To enjoy Maid War, one must understand it's roots. People describe it as a weirdly violent and odd show with maids, whereas it's one of the best Yakuza anime ever made. It's a genre parody which ultimately is more true to the subject matter and better than most yakuza anime which take themselves seriously.
More precisely it's a remake of and homage to 1970s Yakuza Eiga landmark Battles Without Honor and Humanity (1974-2003), one of the defining Asian movie series of all time. It's the first Yakuza show, if not mafia show in general, to not glorify and romanticize organized crime like The Godfather or any of Martin Scorsese's movies in existence does. It shows the poverty, nihilism, arbitrary abuse by their bosses and random deaths of low ranking yakuza "soldiers". Just that this show now replaces this gritty setting with moe maids, for maximum cognitive dissonance. And as somebody who watched both the 1970s live action and this show, let me say: brilliantly so.
BwHaH founds the Jitsuroku Eiga style, with shaky cam, extreme Dutch angles, hyper-realism, amateur actors and ultra-violence. All of those can be found in some of the best Western crime shows of the 1970s as well. E.g. That genre inspired Tarantino's Kill Bill and is the Asian version of American exploitation movies or Italian Giallo thrillers from the same era. I've tried to add a "recommended" anime, just to find that I can't really think of a similar show. It's innovative, one of a kind. Maybe Black Lagoon comes closest.
You'll find they copy full scenes and dialog fragments, story elements and much more in Maid Wars. Looking at the reviews and "related" sections, hardly anybody on MAL seems to get what this really is. They call it "90s feeling" when it really is 20 years older. This certainly is acquired taste, mentally I can only see yakuza thugs and not maids. To better understand the genius of the show's cognitive dissonance, I recommend to watch at least the trailer of it's role model at https://youtu.be/EXNaUDTLUak and https://youtu.be/f4-PgHmvPAM
It's a deeply Japanese show which can't be appreciated without some extended media knowledge. The ED is a powerful Enka song, both OP and ED also make my best of year short list. The Japanese otakudom know their stuff, and correctly rate this minor masterpiece into the top 5 of otaku community 5ch's best of 2022 list. To me it's certainly in the best of the year.
