History Manga / SkullFaceBooksellerHondaSan

''Skull-face Bookseller Honda-san'' (ガイコツ書店員本田さん ''Gaikotsu Shoten'in Honda-san''[[note]]lit. "Skeleton Bookstore Employee Honda"[[/note]]) is an autobiographical Japanese comedy/essay manga the eponymous Honda. It depicts Honda's [[SliceOfLife day-to-day life]] as an awkward bookstore employee... except [[StylizedForTheViewer she draws herself]] as a skeleton and protects all of her former coworkers' identities by drawing them with weird masks and other headgear.

* SomethingCompletelyDifferent: The first half of episode 11 sets the bookstore in an HistoricalFantasy AU of sorts (with much SchizoTech), where most of the antics are the same, but the customers are monsters instead of humans and magic is in full-force, among other things.

''Skull-face Bookseller Honda-san'' (ガイコツ書店員本田さん ''Gaikotsu Shoten'in Honda-san''[[note]]lit. "Skeleton Bookstore Employee Honda"[[/note]]) is an autobiographical Japanese comedy/essay manga the eponymous Honda. It depicts Honda's [[SliceOfLife day-to-day life]] as an awkward bookstore employee... except [[SamusIsAGirl she draws herself]] as a skeleton and protects all of her former coworkers' identities by drawing them with weird masks and other headgear.

* FunWithAcronyms: The name of the anime's opening theme, "ISBN ~ Inner Sound & Book's Narrative", is a nod to [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Book_Number the ISBNs]] that are on books.

* ShownTheirWork: Honda takes some time to briefly explain different aspects and genres of manga, such as doujinshi and BL, and their impact in the overall business and popular culture. Many of the customer interactions will also be spot-on for anyone who's ever had a job in retail, ''especially'' in a bookstore. It helps that the real-life Honda has actually worked in a bookstore before.

You can find the anime on Website/{{Crunchyroll}} [[https://www.crunchyroll.com/skull-face-bookseller-honda-san here]].

* ArtShift: Honda's face (or at least, skull) switches from an anatomically-correct and detailed skull to a rounded and cartoonish skull in times of great stress, often for comedic effect.
* BreakingTheFourthWall: As it is a autobiographical manga, this trope is employed by the ''tons''. Even more so in the anime adaptation.

* OccidentalOtaku: Most of the first episode focuses on foreign customers at the bookstore Honda works at. One of the customers in the first episode looks like a parody of an American anime fan. Scraggly blonde hair with a bandana, overweight, has a weird accent and a magical girl cell phone case.

* ShownTheirWork: Honda takes some time to briefly explain different aspects and genres of manga, such as doujinshi and BL, and their impact in the overall business and popular culture. Many of the customer interactions will also be spot-on for anyone who's ever had a job in retail, ''especially'' in a bookstore.

* SurrealHumor: Who would have thought a retail job at a bookstore would have so much bizarre behind the scenes stuff? It doesn't hurt that the author depicts herself as a skeleton and picks off-the-wall {{Cool Mask}}s for each of her coworkers only adds to the weirdness.

* SurrealHumor: Who would have thought a retail job at a bookstore would have so much bizarre behind the scenes stuff? Portraying the main character as a skeleton and his coworkers as wearing {{Cool Mask}}s only adds to the weirdness.
* StylizedForTheViewer: The author portrays herself as a skeleton and her former coworkers as wearing masks, but neither is literally the case, they're all humans that dress normally.

* YaoiFangirl: "Yaoi Girls from OVERSEAS!!!" revolves around Honda dealing with a bunch of these, and his embarrassment at having to give them suggestions on what books to get.

''Skull-face Bookseller Honda-san'' (ガイコツ書店員本田さん ''Gaikotsu Shoten'in Honda-san''[[note]]lit. "Skeleton Bookstore Employee Honda"[[/note]]) is a semi-autobiographical Japanese comedy manga series by the titular Honda. It depicts Honda's [[SliceOfLife day-to-day life]] as an awkward bookstore employee... except [[SamusIsAGirl she draws herself]] as a skeleton and protects all of her former coworkers' identities by drawing them with weird masks and other headgear.

* MediumAwareness: Honda is still working at the bookstore while she's writing the manga, which causes the two to blur together when she goes to a company ''nomikai'' for networking only to meet a colleague from another store who says that he doesn't find ''Skull-face Bookseller'' believable because the main character doesn't hate their wholeseller as much as he does. This prompts her to apologize, leaving the other employee dumbfounded once he realizes that he is speaking to ''the real'' Skull-face Bookseller, but that soon fades into a rant that Honda needs to be more demeaning towards his store's wholeseller, who we have already met earlier in the episode and who everyone at her store likes as a friend and fellow nerd.

* GenderFlip: The anime inexplicably casts Creator/SomaSaito as the title character, when the author and therefore the AuthorAvatar is actually a woman.