Mightyblue’s Corner

Some days I like to think I’m a sane and normal guy. Most days I get up, think vaguely philosophical thoughts on what it would take to actually build a functional Macross Valkyrie and just give up.

Given that one of my hobbies is on the nerdiest side of nerdy, and that most of the output on both ends of the ocean for stated hobby tends to pander to perverts and teenagers, it’s not surprising that to find the good stuff you have to wade through an ocean of crap and near porn. Please note that whoever tells you that “moe” is an innocent concept made of bunnies and light is lying through their teeth, as the only “bunnies” in moe are hot women in bunny suits (probably not fursuits, but that shouldn’t be ruled out either).

The subject of today’s column is the anime Kimi ga Aruji de Shitsuji ga Ore de, which loosely translates to something like They Are My Masters. Important words in the title would be Aruji and Shitsuji, which are Master and Servant/Butler [usually tl’ed as butler] respectively, so we’re looking at a butler show, if the post title didn’t give that away already…

I’d be more forgiving of Kimi if it was more along the lines of Hayate, which tended to focus more on gags and inside jokes based on the last thirty or forty years of Japanese animation and manga. It’s not something that’s widely appealing to Western audiences due to the very different sense of humor (and the pre-knowledge required to even understand that they are making those jokes, let alone actually find them funny) that pervades the show, and it’s probably why we’ll never see it over here, but then we did get Azumanga Daioh!, so anything’s possible.

Kimi, on the other hand, appears to be appealing more to the hormonally and obsessively driven segments of the anime viewing world, given that it bleeds moe from the very cels it’s drawn on. Maid/Butler shows that exist for no other reason than to showcase excessively attractive men and women in their stereotypical outfits are a dime a dozen, and most of them tend to be weird or mix in some superpowers or whatever to spice things up, since Real Life Examples Are Boring™. The one example that’s available on this end of the Pacific that springs to mind would be Hanaukyo Maid Team: La Verite, which is almost exactly like Kimi (and a host of other butler/maid shows) save for a few aspects. Of course, there’s the utterly sublime Emma for you Masterpiece Theatre fans if you want a realistic depiction of Victorian English maids rolled up in a touching romance/drama as an excellent counterexample.

Damn, did I just say touching? I think I just lost my manly cred. Wait, I watch anime, so I never had any. Ha?

Anyway, this particular complex is more mainstream than most people might think, especially since I’ve been gearing this post towards anime and not the real world, and not because Real Life Examples Are Boring™, but rather as an extension of Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction; Real Life Is Scarier Than Fiction. Japan, that lovable place full of hikkomoris and fetishists of all shapes and sizes, also has a large number of maid and butler cafes for both sexes, making this whole deal one of the reasons why Japan is such a strange place and also probably why Tokyo gets destroyed so often.

Kimi, on the other hand, straddles the line between being just plain weird and being self-irreverant. It’s humor comes from slightly more subtle lampshading and inverting of the tropes and cliches it’s built out of, unlike Hayate’s perpetual out and out parody. It also features more fanservice in the first episode than Hayate did over two seasons, if I’m making boastful claims correctly. Sigh.