Greetings! It's the third of the new serialization write-ups with Mako Hatamichi's Hello Work Monsters, a unique take on the shonen fantasy genre. If this round of serializations has one thing in common, it's that these authors have all been round these parts. Though Hatamachi-sensei has had more experience than many others.
The Artist
Mako Hatamachi
So I have a conundrum. To be clear it's a good conundrum, in that Hatamachi is perhaps the most prolifc one shot author I've written about in these spaces. They've illustrated manga for Shogakukan and Shuiesha as far as I can see, and the list of titles they've worked on is as long as it is varied. It's to a point where being able to construct a timeline of their work is really difficult but I'll try.
It appears Hatmachi-sensei hails from Chiba prefecture, and at 22 years old they entered the 84th Shogakukan shonen rookie prize. I can't tell if they won, but the work itself was nominated and thus put up on Shogakukan's site for reading. Now I can't say for sure if this is their first work but it does set us on a trajectory that eventually arrives at Hello Work Monsters The title of this oneshot is Sue zenkuwanu wa otoko no iji, which means something like "Rejecting the advances of a woman is a man's pride." Which in turn is a play on the phrase Suezen kuwanu wa otoko no haji" Which literally means "Not eating the meal set before him is a man's shame" or to put it another way "Ignoring a woman's advances is a man's shame."
As another caveat, since there's just so much Hatamachi out there, I'll speedrun through these a bit more than I do with other authors --this background section is meant to be an introduction to the author's past works more so than a detailed resume. In this oneshot, a fisherman has a unique problem --he caught a mermaid who claims she tastes better than any fish! Does it count as murder if you kill a mermaid who's asking for it? Is the question he grapples with throughout. What the two have in common is they hate to back down from a challenge, but eventually he and the mermaid come to a truce of sorts and have an unlikely friendship bloom.
If this is Hatamachi's introduction to the manga world it's an interesting one. The art doesn't stand out per se, (even if it is very good) but the storytelling and character building shows great promise. I mean it's not often you get a tale about a mermaid who wants to be eaten to prove a point.
Hopping from Shogakukan to the Shonen Jump publisher Shueisha, Hatamachi participated in a 2023 competition held by comic book art supply maker COMITA in conjunction with Shueisha's Seinen web magazine Tonari no Young Jump or "Neighborhood Young Jump/Next Door Young Jump." In which submissions would be closed at 4pm and winners would be contacted at 8pm.
Flyer for the Event.
The upside to this of course is getting immediate feedback on one's work, and seeing it published immediately online as well. Hatamachi turned in two oneshots, one in September 2023, and the other in November of the same year. The September oneshot is a set of stories entitled Yamazaki-san and the other is Kabutomushi to niichan or "Rhinoceros Beetle and Big Brother"
From Yamazaki-San
From "Kabutomushi to niichan."
What's immediately apparent from both of these oneshots is Hatamachi's artwork has improved greatly! It's hard to believe this is the same person. Granted, both of these are very short (clocking in at about 10 pages or so each), but still it is a testament to improving one's craft through diligent work. Not surprisingly the stories are simple as well considering their page length --Yamazaki-san is about a girl who may have feelings for the most popular girl in the class and finding that those feelings might be requited, while Kabutomushi to niichan is about a younger brother who's often trolled by his older brother, but still chooses hope over experience when he promises to catch him a Rhino beetle --just for experience to win out when it's a hoax in the end. They're very different stories, evidencing that Hatamachi is no one-trick pony. Though their time with Shueisha was brief in comparison to their output with Shogakukan which produced five oneshots before Hello Work Monsters.
Unfortunately, something I've run into often with Shogakukan's uploads of these oneshots is when they upload them to Sunday Webry, they use that date --as in the date of upload rather than the date of actual publication. Many times I'm able to sort of wing it using Twitter and google, but in this case I was only able to find out when the first one shot above was printed, which was in 2019. (But uploaded in 2020.) In any case, judging from the other upload dates, beyond their rookie submission, Hatamachi has been drawing for Shogakukan since at least 2019 with their first oneshot (first row left) Takese-kun wa kao ga ii or "Takase-kun is handsome" running in the December issue of Sunday Super. The next (beside it) is Makutsu dassou senki or "Magic Cave Escape Diary." followed by Yamanaka kokuhaku sensou or "The Yamanaka confession wars" (second row left) then Tokoyo no Ishii or "The Immortal World Doctor" and finally Ikkatsu kaiketsu! Daifugou Grace no jikenbo or "All solved! Billionaire Grace's Case Files." (bottom) These oneshots save Toyoko no Ishii, show a lighter side of Hatamachi, as the first is about a boy who's so pretty he has to hide his face to go to school, the second is about two guys trying to escape a magic cave filled with sea monsters, just to instead end up improving their society. Then Yamanaka is the tale of a hopless boy calling out his classmate Nomura to confess to her, but he forgets there's more than one Nomura in the class, and ends up having to awkwardly explain to a male Nomura why he's here. Last is Grace's case files about an eccentric and very good detective who's flush with funds but only picks up a case to meet his idol --a thief who has never been caught thinking that he's got more noble causes than money just to find out....yeah he's in it for the moolah.
Toyoko on the other hand sounds like it would have made an interesting series in its own right as it's about an immortal doctor who ends up in the middle of a locked room murder mystery where he's the second victim, but uses his immortality to rise again and solve the case.
Whew, a lot to go through! Hatamachi has a wide breadth of work and no shortage of topics they've touched upon with their oneshots. Be it school life, fantasy worlds, or something in between, the unifying theme in their work is expecting the unexpected. You think they're going to go left but not only do they defy that expectation, they do so in a way that readers can't help but have a chuckle and admit "they've got me there." Plus the artwork continues to improve at a steady rate, and by the time these oneshots come around they look much more like Hello Work Monsters. Hatamachi's strength is definitely more character designs and BG art as their composition and approach to page layout is straightforward but in a refreshing way. That being said, some pages pop more than others, like this one from Yamanaka:
I wonder if this was originally a color page? It's not usual for them to omit color pages when the series are brought online, but this is odd coloring if it were always meant to be in black and white... either way the watercolor effects are a nice touch on the moment where Yamanaka finally tells Nomura how he feels about her after a chapter of meandering around awkwardly. Speaking of, now over to the serialization proper.
The Serial
Hello Work Monsters
Originally billed as Haim no oshigoto soudansho or "Haim's Employment Consultation Office" the series debutted in WSS combined issues 22/23 under the name Hello Work Monsters which is taken from the Japanese temp agency "Hello Work." The blurb says that this is an Isekai and Employment story. That might seem a little confusing since how we refer to isekai generally in the western world is a character being transported from one world to another, which is not the case in this series. The protagonist was born and lives in a fantasy world without being sent there, but the wording for Isekai in Japanese simply means "another world", i.e a world that is different from our own. It's a small difference, but worth noting.
The Premise
I've mentioned it on twitter before how WSS series seem to be serialized with themes in mind, and this time around seems to be fantasy series. The next series we'll cover Kaiten no Albus also has a fantasy theme, and with the ever popular Frieren Beyond Journey's End making its home in the magazine one has a bumper crop of very similar settings. Hello Work Monsters and Kaiten no Albus both even take Frieren's premise of "What happens after the demon king has been defeated?" Though both series go in very different directions than their elf-mage older sister. In Hello Work Monsters the hero Stan has defeated the Demon King and peace has been restored, however the battle wasn't an easy one and has left the land in turmoil as someone's gotta clean up the mess left afterward and humans alone aren't going to cut it.
Stan tries his best to lend a helping hand wherever he can with the reluctant assistance of his maid Maira, but the problem remains that it's more than a society still recovering from it's wounds from the war can handle. They're going to need an idea that's far more dramatic, no, crazy to get this done.
Luckily Stan knows a guy with forward-thinking ideas --Haim! Just, y'know, ignore the fact that he's the top commander of the very same demon king they just defeated and it's fine, I'm sure it'll be. Not surprisingly, Maira is very against working with him, but he does propose something novel --the demon king's monsters are without a master and the humans without a means to get back on their feet. Why not combine both of these issues into one solvable problem and put the monsters to work? Though, they'll need someone who knows the monsters (Haim) to garner their trust, and someone else (Stan) to know what monster works best where.
What results from this is a Delicious in Dungeon-esque story right down to the character interactions. Stan and Haim --especially the former are unflappable taking the monster's quirks in stride, while the ever suspicious Maira acts as Marcille who finds the situation she's thrust in due to her master to be annoying at best, and terrifying at worst. Hatamachi hasn't said as much, but I wouldn't be surprised if one of their inspirations is Ryoko Kui's gourmet manga. Except in this case rather than cooking and eating the monsters of a dungeon, they're giving them jobs.
A very Marcille reaction to finally trying new and weird foods.
From dealing with zombies who come out due to people (and monsters) not properly disposing their trash, to a homeless dragon, and a wolf man with an attitude, the first few chapters of Hello Work Monsters has a very laid back feel --but there's a gravitas to it since Haim's wish to have the monsters thrive, and Stan's drive to restore humanity intersect into what is an overall desire to put aside the past and coexist. Both sides are still dealing with both physical and mental scars of the conflict and putting aside their differences is going to take time, patience, and most of all mutual understanding. It helps too that Hatamachi's light touch has prevailed through their oneshots and the series is hilarious if only because poor Maira is having trouble adjusting to everything she's dealing with even if her heart is in the right place.
The Verdict
Frieren has left an undeniable mark on the magazine (and I'd daresay media in general) so I'm not at all surprised that other series are attempting to hone in on it's success. Hello Work Monsters represents that as well as taking parts from Delicious in Dungeon, but rather than coming out the other end an bizarre chimera of mix matched parts, it instead lays down the groundwork to be a unique experience in it's own right. Fans of both series should check this one out as it has all of the potential to stand alongside those two greats in this genre, all while being a poignant tale of finding a place to belong among others, as it's not that we work that defines us, but the reason why we work.
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