Or, "Work is hard, so we drink": The Anime.
Michiru has just moved to Tokyo from the suburbs in order to take up employment in a new start-up, and so has moved into a house share with various other young professionals. It's a bit like the recently reviewed Comic Girls but with a rather older set of characters.
Filling out the house are Kae, a wedding planner, Nao, who works in a clothes shop and Makoto, her still in university little sister. They've all got various stresses to cope with in their daily lives, and like a certain lemon-loving alcoholic, they solve their problems with booze.
It's unexpectedly bleak, perhaps based on the life of the original author who spent time working in an office and had to survive on drink to get through it. There's a lot of crying (also wailing) into beer, but it's balanced with more infodumps about booze and bar snacks than you'd ever expect.
In a similar manner to Love is Like a Cocktail, this goes into the bartending skills element of drinking, with a bit on the perfect pour, what makes drinks suitable for different occasions and the occasional bit of history about various brands. Food is also very important.
Weirdly, I found that there was too much drinking in this. Each episode is about half new job problems, and half drinking to forget the problems. The drinking elements aren't anywhere near thrilling enough to spend as much time as they get, and sometimes feel either too much like an advert for some particular drink or a re-run of the premise of "we're stressed, so we drink". That's not a particularly original observation on society.
The new job problems are better, though are reminiscent of the recent New Game!!, which covered similar issues. The household negotiations are often loosened with booze.
On the whole, it doesn't do anything particularly novel with the premise, and the drinking elements' appeal is a bit too niche for my liking, though the cat beer is kinda funny. Have given up rather quickly on this one.
Tagged: Anime Comedy Home life Food and drink porn Slice of life Hidive Subbed