Maids. The epitome of cuteness, the pinnacle of omurice, the zenith of “Moe Moe Kyun”. That’s what we know them as nowadays, but what if in the past, they were these dark, heartless beings that felt like the yakuza? Shocking, I know. It’s an interesting concept, and something that worked so well to start, with in my opinion, one of the best first episodes of the entire year. It’s a perfect show to turn your brain off, and just enjoy the mindless action that Akiba Maid War brings, and entertainment value it does bring, but I felt it could have done more with its concept.

STORY:

The story revolves around Nagomi Wahira, an admirer of the maids at maid cafes. Wanting to join in on the fun, she decided to travel to Akihabara, to work at Ton Tokoton, a pig-themed cafe. Things are all going swimmingly, until she has to run an errand, which gave her a dose of reality that maids in this world wield guns and knives, ready to kill fellow maids. The first episode was so over the top, with themes from Quentin Tarantino movies such as Kill Bill being seen, along with a happy go lucky song to accompany the killing. It felt so dumb, yet so entertaining, but I was left wondering, how could the story progress from here? Maybe there would be turf wars or something?

I was a little disappointed to see that it ended up being a bit of a “heist-of-the-week” type show, with no real direction, minus a few episodes that felt a bit more plot heavy. The nonsensical narrative worked at first, but it didn’t work forever. I would have appreciated a more structured approach, while keeping some of the nonsense intact. It would have made the characters better, and whenever a character did something memorable, it would feel more earned.

Overall, just a lack of direction, and it was hard to get a handle on what the show was trying to achieve.

ART:

Pretty good, as expected of P.A. Works, but I believe it could have been better. Some of the action sequences could have been more fluid rather than using stills or limited movement.

MUSIC:

The OP and ED are both awesome in my opinion, pretty fitting of the show. The soundtrack isn’t the most noticeable apart from the song from Episode 1, which was a big highlight of the show.

CHARACTERS:

An aspect that holds the show back is definitely the characters. With the lack of plot direction, the character development was very unbalanced among the cast, with only two characters getting any time to shine. Nagomi was a reason why this show is just good, but not great. She’s your typical protagonist, holding her sense of morality, trying to keep peace in the world, and prevent violence. Many terrible things happen to her and the cafe, but she never snapped, never gave us something really intriguing to talk about. It felt like the show was playing it safe in their insanity, as even some hatred from Nagomi’s side toward other maids would have been more interesting. Instead, time and time again, she gets bailed out by others, and never achieved anything too worthy of note.

The other character that stood out, and a fan favourite, was Ranko. She’s a very stoic character, and with her lack of emotion, her maid mannerisms when serving customers was quite funny, but that’s not what I’m here to focus on. She doesn’t hesitate a lot when killing others, and protects the cafe very well, but in doing so, I think she stole the spotlight a bit too much, and prevented development for the other maids in Ton Tokoton. A bit more of a balance of development in the characters would have worked better in my opinion.

The other maids aren’t too notable, but they have their respective moments, and Tenchou, man is she just useless.

ENJOYMENT:

Like I said, the first episode was of my favourite episodes of this entire season, and perhaps even the year, but the other episodes felt like they could be more insane, and I never felt like we reached the peak that was the first episode’s antics.

THEMATIC EXECUTION:

The atmosphere of the maid world in general was nice, but the themes were a bit out of place at times. The comedy was sub-par throughout, but at least the violence was graphic and enjoyable to see. Some plot twists could have been executed with more care for sure.

OVERALL:

As some popcorn entertainment that you can turn your brain off watching, it’s decent enough, but if you were looking for a coherent story about maids, it might not be the best show to watch. To me, it was good, but it had the potential to be great, and it just didn’t hit that mark.