As I said just now, the premise of this show was fine: we have a girl who has a distinctive “creepy smile” which caused her to not be able to find a job. Luckily for her she finds a café which specializes in having maids with different persona’s and they are looking for a “sadistic” one. Rounding up the cast of persona’s will be (as seen in the opening): a tsundere, a little sister, a big sister and an idol. More than enough variety to keep things interesting right? At least that was what I was thinking after episode 1.
The biggest problem for me was that instead of moving forward the show just kept repeating itself, over, and over again. I know this is supposed to be an episodic anime but that’s not the point I’m trying to make here. Characters and situations don’t evolve over time but stay the same as they were from the start. Take the protagonist Maika for example. In the first episode it is shown that she has a “creepy smile”, she likes foreign things, she is very self-conscious, she apologizes a lot and she cannot read the situation most of the time concerning Dino (the manager who has a crush on her). That may seem like a big list, but the thing is all of this is shown in episode 1, and in the entirety of episodes 2 through 12 nothing is added, removed or changed from that list. Someone who watches the first episode basically knows as much about Maika (both her personality and her background) as someone who finished the entire show.
But unfortunately Maika isn’t the only one with this problem.
Not only is this the case for almost all of the other characters as well, the humor itself also suffers from it. The joke that Maika says something that causes Dino to get a nosebleed and then showing Maika not knowing why this happened has been made about 4 times each episode, and I do not think that is exaggerated at all. The first two times it was hilarious, the six times after that it was still funny, but then there were 10 episodes more to go. Again, the humor itself isn’t the problem. In fact, I was enjoying myself quite a lot in the beginning, but they are just so repetitive. That’s why I found myself laughing just a couple of times in the last six episodes: When they occasionally made a new joke.
Lastly I would like to point out another frustration I had while watching this anime, which is the “delay of Hideri”. Hideri is the final character that was supposed to be added to the group and *SMALL SPOILER ALERT* is besides an idol persona also a trap, a fact that made me curious as to how this character was handled. *SPOILER END* As the rest of the show didn’t really impress me after episode 4 I was kind of waiting for Hideri to save it. Unfortunately, Hideri first showed up in episode 8. Out of 12. Yeah. If I had known that I probably would have either skipped episode 5 through 7 or dropped it entirely.
In short, this is a fun anime and great overall, if it was three episodes long. For the length that is has right now it’s too short on original jokes, by far. But hey, there’s always the next show about characters running a café or something like that. Personally I’m still planning to watch ‘Working!!’ and ‘Servant x Service’ so I still have my hopes up for this genre.
You should watch this if:
- You are a complete sucker for one or more of the mentioned persona’s
- You really love maid café’s
- You like a good laugh (only the first few episodes really)
You shouldn't watch this if:
- You expect to see one or more of the mentioned persona’s being fleshed out
- You dislike Dino and Maika’s relationship in episode 1 (because you’ll get a LOT more of that)
- You are easily annoyed by jokes getting repeated over and over
Initial score: 7.5/10
Final score: 6/10
[This is only my second review, so please feel free to tell me if I did something wrong or did something right!]
