You are Ms. Servant

Episode 11

I really didn't want it to happen, but I can't say I'm too surprised that it is: it looks like Ms. Servant is using its last few episodes to suddenly become a romance series, which—in case you haven't already picked up on it—I'm not too thrilled about. At this point, if you've been reading these reviews, you know that I just don't buy that there's legitimate chemistry between Hitoyoshi and Yuki. And even now, I still stand right by that. During that scene where Hitoyoshi's middle school “crush” absolutely roasted him saying, “No you don't love me, you're just lonely” and Hitoyoshi wondered if that was the case again, I just wanted to scream, “YES. YOU ARE CORRECT.”

Speaking of which, wow. How often in anime confession scenes—ones amongst middle schoolers, no less—have the confess-ee saying, “You don't love me, you only think you do because you're lonely?” I almost had to laugh when this happened—on what planet does literally any middle schooler have the maturity and foresight to say something like that? It's so vicious, and it's kind of hilarious. Rest in peace, Hitoyoshi—there's no coming back from that.

In any case, to his credit, Hitoyoshi is being a bit more introspective about his alleged crush on Yuki than I expected him to be. Which is to say, he's any level of introspective at all. I think in plenty of other anime the protagonist in his position would just roll with it, but Hitoyoshi is actually giving some level of thought into whether or not he actually loves Yuki, or if he's just lonely. And, to be clear, I think he is. I don't necessarily think that's how it's going to play out in the anime, but I would way more readily believe that he was just lonely and thinks Yuki—who he's spent more than a little time with by now—is hot, than the idea that he actually has a crush on Yuki. Not that I think any of this is going to stop this anime from superfluously pairing them together anyways, alas.

On the topic of Yuki, I see that fixing the pipes isn't considered to be a part of her maid-ly duties, because she appears to have sprung quite the leak in her eyes. Again, and again, and again. It's hard not to feel bad for Yuki in the first place, let alone after you watch the episode and see this show waste another perfectly good setup. What could've been a really heartwarming episode is instead spent mostly watching Hitoyoshi ruminate on his feelings for Yuki, while Yuki's whole thing feels more like it's just something going on as background noise. Meanwhile, Hitoyoshi doesn't want to make Yuki feel worse, but he also doesn't really know what to do, so he… doesn't really do anything. To his credit, he realizes this is a flaw about himself—earlier in the episode he acknowledged that he tends to run away when the going gets tough—but that doesn't make it any less frustrating to watch. Here he is, unable to figure out whether or not he actually likes Yuki. Meanwhile, he has a golden opportunity to help her get through a tough time, and he just… tries to pretend like nothing's going on. Just, trying to be really casual about it. I can't decide whether it's more impressive or embarrassing that this anime could fumble so hard this week.

If there can be said to be a silver lining for all this, it's that the series isn't resuming its old habit of having a gimmick-of-the-week and completely forgetting about it the next week—last week was this series trying to be a romance series, and for better or for worse, that's once again where we're at. Still, as always, I can't help but miss the halcyon days where this was just a comedy exuding Y2K-ness about an assassin-turned-maid-turned-student. That really feels like it got lost in the sauce—literally and figuratively—over the course of the series.

Still, next week is the last episode. Can't honestly say I'm too disappointed to see this series end—it's run its course, and the prospect of watching the turnover rate for new side characters du jour continue to rise doesn't particularly excite me. I'll talk more about closing and overall thoughts on the series next week. For now, though, I'll just say that I think next week's episode is almost certainly going to be another romance-centric episode, which will continue its uphill battle of trying to make Hitoyoshi and Yuki feel convincingly like an actual couple. It likely won't be successful in this unnecessary, and almost Herculean, task that it really brought upon itself, but that's neither here nor there.

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You are Ms. Servant is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.