Miss Kobayashi was just an ordinary office worker. Not a lot of information is available about her past, but it’s fair to assume that she graduated college, moved away from her folks and found herself a decent paying programming job at least a few years ago, because while she’s become just adjusted enough to the daily grind of the 9-to-5 office life, she's still not adjusted enough that she doesn’t need some liquid encouragement to wash the stench of mundane labor out of her mouth at the end of the day. One night, after drinking a bit more than usual, she misses her stop to go home, and instead winds up wandering the Japanese wilderness... Which is where her bland, boring, repetitive everyday life is suddenly shaken by a dose of fantasy. She meets a wounded dragon, and like the proverbial mouse to a lion’s paw, she ignores the potential threat to her life and saves the dragon’s. Now, that dragon is forever in her debt, and she decides to pay it off by becoming Miss Kobayashi’s maid! And if that wasn’t wild enough, a number of other fantasy creatures follow her into the human world as well! Will the arrival of so many terrifying creatures spell doom for mankind, or are they just what the human race needs to spice up their meaningless lives?
Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid was produced by Kyoto Animation, which is probably one of the most famous and well known anime studios, right up there with Ghibli and Gainax. When it comes to small work, like In-Between stuff, production assistance and finish animation, they’ve had their fingers in an unbelievable number of pies, which is probably how they’ve been able to afford pouring lavish amounts of money into their OWN projects. For the majority of their primary work, IE the titles they’ve been listed under “Animation Production’ for, they’ve developed a reputation for taking relatively dialogue heavy slice of life anime and just animating the crap out of them in order to please the eyes of the audience. Thanks to their consistently high budgets, a good amount of these projects HAVE benefited from having a supernatural edge to their stories, such as The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya and Beyond the Boundary... And it has also helped them to create subtle visual effects that heighten the emotions of numerous titles that have since been popularly considered to be among the most classic tearjerkers.
That’s not to say they haven’t faced some criticism... They are the largest producer of the oft-lamented “Moe-blob” faces, which I guess you could kind of consider the anime equivalent of the western Cal-Arts style, and there have been no small amount of otaku who consider this character design aesthetic to be the bane of their existence. They also like to use the runny egg trick sometimes, in fact there was a brief period where almost everything they produced had to resort to that frame-breaking tactic to show fast motion while still saving money, een changing style on shows they had already animated in a smoother and more normal style, as was the case with the second seasons of K-on, Haruhi and Clannad. They would eventually get a lot better about this, and Dragon Maid is a prime example of this, as it deftly blends both of these styles into one, and it’s probably one of Kyoani’s best looking anime as a result.
The aesthetic of this series is very intentionally cartoony, but in a way that’s very deliberately being controlled and kept in line. The way it looks, slightly sketchy and sometimes reminiscent of water coloring, the occasional frame-breaking animation switch doesn’t feel nearly as jarring as it would in your average JC Staff anime, and even then, it’s only used sparingly in scenes of intense action, where it’s not as likely to be noticed. The animation, as a result, is crisp and smooth, the characters feeling fully articulated without feeling like an unreasonable amount of money was necessarily behind it. The character designs are a bit of a mixed bag... I love how Miss Kobayashi’s hair is considered an unnatural color in Japan, it’s still slightly muted, as if to convey her draining spirit at her dead end job. I also really love Tohru’s design, especially the color blend at the tips of her hair. There are a few OTHER dragon characters that, in my opinion, are just a bit too over designed to me, but none of them are in the show enough to really damage it. It’s a good looking show, probably one of Kyoani’s very best.
The same could honestly be said for the English dub. Originally produced by Funimation... Which means Crunchyroll owns it now, sadly... The entire cast is pretty much spot on. Leah Clark tends to get typecast as really airy, soft-voiced characters, which you would think would make her the more obvious choice to play a maid, but she gives the perfect deadpan, world-weary performance as Kobayashi, while still allowing for a wide emotional range in her character’s daily life. Jad Saxton has long since carved out a niche for herself as the nasally tsundere, always down to play rich haughty girls or the social adversary to a number of different protagonists, so she is completely unrecognizable as Kanna, portraying a character who’s both way older than she appears, but who also has a cadence and a subtle trend of mispronunciations that are just adorable enough to not creep into annoying territory. The star of the cast, however, is Sarah Wiedenheft, playing Tohru as eternally enthusiastic, with a slight rasp and an edge of both warm affection and devious mischief. ADR Director Jamie Marchi also gave herself the role of Lucoa, which also meant she gave herself one of the most consequential lines in dubbing history, which we’re going to have to talk about now. I’m gonna put the next section under a spoiler tag, so if you don’t want to read my latest political rant, just skip it.
The people who are still harassing Jamie Marchi and other members of Funimation’s dubbing staff to this day will tell you that it’s not a political matter to them, it’s all about defending accuracy in dubs. This is bullshit, and I can prove it. First off, there were issues with Jamie Marchi’s dubs before they got political. Where were all of y’all when I was complaining about all of the awkward slang she wouldn’t stop using? Back when every other dub she worked on contained the phrases “Totes” and “What the crap” at least once each? This shit drove me crazy, and nobody else cared. Second, she is not, and has never been, the worst name in dubbing. Remember Stephen Foster, the guy who rewrote his dubs in ways that barely resemble human speech and made characters way less likeable? The guy who apparently lied about the backstory of the Ghost Stories dub? He retired a few years back, but what about J Michael Tatum? Tatum is a wonderful actor and a sweet person, but he’s also a massively pretentious writer who likes to cram memes and internet references into his dubs, and he never hesitates to replace entire lines of dialogue with recognizable American idioms and expressions, even at the expense of the scene’s intentions.
If these people genuinely cared about ‘accuracy in dubs,’ they’d be lighting Foster and Tatum up like Christmas trees, but no, they’re only interested in targeting Jamie Marchi specifically, and... And for some reason Monica Rial? Why? I don’t want to sound like a simp here, but I’ve been watching dubbed anime since the mid-nineties, and I’ve never had a single complaint about any dub Rial worked on. If anything, I’d say she’s one of the better script writers/ADR directors, right up there alongside John Burgmeier and Colleen Clinkenbeard. No, it’s obvious why they’re targeting this show specifically, and there’s a reason they’re targeting Jamie and Monica specifically. They’re targeting Dragon Maid for the same reason a certain subsection of the internet won’t let Ghostbusters 2016 die, even though they stopped caring about the even worse Jem and the Holograms reboot years ago. They don’t care which product is worse, or which one insults the original source material more, they only care about the one that helps them to continue to wage their culture war. No matter how many badly written dubs there are out there, only one directly called out The Patriarchy, so only one supports their political rage-boners.
And speaking of rage-boners, the only reason they’re specifically targeting Jamie March instead of Stephen Foster or J Michael Tatum, and the only reason they feel the need to drag Monica Rial into it, is probably because they’re still pissed about the allegations both made against Vic Mignogna. In other words, they’re full of shit and they can go fuck themselves. Dragon Maid has an awesome English dub, and while that one exchange is pretty bad, it’s easy enough to ignore.
Okay, putting all of that behind us, Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid is a slice of life comedy, which means everybody’s going to come away from it differently. Comedy has always been extremely subjective, as not all people are going to find the same things funny, and this goes doubly so for slice of life comedy, as these kinds of shows are going to be engaging and relatable to some, and boring and unfunny to others. It usually depends on how well any given viewer takes to the cast of an individual series, and how well the pacing and atmosphere strikes them, either hitting their comfort zone or ultimately alienating them. With Dragon Maid, I guess I might as well let you know right now that while the pacing and atmosphere of this series are to my liking, I find the comedy to be a little more hit or miss. I love the two main characters, and to an extent, I like how they play off of each other, with their wildly different lives and perspectives complementing each other really well.
Kobayashi is a native to this world, but she’s also been closed off in her own little world as an introverted workaholic. Tohru is a foreigner who doesn’t quite know how this world works, but she’s also outgoing and sociable. So while Kobayashi helps Tohru get accustomed to her world, Tohru helps Kobayashi to come out of her shell and have more of a social life. Because of their relationship, Kobayashi learns to open up, and Tohru learns to get her more extreme dragon instincts under control, which means they’re both gradually improving each others lives and teaching each other how to live. As for what their relationship is, however, well, there are a lot of different ways to look at this series, but for the sake of this particular review, we’re going to be examining two of them. We’re going to examine the relationships in this series through metaphorical perspective, and then a literal perspective, in order to explore how both approaches will lead you to have drastically different experiences with the material.
From a metaphorical perspective, Dragon Maid is a thoroughly positive and reaffirming look at a theoretical society where people from different cultural backgrounds are able to live in peace and harmony, with respect for one another’s differences. This is a world where dragons, demons and other mythological creatures are able to assume mostly human form and live amongst modern day Japanese society... Which is refreshing on the grounds that Japan is still a massively racially homogenous country... And even when these beings reveal their true natures in front of people, walking around with horns and tails and pulling off superhuman stunts in public, everybody’s pretty chill about it. Nobody busts out the pitchforks and torches, nobody screams and runs in terror, nobody tries to force them to leave, they’re just accepted. Also on a purely metaphorical basis, Kobayashi and Tohru represent a normal, well adjusted, and socially accepted lesbian couple, living their daily lives in domestic bliss while taking care of their adopted daughter. Kobayashi has a male best friend who is REFRESHINGLY not in love with her, where in ANY other anime he’d be one of her many love interests, and the only pushback their relationship receives is from Tohru’s father, who Kobayashi stands up to.
This is all, mind you, purely metaphorical. According to the actual text of the series, Tohru and Miss Kobayashi are NOT a couple, they are just a bachelorette and her roommate/maid. Her Roommaid, if you will. Now, to be clear, stories about metaphorical queer couples who are never canonically acknowledged aren’t necessarily a bad thing. Yuri On Ice and Revolutionary Girl Utena were able to achieve a lot under those same circumstances. The catch is that, even if you don’t acknowledge the metaphor, and only see what’s on the surface, that relationship still has to be a likeable one. If Yuri and Victor aren’t a couple, then they’re still a pair of close friends with a strong, supportive bond to each other. If Utena and Anthy aren’t a couple, you still have Utena defending her friend from abuse and objectification. When it comes to Kobayashi and Tohru, however, once you step back from the metaphor and stop looking at everything through lily colored glasses, things honestly start to look a little fucked up. Sure, the setting itself is still positive and reaffirming with it’’s level of acceptance, but beyond that, this show has some huge problems.
Early in the series, Miss Kobayashi states that she isn’t interested in women. Now, due to her actions later on, I do believe in the fan theory that she’s either in the closet or hasn’t come to terms with her sexuality yet, but even so, no still means no, and rejections should always be respected. And yet, Tohru still refuses to give up, dedicating her life to her, acting jealous and possessive over her, and taking every opportunity to try and bypass her lack of consent, playing the long-outdated ‘predatory queer’ cliche. Sure, she never outright attempts to force herself on Kobayashi, but she keeps trying to trick her into eating her tail, and in the OVA episode, she tries to slip her a love potion, which is attempted rape. For her part, Miss Kobayashi shamelessly takes advantage of Tohru, stringing her along and exploiting her despite never intending to return her feelings. So they aren’t so much a couple as they are parasites mutually feeding off of each other. Hell, Tohru’s feelings aren’t even genuine. She isn’t in love with Kobayashi due to her personality or her looks, there’s no actual attraction involved, she’s just honoring a life debt.
Then you have Kanna and Rika, which... I want to be clear about this, people don’t just choose to be gay as adults, most LGBT people are born that way, so I do think it's important to acknowledge queer identities in child characters in media, but if you’re trying to portray a queer little girl character appropriately, it’s probably not a good idea to base her personality on the wolf from Red Hot Riding Hood. I don’t know, maybe I’m exaggerating there, but when she’s constantly reacting to her crush with a facial expression that’s one exposed tongue away from being an ahegao, that’s definitely a red flag. What’s even worse, however, is the relationship between Lucua and Shota, which doesn’t look good from ANY perspective. Shota is an apprentice mage who accidentally summoned Lucoa when trying to summon a demon, and now she lives with him. He’s also literally a very small child.
How do Shota’s parents feel about a grown woman sleeping in their son’s bed with him, bathing with him naked against his will, constantly smothering him with her giant breasts while he struggles to get away, and dragging him off to other strangers’ homes with her? I don’t know, i don’t think it’s ever made clear whether he even has parents, but even if they fully approved of everything, Lucoa’s behavior towards him would still be fucking reprehensible. I don’t know how things work in Japan, but in America, if you enter someone’s private space while they’re naked or in a state of undress and refuse to leave when they tell you to, that’s legally considered sexual assault, and that’s when both parties are adults. For a grown woman to do this to a little boy, even when they’re just fictional characters, is disgusting. In a cast full of dragons and mythological creatures, Lucoa is the only true monster, because she is a child molester. I could see somebody ignoring this so it wouldn’t hurt their enjoyment of the series, but I can’t begin to describe how morally bankrupt you’d have to be to find this material funny. You may think I’m over-reacting, but if the genders were reversed, I would not be the only person pointing this out.
Now, because this series features a story arc where an adult acting inappropriately with a small child is treated like a joke and is never adequately examined and addressed, does that mean the whole show is irredeemable? No, but it is the worst of a series of very huge problems that taint and threaten to drag down all of the more positive qualities that the series does have. I generally do have a soft spot for fish-out-of-water stories, specifically in the context of reverse-isekai characters, people and mythological creatures coming to our world and having to adapt to our cultures and technology, and this show does explore that concept with an inspired level of creativity, even if it does resort to the same two or three jokes way too often. I love how warm and cozy this series can be when you turn off your brain and watch it purely through the metaphorical perspective that I mentioned earlier, and while the comedy is hit-or-miss, it’s pretty damn funny when it hits. Unfortunately, those negative qualities present a heavy burden that it never fully recovers from.
Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid and its sequel series were available from Funimation, but now that they’ve been bought out by Crunchyroll, I don’t know just what its availability is going to be in the future. The original manga, along with its various spin-offs and full color variant, is available from Seven Seas entertainment. The video game is not.
I have made a severe and continuous lapse in judgement by expressing unpopular opinions in my reviews, despite the number of people who have very kindly tried to correct me by informing me of how wrong I am, and today is no different. Despite how popular and beloved Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid is, the nicest thing I can personally say about it is that it’s kind of a mixed bag. It has its positive qualities, to be sure, and your experience with it can change exponentially depending on how you choose to look at it, but the problems that it has are just so glaring and obvious that I personally can’t ignore them. Still, despite my mixed feelings, I guess I enjoy just barely enough of it to give it a pass.
I give Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid a 6/10.
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