The Search for “1” – Phase 2: Hanaukyo Maid Team

What I originally got from this was that this show had a lot of similarities to Nogizaka Haruka, in that it had a maid with glasses, a small maid with blonde hair that couldn’t speak, a shitload of maids, maids, and some maids (there really weren’t that many maids in Nogizaka, but whatever). There was also a huge mansion. Honestly, all maid shows are kind of the same. I mean, how original can you make a maid show? They’re all going to have a bunch of maids with different personalities, and there’s going to be one dude in the middle. This anime is pretty much exactly that.

I wonder how this show was ever suggested to me as a possible “1”. In all honesty, I actually liked this show. And I know what you might be thinking…

Okay, most people probably were not thinking that, but I wanted to use that picture, and just didn’t know where to put it in the post (this show had good humor).

• It had nice, short episodes, so I could breeze through episodes like nothing. (14 minutes, like One Piece or DMC)
• It had a good cast of characters.
• It didn’t try to do too much with the plot. It kept it simple, and that was probably what was best for the show.
• It had a good sense of humor. Or I should say, the humor was good enough for me to enjoy the show overall.

Let me embellish on…

Characters

Touru

Well, he’s our main character, and has inherited a house full of maids. And he can order them to do literally anything he wants them to do (EVEN SEX OMIGOSH!). However, he is literally allergic to girls, and when they touch him, he pretty much becomes Robert, and dies (in case you don’t know Robert, his doctor thought that he had an actual serious disease, until he realized it was just allergies). Anyway, this character trait is somewhat unique (I haven’t really seen it before) and you know I love unique character traits. The only girl who doesn’t make Touru fell like shit when he touches them is Mariel, who actually does the opposite, and makes him feel better. Mariel as a whole is a typical nice person, the one drawback is that she’s a lot like Belldandy from Ah! My Goddess, albeit a lot less annoying then Belldandy (who should die), and a plus is that she’s voiced by Rie Tanaka, who is awesome.

Touru and I have a lot in common as well:

Anyway, he’s a pretty cool dude…he’s laid back, normal, and, unlike most anime characters, he actually looks Japanese (slits for eyes…no racist [no racist is the same as “no homo”]) The rest of the characters follow suit:

• One who can’t speak and uses “huff and puff” sounds to get her point across….oh wait…..she’s actually got a SPLIT PERSONALITY!!!!!
• One with a SAMURAI SWORD.
• One who laughs into the back of her hand.

There’s great characters all over the place, even the slutty triplets are almost decent (actually, they’re horrible and I hate them. How fucking annoying can you get?). I mean, how could you hate a show with a skitso and a katana wielding maid?

Now for an in depth analysis of the…

Comedy

It’s solid. What about….

Fanservice

Now, there is a bit of fanservice, and  fair amount of bare breasts, but unlike the fanservice in Eiken, the small amount of fanservice in Hanaukyo Maid Team is much more tasteful. For example, most fanservice shows will display their fanservice by freezing a frame on some girl who is flashing her panties, or some other stupid shit like that. Those kinds of things are always dumb, and don’t make me laugh, so they suck. Other types may include a girl spilling “milk” on her face, or something stupid shit like that. For the record, Japan’s milk must be a lot thicker than the milk that I drink. I mean, in Queen’s Blade, milk sticks to a girl’s face in globs. If you ask me, that milk’s gone bad. Another good example of this is Eiken, which is a pretty bad show (definitely deserving of a 2), and in one of the OVA’s they had to slide down a water slide, except instead of water, it was yogurt. Really? At least they made it into kind of a joke, and it was mildly funny, albeit incredibly stupid.

The service in HMT is different. They don’t exactly flaunt naked chicks around or anything like that….in other words, it’s not as blatant. Even the scenes where it is blatant, it’s still not that blatant. In fact, the only real source of fanservice are the three triplet maids, who I hate and are dumb. there are also breif glimpes of fanservice, such as this:

I find the retarded size and angles of these nips to be funny....mainly the right one.

Notice how I circled the nips in the above picture. Would you call this fanservice, or just bad animation? probably a little of both…I mean, look at that right nip (her left)…..it’s pointing up to the sky! That’s just silly.

Well, that about covers it. Overall I actually found this anime to be kind of refreshing (maybe because I just watched Eiken, which, in my eyes,  is getting stupider by the day), so I give this, an anime that egress63 suggested could be a one, a

FINAL GRADE = 4

Bill is busy training in the mountains.

NOTE: There’s a second season….I’m going to watch that too.