Review for Shonen Maid Part 0: Preamble What happens when you mix a maid anime with good characters and mildly fucked up messaging? You might just make something like Shonen Maid. Warning: Cognitohazard as I shit talk some of this animes themes. Part 1: The Plot At the core of it Shonen maid is a serialized anime about a kid named Chihiro who lost his mother. He is basically adopted by his rich uncle Madoka and due to psychological conditioning from his mother he decided that instead of living a normal life he lives out an extreme OCD fantasy where he managed to keep perfect grades become a maid that is constantly cleaning the house and somehow also maintains good relationships with his friends. Jokes aside its a spectacularly wholesome anime about a kid who is grieving from the loss of his mother and the relationship between him and his estranged family. He actually just decides to become a permanent worker within Madokas household and while he is employed in a completely legit way it is to some degree at least clear that its actually just an adoptive relationship. Still not good for Child Labor laws but who cares about that anyway. Considering that its very spoilery and Id prefer to keep this review spoiler free I wont go too much into why Chihiro didnt know about Madoka before his mother passed away but what I will say is that one of the few plot points that I did enjoy was that. Another aspect of the plot that comes up is Chihiros relationship with his friends with them forming an emotional safety net around him. Its my favorite part of the anime and it gets a good amount of focus. Part 2: The Good As an anime its a really good slice of life story. Its twelve episodes of completely wholesome stuff that has none of the fanservice gore or creepiness that can permeate other animes. Mention the soundtrack having some nice calming tunes. The Opening is good the ending theme is great and some of the other scenes involving idols have really cool songs. https://www..com/watch?v=GKIUOUlfmR8 For an anime to be good you must have characters the audience can attach to. Shonen Maid exceeds all expectations in this regard. Not a single character in the entire show acts outside of their characterization. Most are extremely wholesome with the exception of a selection of maybe 2 or 3 characters that serve as minor antagonists. The four that stand out most Chihiro Madoka Miyako and Keiichiro. Yji being my honorable mention. http://coleccionistademomentos.com/images/characters/chihirokomiyashounenmaid104621.jpg Chihiro is a young boy who recently was bereaved of his mother. He is a very dutiful kid who was fucking conditioned taught by his mother to value work and to believe that without work there is no food. In another sense his mom instilled a pull yourself up by le bootstrap energy in him which unfortunately still pollutes his mind as the anime goes on. If anything his friends and family even recognize this issue and try to wean him off his constant work. https://i.pin.com/736x/7f/dd/53/7fdd53d5702afb3f510ebd763e14f6b3.jpg Madoka Takatori is a costume designer side note: I genuinely like this and I think its an interesting profession for him to have known for his exquisite work and reclusiveness and the fact hes a bachelor Madoka is a very eccentric man. His love of cats kindhearted nature and slight sadness after the passing of his sister really characterize him well. He is your rich friend who just wants to chill and do the things he loves. https://gonerealwild.com/images/characters/keiichiroushinozakishounenmaid104624.jpg Keiichir Shinozaki butler and childhood friend of Madoka is the man keeping Madokas household from collapsing in on itself. Also a cat lover albeit not allergic like Madoka he is a figure of stability within the household and generally plays straight man to the rest of the cast. http://pm1.narvii.com/6810/9b8bdeadf364fda62cd436f8f5776802349a4958v200.jpg The main female character among the cast Miyako tori starts the show in a betrothal with Madoka although this is resolved through some questionable means. She has a crush on Keiichir and through Chihiro develops a passion for cooking and learning about the less cushy parts of life. Being raised in wealth she goes out of her way to be kind and to do menial tasks like cleaning. A big part of this show is handling the grief that Chihiro is experiencing following his mothers passing. One of my favorite things in the show is how muted Chihiros initial reaction is which I interpret as him being too shocked to be able to able to fully grieve for his mother. https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/961694719329587281/997618058048847973/unknown.png?width=1031height=610 As the show goes on he does open up and seems to be able to fully process what happened. It is really cute and great. And I have to mention this visual joke that I liked a lot https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/690229087008063520/988500069181444166/unknown.png?width=1051height=572 Part 3: The Bad A child gets indoctrinated into child labor because the mother teaches him capitalistic values from birth. A phrase repeated ad nausium throughout the series those who do not work shall not eat. The fact she taught a fucking child this genuinely annoys me. To be honest its not that you cant value hard work thats fine but he genuinely seems to take this in as a lesson that he literally shouldnt accept charity despite at the time being a homeless fucking kid. His moms lesson genuinely angers me and on some level I really do not know if its a message from the author or not. Depending on your opinion on that you could technically consider this as part of The Good. I just dont know myself. Sometimes the episodes feel chaptered but I dont know how to fix that. Its a bit of a structural issue where some plots will resolve within the first 1012 minutes of the episode and the rest of the runtime is filled up with some other thing. Its not bad all the time but makes the episodes drag at times. Part 4: Closing Thoughts Shonen Maid is a really great anime that I would totally recommend if you wanna take a break from some of the more serious selections in the anime community. Its a happy little show 12 eps long. Id recommend you savor it maybe sticking to 1 or 2 episodes a day. Shonen Maid doesnt really lend itself to binge watching. It took me a month to watch the whole thing lol. Signed Kronos Bach