to do EXACTLY what she’s doing. Force yourself into situations with men until you get used to them, find a job that has male coworkers, etc. So even if she saw a professional – hell, she might, they never say she does or doesn’t, the result would be no different.

The idea that someone suffering from a psychological disorder should be locked away is hilarious and clearly the people saying this have never been through an actual difficult issue…actually, on that point;

“She should just get over it, it’s been like a year now and she still has barely made any progress, it’s so unrealistic and forced.”

This is just laughable. Anyone who believes this really needs to go through a real problem in their life sometime soon. You can’t just magic away such a deep psychological issue. Hell, I’ve been (and still am) suffering through one of my own for the past ~7 years. One that makes my life basically unlivable by any normal standards and has forced me into a life where I can barely step out of my house, let alone interact with people or do much of any “living”. I’ve seen several psychiatrists/psychologists/therapists and none of it has helped, actually I’ve probably gotten worse.

Inami on the other hand has actually shown VAST improvement for the time frame, probable lack of professional help, and depth of the issue. It’s shown to clearly be getting better. These people not only don’t understand how hard life can be, but also miss the very obvious signs of improvement. You do not magically overcome mental issues and some dude at work helping you for your work period each day does NOT help all that much either. Anyone claiming she should be better by now because of that is retarded. This sort of thing, even with professional help and medication can take years, lifetimes, or simply never be fixed – yet luckily for Inami, she’s shown drastic (for the level of issue she has) improvement over the course of both seasons of the series.

For those who want to disagree about her massively improving, please refer to the second episode of season 1 and then any episode of season 2. In episode 2 of the first season she literally can’t even get close to the counter while Satou is on that side of the kitchen (to take the meals out to the customers) and has to wait till he goes away while also doing some sort of ‘he is a girl’ chant to herself. While, just a couple episodes later, she gets much more used to being around guys a lot closer than that, and in season 2 she can even be only a couple feet from them from time to time without any trouble at all. There’s also the other things like how she goes from the very very very tip of the ‘hand’ thing Takanashi uses to walk home together with her to holding it closer and closer – last being shown standing maybe less than a full foot away from him while holding the ‘hand’ almost where he’s holding it.

“She’s a one trick pony that has nothing else to her character aside being a violent abusive bitch”

Let me point something out about the entire franchise of Working!! including the manga; each character has one big quirk that is extremely exaggerated and focused on almost 99% of the time they are on screen (or in-frame). This is true for every member of the cast. This argument that Inami is shit because “all she does is punch guys” is beyond stupid because all the ENTIRE cast does is one thing.

Actually, Inami is probably the deepest and most full character in the show and is one of the only ones with MULTIPLE traits and quirks to her. Everyone else has their basic thing and then some normality with a twinge of strange on top of that – Inami however has that, has a focused romance, has her one quirk, has more additional quirks, and has the only semblance of progress in the entire series. Nobody else even cares about their one issue (aside Poplar – whose apparent devastatingly terrible life-breaking issue is not liking her height) nor tries to make any change about it. The only thing you could consider “plot” in this show is all thanks TO Inami and her problem as well as her progress. She’s the sole point of the story, without her there simply isn’t one and that changes the entire chemistry of the series and relationships; in a bad way. Yes, in the manga she’s got less focus – but she still carries the story.

Inami is a very key asset to this series. Remove her and you remove a huge chunk of everyone else’s personalities and moments as well. Just like in real life, the people you know help form who you are, and without her the vast majority of the relationships in the show would never progress (she causes them to), the jokes would be undoable (she’s involved in most of them), and the cast’s personalities would be much less interesting (as she is a huge factor in developing everyone else too).

Having less of a focus on her like in the manga would be fine, but people who think she should outright be written out of the story are either just plain idiots or are your typical types who simply can’t think of the effects and consequences of such a big decision. Not to mention, as I already brought up, she is the only thing close to character development and plot progression in the series. Without her the quality of the story would drop drastically – there are shows that work without a plot, but they focus on character development, and nobody in this series has any development of any worth mentioning depth aside her; which is why they aren’t focused on as much.

On to the next part!

Post a link to this post when you see threads hating on her!