Well, the titles says it all. I'm looking for a manga, novel, anime, TV series or movie with a real, true, honest-to-goodness workaholic. Someone who lives for their job and is devoted to it, body and soul. Their life is their work, and their work is their life.

Specifications -

- The character in question must be the protagonist! Please, no side characters or secondary protagonists!

- He/she must have a job that is not 'dirty'. In other words, no prostitutes, strippers, nude models, porn actors, smut novelists etc. (I know this sounds weird, but you never know what people might rec, so I figured it's always best to be on the safe side ^_^)

- Apart from the aforementioned exceptions, though, the job can be anything. It doesn't necessarily have to be a high-profile career (like doctor, lawyer, engineer, scientist) or an office job. S/he can be a teacher/coach/tutor, painter/sculptor (of decent paintings/sculptures), actor, singer, song-writer, novelist, maid/butler/housekeeper, chef/cook, waiter/sommelier, sportsman, policeman/detective, museum curator, historian, farmer...heck, even an accomplished thief, professional assassin/hit-man/mercenary, spy or a con-man would do! No petty thieves or dumb criminals, though.

- Work must be his/her No.1 priority in life! It would be nice if the story deals primarily with the situations the MC encounters at work, but also to some degree with his/her relationships (or the lack thereof LOL) with friends, family, colleagues and people in general.

- Please do not suggest stories where the protagonist is "cured of his/her mania" by some love interest or the other. If I wanted such a thing, I'd just read the romance manga under the workaholic category and be done with it! I want a person who is, in every sense of the word, married to the job. (And fully intends to keep it that way)

Oh, and I almost forgot - examples!
Zero (MATSUMOTO Taiyou) - An excellent manga about a boxer who has no life beyond his boxing.

Hakka Haien no Shujin to Shitsuji - A professional thief whose job becomes his hobby.

Inhale and Exhale from Watashi no Kakurega e Douzo - The guy's wife divorces him because he thinks of nothing but painting. The only reason he quit smoking is because being hospitalized with lung cancer kept him away from his work longer than he could stand. Need I say more?

Dragon Zakura - Every major character here is pretty ambitious and hard-working, and the tutor is no exception.

Edit - I forgot to mention a couple of things (sorry!) but please no school-life manga with student protagonists. And I don't consider royalty / aristocracy as a profession. So I'm afraid even the most duty-bound king, queen etc. doesn't count. Military officials are okay, though.
Also, please don't rec harem or reverse-harem manga!

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Last edited by cyclamen at 2:12 pm, Mar 31 2011

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Sherlock Holmes as written by Arthur Conan Doyle, but I'm sure you've read it or seen its adaptations. Unfortunately, many adaptations add a romantic interest. :/ BBC's updated version, Sherlock, stays true to Doyle's characterization, though. There's even the line: "I consider myself married to my job."

And, uh, I seem to only recall detectives... like Agatha Christie's Poirot.

I believe P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves is unmarried, too.

As for manga examples, perhaps Lorenzo in Elixir fits the bill. His work as an alchemist takes him to places.

Azuma Kazuma from Yakitate!! Japan. He's all about making bread.

I haven't read it, but the protagonist of Hataraki Man sounds hardcore.

I second Yakitate!! Japan and Sherlock Holmes.

The two protagonists in Bakuman definitely count, along with a lot of other characters in the series.

Saiunkoku Monogatari also comes to mind.

Kiniro no Corda

Sorry. Not the protagonist as much (though still quite a bit) but the MAIN love interest and one of the main characters is very much a workaholic (wow, that was confusing. What I was saying is that the workaholic isn't the main character, but the main love interest. However, the main character is also very devoted to her work, only not as much.)

Anyway, I guess it's not a job since I don't think they're getting paid, but they're competitive musicians and for the main love interest (As well as other characters), playing his instrument is EVERYTHING.

Also, I think the TV show House works. He's only a workaholic when he's in the middle of a case, and he hates the paperwork part of his job, but his work pretty much is his life. So . . .

With my added condition, Saiunkoku Monogatari, Bakuman and Kiniro no Corda are not acceptable. Thank you very much for replying, though. Forgetting to mention that specification was my fault.

I've only watched a couple of annoying Sherlock Holmes TV series (and hated them), but reading kureha's explanation made me understand why. I'm gonna go download the whole novel series right now.

I've only read a few Agatha Christie books (and most of them were Miss. Marple ones), so I forgot about Poirot completely. Many thanks for the reminder!

Oh, wow! House sounds perfect
As for Yakitate...bread, huh? How original! Hataraki Man also looks like a good fit. Elixir probably doesn't fit exactly, but it seems pretty interesting.

Thank you everyone, and please keep going

Last edited by cyclamen at 2:19 pm, Mar 31 2011

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I absolutely love House (or at least... the first 3 seasons of the tv show)...

All of these have manga equivalents, but I encountered these via anime --
Let's see... maaaaaybe House of Five Leaves (just look up a trailer for the anime... the mysterious Yaichi-dono says, "I kidnap people for a living. I'm a robber." ><)

Mushi-shi -- ahhh... the life and travels of a mushi master...

Ghost Hunt -- fun!! One particular arc/plot was incredibly creepy... *shudders... focuses around a detective group that solves supernatural mysteries (Naru, in particular, is a workaholic...)

This may be a stretch, but Hikaru no Go? Trying to turn into a professional GO player... yeah there is some school-life, but it's not dominant... focuses more on Hikaru's rise to becoming a unique GO player...

Bartender -- extremely episodic... this may be a stretch since you don't really see character growth for our genius bartender... more like... he's a genius who somehow knows that drink his customer needs at the moment...

xxxHOLiC -- a witch and her "servant" dedicated to making wishes come true?? This was a series that I personally thought got better as the story progressed...

I think Bakuman still counts. The manga starts off when they're in school, but once they decide to make manga (in chapter one), they practically stop caring about school at all so they can focus on being workaholics.

School doesn't play a huge part at all - at the most, it introduces the characters relations in the beginning. Normally, they're either skipping school, working on manga during school, or complaining about how they want to get back to their desks to work on manga during school. XD There's no real plot reason they're in school other than the fact that their age demands them to be there. They work on manga the whole time, whether at school or at their workplace.

Also, the school setting disappears once they graduate high school anyway. That was an unexpectedly long explanation...More possible recommendations for you:

Izaya in Durarara!! (anime) - there's not really any one particular protagonist in Durarara, but if I had to pick one, it would be Izaya. He's an informant, and he seems to know everything that happens in the city. His job is pretty general though, so it might not give the "hard working" sort of feeling you may be looking for, but I do think pretty much everything he does is planned so that it works towards his goal.

The Moonlight Sculptor (Novel) - doesn't particularly love what he does, if you mind that, but he definitely works hard at it, completely and thoroughly with a single-minded determination.

Detective Conan

No Side - he dies and can't even pass on because he wants to keep working to bring his team to victory. XD

Hotel

Kyoushashou

Going out on a limb with Full Moon wo Sagashite, Shitsurakuen, and Love So Life. They're more like a goals than obsession...not sure if it's enough to interest you, but might as well mention them. And in Shitsurakuen, they're technically students, but it's more like a society than a school.

Not 100% certain, but try Beck. They are very passionate bout their band and never stop moving forward even at gunpoint. Some romance, but it never takes center stage.

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"Religion is like a gun, It's only as good as the people holding it and it can easily take a life."

-Personal thought

Nodame Cantabile maybe? Well... Chiaki is certainly a workaholic but you can argue that Nodame is like that as well because everything revolves around music

Glass Mask she doesn't know anything beside acting.... argh.... wish she knows something about love sometimes so Mr. Purple flower won't have to wait for her forever! It's about acting tho so I don't know if you prolly wanna give it a try since this is such an awesome manga. No shoujo cliche where she oh... falls for the handsome co-actor and then jealous because he seems to pay attention to her rival

Ashita no Ousama screenwriter

Swan but CMX is dead so the manga pretty much incomplete in English. In my country, it's already published till end

Pink Lady drawing... ah... don't be fooled by the appearance. It's actually deeper than I thought. It's about drawing and how one balance love and dream.... such a good manhwa in my opinion especially when it gets to the third season when it starts to talk about the struggle to be an artist

Ingenuo maybe. It starts during her high school year but it continues beyond that period of time and it's legit enough to say that she's super passionate about photography

Lady Victorian aiming to be a good governess

And apparently many of ONO Hiromu's work revolves around workaholic. My personal favorite is Diva. It's about an opera singer who is so ambitious that her relationships with her mom well... kinda) and bf become dysfunctional. She'll do almost anything for her dream which is kinda sad but... well... I feel her.

Pony Tail, Lady love by ONO Hiromu are good manga that may suit your reqs but I don't know if they're already being scanlated or licensed in English so you may want to put them on your wish list. The struggles in both manga are so realistic in my opinion. For example, in Pony Tail, one person struggles with his weight because to be a jockey, you have to have a certain maximum weight, which I think is so interesting and can surely be missed easily if the mangaka is not serious enough in her research about jockey-ing

Kanon maybe. It's about music. She's pretty driven

Yakitate!! Japan this is about a guy dreaming about making a Japan bread. Truly a workaholic and this only talks about baking and breads most of the time. ups... it's already been mentioned so I'm seconding this

Mixed Vegetables is pretty good too. It's about cooking

Last edited by cliff at 12:17 am, Apr 1 2011

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Help! I'm looking for... manga with dangerous guys http://www.mangaupdates.com/showtopic.php?tid=39874&pa ge=1#post594033

Hataraki Man deals with a hardcore career-woman who ends up with no time for her private life. Ashita no Ousama has a dedicated (obsessively so) female lead who pursues her career in the theatre without side-tracking into anything else... and yet remains one of the sweetest people, ever. And Himitsu, of course, in which the lead detective (Maki) has literally NOTHING in his life except the cases he solves.

I can't believe no-one mentioned Bambino!

Hataraki Man, Bartender, Bambino!, Kanon, Ashita no Ousama, Himitsu, Glass Mask, The Moonlight Sculptor (Novel) and Swan look exactly right. Thank you all!

I'll give Bakuman, Beck, Lady Victorian and No Side a go, though they don't look as promising as the others. But thanks a lot!

Hikaru no Go, Nodame Cantabile, Mixed Vegetables, Love So Life, Pink Lady, Shitsurakuen and Ingenuo don't really catch my eye. And I must emphasize that the protagonist has to be a member of the working force. I don't want a hobby or a course of study, I want him/her to be obsessed with an actual job/career. A job that s/he has already gotten - not one s/he is studying for!

Detective Conan, Ghost Hunt don't fit at all, since both of them have other, personal reasons for which they're doing their job. (Conan to get back his adult body and Naru to find his brother)

I don't get how Hotel fits?
The train conductor and train enthusiast in Kyoushashou were very fun characters. I wish it had been a volume instead of a one-shot!

Izaya from Durarara!! would have been good, but he doesn't get enough screen/page time to satisfy me.
House of Five Leaves seems like an interesting, atypical rec. I'll check out the anime, since the manga is unscanned.
Mushishi is the BEST manga I've EVER read, and I guess you could call Ginko a workaholic of sorts...but it's not like he has any choice but to be a one, considering his weird physiology that attracts Mushi. So this doesn't fit all that well, either.

A big thank you to everyone who was kind enough to reply! And more is always welcome!

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The protagonist of Hotel works to keep himself standing up until he can't move any longer, but I guess that's more along the lines of hardworking rather than workaholic...

For Detective Conan, he's the type to solve mysteries and be a detective regardless of what situation he's in...but I guess the focus is more on solving the cases than on Conan's workaholic-ness, so you may not like it anyway.

I'd like to add Kaleidostar (anime), which I just squeezed out of my memories. ^^;

Bump

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Lone wolf and cub.

The guy gets the job done!