You are Ms. Servant

Episode 12

Well, here we are: the end of the series. I have mixed thoughts on the ending itself. On one hand, I like that Hitoyoshi and Yuki didn't become a couple—that Hitoyoshi's confession was taken completely the wrong way by Yuki, who seemed to assume that Hitoyoshi meant that he loved her like family. Almost as if, you know, that's what clearly makes the most sense for those characters! But on the other, I don't like how, at the end, it seems to be hinting that maybe Yuki could have romantic feelings for Hitoyoshi that she just isn't totally conscious of, or doesn't have the words for. Don't even get me started on that shot of them as adults with kids together. Is it really so hard to just let them love each other like found family? It would make so much more sense, both thematically, and—again—for their characters, who I maintain have no romantic chemistry with one another.

Overall thoughts on the series as a whole, now that it's over? Forget being a maid anime, this is a mid anime. Its greatest strength is, without question, its animation quality, which has consistently been among the best (read: not THE best, but it's certainly up there) we've seen all season. From dynamic and dramatic movements (usually by Yuki) to even comparatively mundane things like the way people walk and go about their everyday movements, there hasn't been so much as a single hastily-drawn-looking episode in the bunch. From start to finish, this whole show has been incredibly visually impressive.

Meanwhile, its greatest weakness is, equally without question, its perpetual identity crisis. I've talked about this week after week because it's so painfully apparent, but it simply couldn't seem to make up its mind about what kind of a series it wanted to be. Ostensibly, it's a comedy about an assassin who wants a shot at a normal life by way of becoming a maid—and yet, neither Yuki's being a maid nor her former life as an assassin come into play all that much. More often than not, she could just as easily just be, for example, an athletic transfer student who grew up in the mountains and wants to learn more about city life, so she's living with Hitoyoshi. Combine this with a constant stream of new gimmicks and side characters that never last for too long, and you have an anime that feels like it's—well, to quote myself a few weeks ago, “just throwing everything at the wall, but not waiting around to see if anything sticks.”

This might be easier to look past if the anime itself were funnier—after all, it is supposed to be a comedy, right?—but most of the time it's not even that funny. I mean, it's able to score some light chuckles every here and there, sure, but most of the time its attempts at comedy are pretty tepid. I think not all, but a lot of that, stems from, well, the aforementioned identity crisis. One of its side effects means that this anime is afraid to fully commit to being a comedy—and yet at the same time, it also seems weirdly hesitant about completely abandoning that part of itself, too. So you end up with a lot of half-baked attempts at comedy, and some really off-putting tonal dissonance. In particular, I'm reminded of the episode where we learn about Yuki's traumatic childhood… by way of a cartoonish-looking talking sauce bottle that she's having a nightmare about. I think it might've been easier for this series to find what was so funny about itself if only it had a better sense of its own identity, but then we get back to the issue of this anime's inability to decide on what it wants to be. It truly is the root from which most of this anime's other problems descend.

Other miscellaneous thoughts:

When it comes to sub vs dub, while both are good, I prefer the subbed version overall—Lynn as Grace, in particular, is just too good.

Credit where it's due to Hitoyoshi—at the start of the series I thought he was going to be a nothing protagonist, but by the end, he at least had at least some substance to him, which is more than I expected.

I know it's been a few weeks, but I simply haven't been able to stop thinking about how this anime—this alleged maid anime—fumbled so hard by not taking advantage of the remarkably low-hanging fruit during its school festival episode that was the maid cafe. If anything should've made it obvious that somewhere along the line this anime lost its way, it's that. It's truly mind boggling.

If this show never continues, I won't particularly miss it. While it could've been far worse, it also could've been way better. Still, I also think there's an audience out there who wouldn't mind a return to the wish fulfillment-y, and maybe even a touch absurdist, maid comedies of the 2000s—just, you know, done better than this. The execution was obviously flawed, but the concept for this show had some potential to it—it just quite literally got lost in the sauce.

Rating:

You are Ms. Servant is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.