You know, it’s been such a long time to see pure fan service goodness without elements such as twisted plots, lame attempts for innovation, flashing pictures showing scenes at awkward angles (no I’m not talking about Eva) or any orchestral music reaching way too high (not even up a skirt) in attempts to achieve a sense of “better service show with a heart”. Maybe there were some other shows like such in the past few seasons, but few do everything so well and so successfully as this one.
Tomomi, the evil childhood friend at your service, is delicious and delightful being simultaneously the angel and the devil. Kawasumi Ayako portrays her in a devious and playful tone with elegance and grace. She is kind toward Akiharu, certainly, but she needs a little fun in her otherwise boring, high-class nobility living. She needs someone to create some tension and chaos in the ladies’ high school to spice up her school life. Thus, everything she does toward him has hidden agenda behind it.
Akiharu is brash and often careless, which makes him the perfect toy for her to set him up for various downfalls, trials and mishaps. Nakahara Mai’s Sernia is loud mouthed and easily incited. She’s the twin drill that makes ordinary twin tails look as bland as white paper. But she falls into this “morally responsible for the school” trap and inevitably helps the fun along. She becomes another toy for Tomomi. Together with Akiharu, Selnia helps to form this bickering comedic team with great chemistry.
Sure, this show is as cliché laden as any fan service show, but hell, being revolutionary should not be the point of a fan service comedy. The point is to be fun and funny. Not to mention having enough ecchi and girls in underwear, girls totally naked with big boobs and pleasingly proportioned bodies, and a thunderously clumsy maid that accidentally performed a Turkish Bath/soapland service on our hero; finish it off with the Gainax bounce, and we have a winner of a fan service show.
I give this one an 7-pistol-salute out of 10. Fundamental Otaku goodness indeed.
Ayse Khadim is an epitome of the Western Odalisque fanaticism during the 19 century exported to Japan, reimported to the most powerful Western world, America. Great to know middle eastern maid, or odalisque can be 萌えっ子. Moe keeps expanding its horizon! Btw, how do you know about Turkish bath? トルコ風呂?That term’s pretty archaic.
@ Monsieur LaMoe – wow, I didn’t know your reference and had to look it up. I see the background story now. As for “トルコ風呂”, I read that the term changed to soapland because the Turkish people complained about the original term. I didn’t know the term was quite old!
Oh, I see. Coz I never heard “Turkish bath” in Japan. We always said “Soap.” Turks complained? Isn’t that like French complaining about “French fries” or Germans complaining “German suplex”?
People always complain and make no efforts to create better solutions. XD