101 in 1001 - Kantaro: The Sweet Tooth Salaryman

Kantarou: The Sweet Tooth Salaryman

Back in December I watched a show on Netflix called Kantarou: The Sweet Tooth Salary Man (original title: さぼリーマン甘太朗/ Saboriman Kantarou) as part of the 101 in 1001 challenge goal: 

067. Watch 5 new (to you) TV series (all current episodes).

Netflix suggested this series to me because I was looking for/watching Japanese language films and shows, as I wanted some listening practise. However, this was a show I watched purely for entertainment purposes. 

Unfortunately, I haven't read the manga, so I can't make any comparisons. This is just going to be about the show.

Title: Kantarou: The Sweet Tooth Salary Man [Japanese title: さぼリーマン甘太朗/ Saboriman Kantarou]

Year: 2017
No. of Seasons: 1
No. of Episodes: 12
Cert: PG
Genre: Comedy, food, feel-good, wacky
Language: Japanese (Subtitles available in various languages on Netflix; I had English)

Cast (main):
Matsuya Onoe as Kantarou Ametani
Ren Ishikawa as Kanako Dobashi
Sarutoki Minagawa as Toru Miyake
Hiroyuki Onoue as  Daisuke Yamaji
Hazuki Shimizu as Erika Sano

Kantarou eating melon kakigori

Plot: Graduate Kantarou Ametani begins working at a publishing company as a sales agent but he has a secret: he plays hooky from work to indulge in his true passion - sweets!

Overall:

The series is based on a manga of the same name, by Tensei Hagiwara (writer) & Abidi Inoue (illustrator), and was co-produced by Netflix (this isn't an ad, I swear!) and TV Tokyo. The title contains the pun "Saboriman", which is a combination of 'salaryman' and a form of the verb 'saboru', which means to skip out on your duties and obligations. The kanji for Kantarou (甘太朗) also contains the character "ama" (甘) - meaning "sweet" - though it's said "kan". 

On a side note, there are a lot of Japanese language puns/word plays throughout the show which are also ridiculous and fun, but sadly they often don't easily translate without providing explanation notes, so they're left out or just written as direct translations. 

Having a squats contest in the middle of giant peach volcanoes

For example, when eating a particular dessert with peaches (momo) in, Kantarou imagines that he turns into Peach Boy (Momotaro) and is having a squats contest with an exercise demon, based on a work colleague of his. This is based on the Japanese folklore stories of Momotaro, but they focus the camera on Kantarou and his colleague's thighs a lot and have them say "we're two peaches", which seems a bit strange out of context. I watched this with someone who understands Japanese and someone who doesn't and the latter was a bit confused (but still found it amusing anyway). 

The word for thighs is "futomomo" (太もも; I'm writing the kanji/hiragana for this because it has another meaning also) in Japanese. Throughout the whole scene the writers were playing with the fact that "futo" is also the first part of saying "two" when counting certain things. So essentially, they were saying "two peaches" and "thighs" and "we're two peaches", whilst having peaches for heads and showing their thighs, doing squats on the screen. (Yes, it's that kind of show...).

Anyway, it was an entertaining and fun to watch and gave short snippets of information about food making processes and history along the way. 

Best Bits:

All of the "Sweets Heaven" scenes are bizarre and funny, and Kantarou is just a very strange person in general (he gets stranger as the series goes along), but in a way that makes you like him and laugh with him. Sometimes he does things and encounters things in "real" life that are almost as strange as what he imagines. When you find out why Kantarou love sweets so much, it makes sense, and his going off into imaginary worlds makes more sense as well. 

天国 (tengoku/heaven) on a giant hotcake sun

I also liked all the references/parodies of other films/TV shows, though I probably missed some. It doesn't really make a difference if you "get" them all or not though, because the scenes were enjoyable regardless.

Worst Bits:

The plot is somewhat silly since he only stops to eat sweets after he's already finished all the sales work he needs to complete. I'm pretty sure he would be allowed to go and eat something for lunch at least, in which case he could eat all the sweets he wanted then (correct me if I'm wrong though). Also, sometimes it felt like I was watching a tourist information show about the districts and sweets shops of Tokyo, rather than a fictional comedy, but it was interesting so that wasn't so bad. The way Dobashi behaves towards Kantarou is also slightly odd. Or rather, the way she goes about it doesn't seem to make any sense. But again, it's not something off-putting and I like her as a character. 

Dobashi and Sano (eating, of course)

Mostly though, as I really dislike the noise of people eating (myself included) the sound was somewhat unpleasant at times (though, some of the noises Kantarou makes when he eats aren't the same as most people, haha).

Kantarou and his mother. Let's just not talk about this...

Watch It If You Like: Quirky comedy; sweets; foodgasms; the processes involved in making food; salarymen; watching people eat; slacking off work; seeing places in Tokyo/Japan in general; bloggers; silly humour; some slightly dark humour; weird, bordering on surreal visuals.

Rating: 7.5/10