You Are Ms. Servant – Episode 1

What’s it about? One day, Yokoya Hitoyoshi’s messy, sleepy teenaged life is interrupted when a woman in an old-fashioned maid outfit turns up at his door asking if he’ll hire her. It turns out her area of expertise is assassination rather than housekeeping, but after she saves Hitoyoshi from being hit by a truck, he invites her to come work for him despite her inexperience.

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“Hardened killer and/or career criminal finds themselves in a domestic environment” is one of those classic comedy premises. The juxtaposition between the character’s violent job and the peaceful softness of their mundane household existence is the simple but effective core of series like Way of the Househusband, Spy x Family, and the many “cute members of organized crime syndicates do cute things” shows that have emerged over the years. It can get stale if overdone or done poorly, but it’s not a bad joke—not to mention the heartwarming hurt/comfort fodder it potentially provides as these characters find a new sense of self in the safety of domesticity. 

There’s also an interesting gender dynamic at play here, as the leads in these series are more often men, offering a subversion of expectations for comedy purposes, but also giving these stories the opportunity to depict softer visions of masculinity. On the flipside—though it’s less common—contrasting the archetypes associated with adorable domesticity against action-movie violence also provides the opportunity for female characters to be raucous, ruthless, and slapstick funny, as is demonstrated in the fantastic Akiba Maid War. 

…do you see how I keep mentioning other shows when I’m supposed to be writing about You Are Ms. Servant? I promise this is all important set-up. I always find it useful to address a premiere through the lens of its genre context, and the other narratives and pop cultural tropes it may be in conversation with. This has, however, been a terrible mistake, because now I’m just thinking about all the other series that play with similar ideas but do it better. 

Ms. Servant has a premise silly enough to bill it as a comedy, but this first episode is pretty subdued and lacking in jokes. Aside from one brief scene of her slicing up lettuce, it really doesn’t lean into the zany action that usually underlines these types of shows, making it all feel oddly… still. Stagnant, dare I say. The series’ central gag, I guess, is that The Maid is trying to work as a housekeeper but isn’t very good at it because she’s more used to slitting throats than mopping floors, but it really doesn’t live up to its slapstick potential. Maybe it’s an animation resourcing thing.

The central gag also absolutely does not give us any of the playful subversions of gender expectations that I mentioned up top. The joke is that this woman is clumsy and so bad at housework that she needs help from a hapless teen boy, and the emotional arc that’s set up in this premiere is about her finding her humanity by performing domestic duties as a combination mother/love interest for aforementioned boy. She’s a cold hard killer but Hitoyoshi gives her warm and fuzzy feelings; she’s incredibly competent at her old job but now she constantly needs him to rescue her. This is presented as nice, and heartwarming, and good character development. I get the juxtaposition they’re going for with this, but it’s mostly just condescending, and slides hard into traditional gender roles rather than doing anything interesting.

Condescending is a good word for this characterization, actually. Hitoyoshi agrees to hire The Maid as a housekeeper basically because he feels sorry for her, and is generally patronizing throughout the rest of the episode. In one scene he helps her dry her hair (which is wet because whoops! She slipped and a bucket of water clanged her on her noggin! The silly billy!) and says “let’s clean up together” with the tone you might use to console a young child. Going by the close-up of The Maid’s rosy cheeks and wobbly eyes, we’re to understand that she’s deeply moved by this kindness.

You’ll notice I keep calling her simply The Maid. That’s because she says she literally doesn’t have a name and simply goes by whatever name her employers give her. In this case, Hitoyoshi makes an awkward joke about not being very good at coming up with names and decrees that she shall henceforth be “Ms. Servant.” The Maid is like “wow… I’ve been an unfeeling husk my whole life and have never cared what I was called before… but for some reason now this feels really good… my shriveled assassin heart is going doki-doki…” This is the gist of their interactions throughout the episode.

We’re treated to some short sequences inside The Maid’s headspace, so I have some faint hope that as the story goes along she’ll get more interiority and more depth, and the narrative will do something with her blood-soaked backstory other than using it as fodder for warm-and-fuzzies when she gets the chance to be a “normal woman” by helping a male character, or letting him help her. There could be something to this—I don’t want to discount a character arc where a person who’s clearly been violently dehumanized gets the chance to (re)discover the feminine side that she was denied, and finds fulfillment in nurturing another human being rather than being forced to harm them.

I just don’t have faith that that’s what Ms. Servant is doing. It seems much more concerned with cutesifying The Maid and having her be The Ultimate Woman for its teen male lead. Literally there is a scene where she emulates his mother, offering to let him rest his head on her lap, but the camera pans up a POV shot of her heaving bosom to make this a sexually-charged (or at least, fan servicey) moment. So she’s his mum, and his housekeeper, and will protect him with her life, but she’s also sooo clumsy and sooo hot and she just needs him to take care of her. It’s cliché all the way down without any other compelling story elements to distract you. Excuse me while I go fire up Akiba Maid War just to feel something.

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