Hanaukyo Maids (Hanaukyo Maid-tai)

(12 episodes)

What’s it about ?

A boy receives a sudden inheritance from his grandfather : a ridiculously huged mansion, staffed by hundreds of maids. (Also, tons of money.)

Characters

Taro, our protagonist. Completely baffled by the whole thing. In the grand tradition of stupid harem comedies, he’s got an allergy to girls, which makes it all very awkward.

We don’t actually see his grandfather, but he sounds like a gigantic pervert : his video will to Taro only has footage of maids sunbathing on a private island, there are nude statues everywhere, and then there’s all the training of the maids to be very intimate to their master. Now, I can somewhat understand why a squad of them would help him pee and bathe, but there’s little excuse for the “final service” after lights out.

Mariel seems to be the head maid or something (although it’s not actually acknowledged onscreen). Taro seems to like her, and she’s the only maid who does not set off his girl allergy (which of course raises all sorts of alarms in my brain – hopefully they’re not going that route, are they ?).

There are literally hundreds of other maids, although the only other notable ones are a set of triplets who seem the most sexually aggressive of the bunch.

Production Values

Terrible. This is barely animated at all. Also : boobies ! There’s LOTS of nudity here.

The ED sequence has live-action footage of what looks like the voice-actresses cosplaying as their characters, which is frankly embarassing. At least they’re properly clothed…

Overall Impression

Dear gods this was horrible and sanity-destroying. This obviously tries to be a raunchy sex comedy, but this is neither funny nor titillating.

This somehow got a remake in 2004. I can’t see how that’d improve things.

I had trouble retrieving the only SFW scene of assault in this episode.
I had trouble retrieving the only SFW scene of assault in this episode.

via [In which I review] New anime, Spring 2001 – Page 7.