Africa Salaryman (Africa no Salaryman; sometimes unofficially translated as African Office Worker) is a slapstick workplace comedy set in the African Savannah of an alternate world of anthropomorphic animals. Each episode mainly revolves around the three main characters: Lion, the kindly lion; Lizard, the somewhat jaded and cynical lizard; and Toucan, a selfish womanizing jerk of a toucan.
This series has examples of:
- Art Shift: The anime frequently switches between 2D and 3D animation. The three main characters also frequently switch to a minimalistic art style.
- Bloody Hilarious: One common running gag is Lizard losing his tail, which results in gushes of blood.
- Carnivore Confusion: Smaller animals often get scared that Lion will eat them.
- Dude, Not Funny!: In the last episode, Toucan gets a phone call and then says that the client changed their mind and does not want to work with their company after all, but then says he was just kidding. Nobody finds this funny and he gets beat up by Lizard for it.
- Face of a Thug: Lion, due to his size and species, is very physically intimidating. Truthfully, Lion's a nice guy.
- Fearless Fool: Honey Badger lives up to his species memetic fearlessness, up to the point of challenging elephants and sharks.
- Furry Confusion: Most characters look like furries but a small number are talking animals. In one episode, when Toucan goes to a mixer he finds out at the end that the pig girl sitting across from him was actually a non-anthropomorphic animal the whole time and was really the pet of the girl who didn't show up.
- Insurance Fraud: When Honeyguide is desperate for money he goes to a shady loan company but they refuse to give him the money and instead instruct him to take out a life insurance policy on his hated boss and then kill him.
- Jerkass:
- Toucan. He's lazy, he's a womanizer, he's greedy, he trolls his coworkers constantly, he once antagonized Lion while Talking with Signs to the point where Lion nearly killed his dentist, and he descends into Vitriolic Best Buds with Lizard and Lion so much that you wonder how the two can stand him.
- Honey Badger frequently bullies Honeyguide, the employee working under him.
- Honeyguide, thinking that if he can't be happy then no one should be happy, frequently pulls mean pranks on his fellow office workers.
- Killer Rabbit: Lethal Hamster is a small hamster who is usually carrying around a pair of kitchen knives as big as he is. He never actually kills anybody in the show (although it was implied that he murdered a toucan offscreen in one episode) and mostly is there to be cute.
- Only Sane Man: In the anime OP it's shown that Lizard is one of the only competent employees of the company, writing down notes while moving while Toucan, in contrast, falls over and drops all the papers he's carrying. He's also shown to have a relatively stable home life, since he talks about his wife several times. That said he's also Not So Above It All and is just as likely to engage in the wackiness going on as the other two.
- Shout-Out:
- The first episode's opening as well as the anime's opening theme show a place that looks suspiciously like Pride Rock.
- One episode where Toucan was trying to score a date involved several Jojo references.
- Lizard, in one episode, pulled out a Duel Monsters deck.
- After getting hit by a truck in one episode, Toucan shows up in a later scene lying in a crater in a very familiar pose.
- They Killed Kenny Again: Honey Badger dies in several episodes as a result of his fearlessness and need to prove his strength only to later recover.
