Following the heaviness of Kino's Journey, we're now into something a little lighter, namely a show set in a maid cafe. Japan has a lot of them apparently. I've never really understood how it's such a common theme, but there it is. At least this has a bit of a twist on them.
All of the waitresses act in a style pulled from anime. Maika, the closest we get to an audience surrogate, is made to act in a "sadistic" mode, mostly because of what would perhaps best be described as "resting bitch face". She is terribly embarrassed about this, but makes a brave effort at the urging of her manager, who almost immediately falls in love with her. Unfortunately, he doesn't quite know how to act around her.
Other characters include an older sister type, an idol, a little sister type (which apparently is really all you need, see tomorrow) and a tsundere. Occasionally they try different styles, or have theme evenings. These generally go about as well as you'd expect in a comedy anime.
The comedy mainly derives from the absolutely ludicrous ends they go to keep the cafe in business, and the fact that customers are always weirdly happy with terrible service because they think it's a deliberate choice. (The customers do have a rather interesting presentation though. To a man they're drawn in a basic style, and are more or less all the same. It's a choice designed to make it obvious that the fawning fans aren't important. Quite a good approach.)
I suppose theoretically you could try and recommend this to someone with a fetish for maids or sadists, who happened to be looking for something to watch.
But really, they'd probably be a bit disappointed. It's a chuckler, but doesn't quite as far into filth as it needs to for me to find it hilarious. One I'll finish, but none of the major plot strings have me desperately wating for more.
Recommended.
Tagged: Anime Comedy Workplace/Employment Maids and butlers Slice of life Crunchyroll Subbed