Synopsis
A new maid named Lilith has just recently started working at the mansion where Yuuri lives, after the boy had let go all of the mansion’s staff following his parents’ death in a traffic accident. Since the young woman appeared out of nowhere to care for an orphaned boy without payment, Yuuri continuously feels there’s something shady about the new maid. The maid likes to tease him about his suspicions, but since the boy is innocent and earnest, it often backfires into comedic misunderstandings. Is Yuuri just curious to know the truth about the maid, or has his heart been captivated by her in another way?
Comments
Halimun Muhammad (The Indonesian Anime Times)
It’s been fascinating to think how The Maid I Hired Recently Is Mysterious travels across different media throughout the years. The original Twitter manga works on the simple premise that follows a basic rhythm of cute situations where the young master suspects the maid of something, the maid teases him about that, and his earnestness makes it end with more funny and cute misunderstanding. The author, Wakame Konbu, can fit this simple pattern into just around four pages that suit Twitter’s limit of four pictures that can be attached to a single tweet, and each of the posts can be consumed individually on their own.
As the manga gets a magazine serialisation, where there are around 16-17 pages for a given chapter, Konbu isn’t just employing scenarios of interactions between the main characters that develop over more pages. With more pages, she also develops an overarching narrative that explores more of the characters, like giving them names, providing more background (such as why the young master only lives with the maid to begin with), and even introducing more characters as the relationship between the main characters grow. You can compare the differences from reading the single volumes version (available in English from Yen Press), which includes the Twitter contents in between the magazine chapters.
A TV anime series adaptation adds another dimension to the series’ transformation across different media, as it needs to draw from the available materials to fill the duration of a half-an-hour program. The first episode picks from various parts of the first book’s contents, rearranging them when necessary to better suit the narrative flow of an anime episode. However, as the manga is largely made of short bits driven mainly by dialogues without having much action, I sometimes still have the feeling that a roughly 20 minutes duration (not including the OP and ED) might be too much for this kind of content after all, and I’m wondering if half of that duration (like Encouragement of Climb has for its second and third seasons) would work better for it, though it’s perhaps not feasible for the block it’s broadcasted in.
Still, it’s an enjoyable adaptation that can draw out the cuteness of the characters and their interactions. The anime designs convey the appeal of the main characters effectively (I wonder if they deliberately make the sleeves of Yuuri’s shirt shorter compared to the manga to accentuate even more the cuteness of his small arms). And while between Rie Takahashi and Saori Hayami the former might seem to have more experience in voicing young boys (e.g., Ernesti in Knight’s & Magic), it’s surprisingly Hayami who is chosen for Yuuri’s role, and she skillfully brings out the youthful, straightforward energy of the character. With the addition of this series, fans of manga focusing on relationships between younger boys and older girls are having a good time recently with anime adaptations. And it adds a nice variation since as mentioned before, this series’ comedy relies heavily on dialogues and misunderstandings, which makes it different from the ecchi-laden comedic situations in other recent anime adaptations of oneshota manga like Sunohara-sou and Megami-ryou.
Facts and Figures
| Alternate Title(s) | Saikin Yatotta Maid ga Ayashii |
| Original Work | Manga by Wakame Konbu (The Great Jahy Will Not Be Defeated!) |
| Cast | Mikako Komatsu as Fujisaki Miyu Tomita as Natsume Nakashima Rie Takahashi as Lilith Saori Hayami as Yuuri Yui Horie as Tsukasa Gojouin |
| Director | Chief director: Mirai Minato (The Great Jahy Will Not Be Defeated!, Miss Caretaker of Sunohara-sou, When Will Ayumu Make His Move?); Director: Misuzu Hoshino (episode director in The Great Jahy Will Not Be Defeated!, Laid-Back Camp) |
| Scenario | Mirai Minato |
| Character Design | Machi Yoshino |
| Opening Theme | “Su, Suki Janai!” by ≠ME |
| Ending Theme | “Himitsu no Niwa no Futari” by Yui Horie |
| Studio | SILVER LINK and BLADE |
| Official Website | https://maid-ga-ayashii.com |
| @maidga_ayashii | |
| Broadcast Date | 23 July 2022 (1700 GMT/2400 WIT), 24 July 2022 (0200 JST) |
Screenshots and Trailer
The Indonesian Anime Times
