AnimeZone

I'm back and I'm ready to talk about some more anime! This time around I've decided to talk about not just my top three anime TV series which I've watched this season, like I did last season, but, instead, I'll talk about all the anime TV series that I've watched the past three months and rank them according to my favorite to least favorite. And boy, is there a lot to talk about! Strap yourself in and get yourself a cup of warm coffee because this will be a long one!

Introduction

Love is in the air this summer and believe me, this felt evident to me. Because this season, I've watched not two, not three, not four, but five romance anime TV series. You might not think much of this statement if you're an avid anime consumer but, for me at least, five shows is usually enough to fill in my entire list of TV series I'm willing to watch for an entire season. Granted, I've also watched some series which were not romances this season too, but, suffice it to say, I've been inundated with a lot of content that felt more fitting for Valentine's Day than it did for summer. And let's just say some shows were better than others; by a long margin. I usually dislike having too much of one genre monopolize the shows I'm watching but I decided to make an exception this time around and see exactly how much abundance of romance I can take for three months in a row before I get sick and tired of it. And, surprisingly enough, I can say that I'm genuinely happy at the end of this period, without saying that I'm sick of this genre and that I don't wanna see another romantic comedy for the rest of my life. In fact, some shows really sparked renewed interest in me for this particular genre. And I'm really happy about this because they were done very well. And the others, which didn't feel that amazing and were mediocre at best, they still managed to put out some decent content for me to enjoy. So that was a nice step up. After the disaster which was last season's Shikimori's not just a cutie, you'd think I'd be done with romance TV shows for a while, as that show really left a bad taste in my mouth with regards to that genre, but, thankfully, this season's lineup fixed that bad taste and restored my hope in romance TV shows. And I'm really thankful for that. Now, before I get into the ranking, as promised, I will mention that this lists only TV series that began airing in Japan in July of 2022 and does not contain movies or OVAs at all. It's just multi-episode TV series. Moreover, the ranking you'll see is not a ranking of quality or of any quantifiable objective measurement of a show's achievements. Rather, the ranking is based solely on my subjective enjoyment of the shows in question, and how much fun I've personally had with said TV series, starting off with my most favorite shows and ones which I was the most anticipating the next episodes of, and finishing the ranking with the shows which I was looking least forward to watching and those which were, let's say, not leaving a good impression on me at all. Finally, I need to mention, that all the screenshots shown in this blog post are screenshots from the shows I have watched and I do not claim ownership over any of the content in the them, at all. The content is owned by the animation studios which animated each show, respectively. But enough talk, let's get straight to the point!

The ranking

1. Call of the Night

Let's start the list off with the first romance show! Call of the Night is the one I am most happy with, this season. Back when I read the synopses of all the shows for this summer, this one caught my attention immediately. Without going into spoilers, the show is about a middle school boy named Ko Yamori who, bored and dissatisfied with his life, and also unable to sleep, decides, one night, to go outside and start roaming the city streets on his own. He wanders aimlessly by himself, trying to find a purpose for his own existence, when, just by random chance, he meets, out of the blue, a strange creepy young girl who introduces herself as Nazuna Nanakusa. Nazuna has a very odd aura around herself, worrying Yamori at first, but she manages to appear friendly enough to not immediately scare him off. She reads Yamori like an open book, making it obvious that she's aware that he's just a troubled kid that wants more to his life and is looking for purpose, and offers a way to help him fall asleep by inviting him to her apartment and convincing him to lay in bed next to her, to comfort him and lull him slowly to sleep. Yamori, naturally, is very skeptical of her intentions and immediately wonders what ulterior motives she might have planned for him but, ultimately, allows himself to go along with her invitations. Still, after joining her in her bed, he closes his eyes and only pretends to fall asleep. Thinking that her prey succumbed to slumber under her influence, Nazuna seizes the opportunity and discreetly sinks her sharp fangs into Yamori's neck, beginning to suck his blood. Since Yamori was actually awake this whole time, he immediately freaks out and pushes her off, confronting her about this whole thing. Realizing that he had been awake all along and knowing that it would be very difficult for her to make up a convincing lie, she admits the truth and reveals to him that she is, in fact, a vampire and she merely wanted to suck his blood while he was asleep for sustenance. That was her only ulterior motive and she never planned on harming him any more than that. Yamori is taken aback by this, but is intrigued at the thought of vampires being real and living among humans. He realizes that this might be his ticket to a more interesting and fulfilling life and, as such, he asks Nazuna whether she can make him her offspring and turn him into a vampire, just like herself, so that he could enjoy the night life forever. Nazuna explains to him that she doesn't like creating offspring like other vampires do, but acknowledges his desire for a nocturnal life and decides to go along with his wishes and show him how beautiful the nocturnal life of a vampire can be, by using her flying abilities to show Yamori the city at night from the sky. This only makes him more emboldened to want to become a vampire. The only issue is that, in order for him to become Nazuna's offspring, he has to fall in love with her. And, it was when hearing this, that Yamori remembers that he had never been capable of understanding romantic love and is incapable of having these feelings. And so begins Yamori Ko's journey of learning how to fall in love with a vampire. This plot synopsis may seem a bit cheesy and cliched but the execution of the first episode was impeccable. It's very difficult for a first episode to hook me in such a way as to make me immediately root for the main characters to end up together, but this managed to achieve this goal flawlessly. Usually it takes me a couple of episodes for this effect to kick in, but Call of the Night managed to do it in the first episode. The show is a mixture of romance and thriller, with some very light horror moments as well strewn about every now and then. It focuses on world building, for the most part, slowly introducing the nuances of being a vampire in this world, showing off new characters that Yamori slowly meets with, describing his relationships with other humans as well as new vampires that also arrive nonchalantly into his life, and also has displays of comedy in various episodic adventures with the main cast. The story doesn't rely much on magic or fantasy elements, despite vampires existing in that world. Instead, most of the events are solidly grounded into reality and explores how vampires can coexist with humans in such a world, how they keep their existence a secret from humans, and what are the consequences of being a vampire in the first place. Yamori will slowly have to learn what love feels like, what it means to find a purpose in life in the first place, sort his feelings out, but also confront the difficult decision of whether he truly wants to become a vampire in the first place since, as he later learns, there are also unwanted consequences if he does that, as well. The show is based off a manga of the same name, drawn by a mangaka under the pseudonym of Kotoyama. The mangaka's true identity is never revealed but it's heavily rumored online that she is female. And this story does feels like it's made by a woman, as all the female characters in it feel very human and realistic, displaying a wide array of emotions, being selfish and having their own ulterior motives but also displaying sympathy and compassion every once in a while. The female characters never feel like they become smitten by the male protagonist as soon as they set their eyes on him for the first time, they aren't shallow as girls are usually portrayed in romantic comedies geared towards men, and are refreshingly complex and make, sometimes, unexpected decisions. The show is also very light when it comes to fanservice, with almost no moments of nudity in it at all. Instead, the show relies on a psychological means of establishing a faithful audience, with the romance feeling organic and slowly developing over time. It also doesn't shy away from making progress feel well earned, as it also highlights lust and how that doesn't necessarily equate to love. Finally, my final compliment towards it is that it also has some gorgeous shots of the city in the nighttime. The mostly empty streets, the artificial illumination, the dark blue tint of the sky, they all combine together to form very impressive and immersive pictures of the night, emphasizing the reason why Ko is slowly becoming enamored with the idea of adopting a nocturnal life. While not all episodes have nice shots of the night, the few episodes that do really make us fall in love with the city they live in, and this is further accentuated by very fine background music from the musical group Creepy Nuts, which have very stylish but also relaxing songs which are very unique and matching to this show's overall style. Here are some more screenshots to show you the art style: I've rambled over this show enough for one day. Suffice it to say, it was an excellent watch and this is a prime example for what I want a romance to be like: it doesn't have to go too fast that it feels forced, it doesn't need to have fanservice to be good either, but it also doesn't need to be so slow (i.e. like the way Shikimori's not just a cutie was) that I feel like I'm mostly wasting my time watching over the characters' lives rather than see them grow in their relationships. The show doesn't need to emphasize on kissing and sex talks but it adds them when the situation makes it appropriate to include such scenes, and it doesn't shy away from them either. The pacing of the relationship felt just right. If I were to give out a small spoiler, I will say that Yamori still didn't become a vampire by the end of the show (keep in mind that only season 1 has aired by the time this blog post was written), so if you're hoping for an ending to conclude the story, sadly this doesn't have it (yet). There's still room for a season 2 to continue it and, by God, do I want a season 2 for this. I enjoyed this show even more than I enjoyed the previous season's best show (i.e. In the heart of Kunoichi Tsubaki) and the reason for me liking both of those shows is still the same: the shows were just fun to watch. They didn't need overly complex stories, 5 dimensional multi-layered characters or over-the-top action or fanservice, they just simply needed to be fun. And this show met my expectations and greatly exceeded them even. The fact that this show was never picked up by Crunchyroll is a huge shame. Hidive got this show, instead, and I personally feel like Crunchyroll is missing a great gem because of this. Don't waste your time anymore by reading this and go watch it! It's simply amazing! And the ending, while not overly spectacular nor flashy, did make me feel very satisfied, as an ending for a romance is supposed to feel like, as it ended on a great moment and reached a significant milestone in Nazuna's and Ko's relationship. It's just a huge treat.

2. Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer

And now, time for the first TV series in this ranking that isn't a romance! This, Engage Kiss and Tokyo Mew Mew New, are the only shows which are not romances for this season. So let's get the ball rolling: one day, college student Yuuhi Amamiya wakes up, only to find a strange talking lizard on top of him on his bed, telling him that he was chosen to be the Lizard Knight, a warrior with supernatural powers that has to, along with the other chosen Beast Knights, aide a princess to save the world from an evil wizard that wants to destroy it with an Earth-sized mallet in space called the Biscuit Hammer. The lizard will be his familiar, Sir Noi Crezant, an honorable creature that seeks to help and guide him in this quest, while also promising to grant him any one wish he wants if he accepts this duty. Now, you might think that this plot synopsis sounds like something that should describe a medieval fantasy setting involving dragons and magic. But what makes this show unique is that this is no isekai, this takes place in contemporary Japan, with modern technology and in a modern setting. And while there is a lot of magic involved in this show, the powers that Yuuhi and his other fellow Beast Knights have are pretty subdued and not overly flashy or powerful. Yuuhi has the ability to create telekinetic force fields in midair that allow him to block incoming attacks, allow him to slow his fall from great heights so that he can survive it without any injuries, and perform other mildly impressive tasks. Initially, Yuuhi refuses to accept this duty and is apathetic towards this quest, to the point of even trying to get rid of his familiar whenever Sir Crezant continues to try to persuade him to join. However, soon after meeting his familiar, he is attacked by a golem, a non-sentient aggressive creature that serves the aforementioned evil mage, and, just as he is about to be killed by this golem, he is saved by the princess, his next door neighbour, Samidare Asahina. Asahina, despite having the shape of a weak girl around Yuuhi's own age, has supernatural strength that allows her to easily destroy the attacking golem and save Yuuhi's life. Her cheerful and optimistic persona, along with her great charisma and charm, manages to convince Yuuhi to help her in her quest of saving the planet from the evil mage, but while also revealing that the reason she wants to do so is that so that she can destroy the planet Earth herself, as proof that she loves it and wants the planet to have its existence ended at the same time that her own life ends. Despite this extremely strange statement that surprises and disillusions Sir Crezant with respect to her motives, this convinces the apathetic Yuuhi to immediately agree to join her as her personal knight, going so far as even agreeing to see through that Earth is indeed ultimately destroyed by her. This was a very strange beginning to this story. I personally didn't know what to expect from a show as weird as this. And what was even stranger was that I soon realized that the manga that this show is based off of is old. The original Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer manga debuted in 2005 and finished being published back in 2010. So the source material for this show is more than a decade old. Why did it take so long to get an animated adaptation? And why now, of all times? Who knows. What I will say is that, while the story drives this show apart and makes it reach second spot on my ranking, there is a huge difference in quality between this show and Call of the Night, which ended on first spot in my ranking. Despite them being adjacent to each other in this ranking, there is a significant drop in quality between them. For one, this show is plagued by technical issues, the most glaring of which is cheap looking animation. The show was animated by studio NAZ and, while initially not very noticeable, it soon became apparent that they were saving a lot of money on the animation budget, causing some scenes of animation to look jagged and the frames of animation to look disjointed. This isn't an issue for all the episodes, mind you, but the quality is all over the place, with certain episodes having higher animation budget than others. I didn't notice this very soon but it became apparent the more I watched the show. Another massive issue that this show displays is pacing problems. It's very apparent that the studio decided to adapt a very significant portion of the manga and cover a lot of ground in its adaptation, but the problem with this is that the story progress of each episode feels rushed as hell. This problem can be noticed easily even from the first two episodes. There's constant exposition dropping, character introductions and the fight scenes feel like they last half the time they should because the show needs to keep on going to squeeze in as much story as it can. This does serve the action sequences to make them feel fast paced but, on the other hand, it also makes the action feel short lived and sporadic; and this, unsurprisingly, is a huge problem given that the main genre of the show IS action. But alas, despite all these technical problems, the story does shine through. Soon enough we are presented with Yuuhi's personal family issues, his emotional struggles with having lost his parents a couple of years before the events of the show took place, and his coming to terms of being a hero and doing his best to, at the very least, not hold back the other knights who are trying to save the world as well. Including Yuuhi, there are twelve total knights who were chosen to save the Earth, under the command of princess Asahina. Yuuhi is the Lizard Knight (since his familiar is a talking lizard); there are also a Horse Knight, a Dog Knight, a Cat Knight, a Mouse Knight and so on. Each knight has his/her own sets of abilities, their own life backgrounds, their own personalities and their own hidden agendas and goals. Yuuhi is the first knight that gets introduced to us but slowly, as the episodes go by, more and more knights will enter the stage as well until, finally, all the knights will be assembled and they will come together under Asahina's command. Along the way, we are also introduced to the evil and mysterious mage that's trying to destroy the planet, Animus, and another strange girl with supernatural powers that will help Asahina and the knights out, named Anima. The plot quickly becomes very interesting and despite all the knights seemingly willing to work together to defeat the evil mage, there are hidden goals, that some knights harbor, which are less than noble. Moreover, Asahina's own plans of destroying the Earth herself are only revealed to Yuuhi, who is loyal enough to help her in achieving these goals, even though they both know that this will mean that, after defeating the evil mage, they will eventually have to turn against and fight the other knights who will, most likely, try to stop them from destroying the world too. The knights will, at first, confront the golems that are being thrown at them by Animus, every time defeating the golems and forcing Animus to retreat and have him create newer, even stronger enemies for them to fight, next time. In this sense, the show is kind of a “monster of the week” TV series, albeit there are times when things don't go as planned for them. Particularly, this story isn't afraid of killing off the good guys. There will be deaths in this show and some of them will be more expected than others. Ultimately, I will say that not all the twelve knights will make it out of this battle alive. And while the story is rushed very much, the show does take the time to acknowledge that characters die and try to have the others mourn for them, which is nice. The story mainly focuses on Yuuhi as he struggles to become reliable and find his way as a knight, facing the challenges that he faces and trying to make difficult decisions, but, what I like the most about it is that Yuuhi usually comes off as feeling particularly sympathetic. He is weak, he acknowledges this himself, he struggles to become stronger, he cries when his friends around him die, he is resentful and vengeful against family members that have wronged him in the past but is also forgiving when he realizes the truth. The characters in this show are complex and this is why I like them. They make interesting decisions that may come across sometimes as unexpected. But that's the hallmark of a good story. Overall, while this show does have a lot of technical flaws and doesn't even come nearly close enough to be comparable to Call of the Night, it does have a charm of its own. This is also the only show I've watched this season that didn't end yet, as this appears to be a 24 episode anime series, rather than the standard 12 episodes, so the story is still ongoing. I might write about it in next season's blog post as well. Either way, if you're a fan of classic action TV series with interesting plot developments and complex characters, and the technical issues I've mentioned above aren't deal-breakers for you, I suggest you give it a try.

3. Engage Kiss

To be honest, I simply can't believe this show made it as third in my ranking. When I picked up this show initially, I thought it was a huge mess, with a lot of issues, and I genuinely believed that this would easily end up as my most disliked show of this season. This isn't to say that the other shows that come after it in this ranking are so much worse than expected, it's to highlight how much this show managed to improve as I kept on watching it, to earn this spot on the list. Needless to say, the first couple of episodes of this show aren't spectacular. The show just throws us into the lives of Shu Ogata, and his girlfriend, Kisara, who work as a private military company (PMC) in Bayron City, an artificial city floating near Japan in the Pacific Ocean. The role of PMCs in Bayron City, is to deal with demonic outbreaks in the city, incidents that usually involve demons ranked by their difficulty to be eliminated, who have recently mysteriously been popping up seemingly out of nowhere, for the past couple of years. Nobody knows the reason why these demons keep appearing or what their goals are but, to handle them, the city's own government auctions off missions to exterminate these demons to the PMC willing to be paid the least amount of money in order to destroy them. The higher ranked the demon is (i.e. the more difficult it is to exterminate), the higher the pay usually is for the PMC that takes the job to kill it. And Shu and Kisara form one such PMC, the I&S Office. Shu is the one that formed the office and Kisara is his only employee. In reality, they are a couple barely managing to live together, as Shu is actually a deadbeat boyfriend that, despite being very low on money, is very picky with the jobs he's willing to take, sometimes refusing to work for multiple months at a time, wastes his money on gambling whenever he earns even a meager income, keeps borrowing money from his girlfriend, Kisara (usually from her high school student allowance), and also from his ex-girlfriend, Ayano Yugiri. Ayano works as the president for a different PMC as well, AAA Defender Co. Shu used to work with Ayano a couple of years back while they were together, but decided to leave her company once they broke up. But despite them not being together anymore, Shu still relies on Ayano's help from time to time, asking for favors from her, much to Kisara's chagrin. Ayano herself hates Kisara and believes that she is a bad influence on Shu. Shu is a skilled gunman, usually sniping at targets from a distance although, realistically, he is pretty much functionally useless and the only reason his PMC manages to finish contracts and kill demons is almost solely due to his girlfriend, Kisara, who is, in fact, a demon herself. Kisara is a very old demon that had made a contract with Shu a couple of years prior to aide him in a particular mission and now works for him. She is very powerful, fast, strong, has a very sharp and long blade that she wields, and she is capable of passing through the floor and walls if she chooses to do so while fighting. However, she also becomes weak at times and relies on Shu to provide her with energy by kissing him on the lips every so often. Such kisses power her up and allow her to overpower usually any type of demon they confront. There is a catch though: the kisses she gives him come at a cost that is later revealed in the series. So....yeah, that's the summary. I'll be honest, this show seemed prime and ready to be an action ecchi series with a “monster of the week” type of formula and with some romantic comedy shenanigans that pertains to the constant jealousy between Ayano and Kisara over Shu. And I really wasn't in the mood for that. I thought very little of this show and my suspension of disbelief was sometimes hampered by scenes so stupid that my jaw almost dropped to the floor. An example of this was when Shu and Kisara were fighting a demon in one of their missions, he realized that the demon was getting away and decided to eliminate it himself, made a phone call to a courier company to deliver him a weapon that would help him defeat the demon and then, mere seconds after the call, while the demon was making its escape, the courier company's truck arrived at the scene immediately, almost like on cue, slammed against the demon with their truck while it was making its escape and caused to demon to be defeated, just because it was ran over. That was so effective that Shu didn't even need the delivered weapon in the end. That scene was so ridiculous in so many ways I was half expecting for it to be out of a comedy sketch on Robot Chicken. And no, this show is NOT a comedy. It's supposed to be taken seriously, despite scenes like this littered all over. The fact that the main character is so unlikable also doesn't do this show any favors, as he is constantly borrowing money from his current and former girlfriends, wastes that money on gambling and cigarettes and then relies on Kisara to somehow still make dinner for the two of them despite them having almost no money left for food. Seriously, the demon in this show is a better person than her boyfriend. And somehow, Kisara still chooses to forgive him and continue to be enamored with him. Yeah, liking this show is pretty difficult. But, I still persisted. I refused to drop the show yet as this was, ironically, the setup that I've been waiting for, for many months now. A dead weight protagonist like this with so many flaws is incredibly refreshing to watch after so many seasons of consecutive good-guy overpowered protagonists that have little to no identifiable personality traits, no flaws whatsoever, and who are as shallow a character as shallow characters can get. At least Shu felt like a human being in this story, a terrible extremely flawed human but a human nonetheless. The show also makes a point of showcasing many sinful human behaviors: obsession over power, money, sex, compromising one's duties for one's own selfish motives and, believe it or not, all of these will eventually come into play in the plot, later. Shu is a terrible boyfriend by all means and, at some point, even cheats on Kisara as well, but it's later revealed why he does all of this stuff. It's revealed why he's such a husk of a human being and it eventually makes sense. Moreover, he does have one noble goal that is always on his mind: to find out the truth behind a demonic incident that had occurred many years back when he was still a very little child that resulted in both his parents and his younger sister going missing. Ever since, his ultimate goal has been to find out the truth behind that incident, which was covered up by Bayron City's government, while also seeking to find his younger sister, Kanna, who he occasionally still meets in his dreams at night, which leads him to believe that she is still alive somewhere. Along the way, Shu is getting tips from a mysterious anonymous informant that allows him to be at the scene of demonic incidents before any other PMC (whose identity is later revealed as well) and he later realizes that there is a pattern to all of these demonic incidents that he's been handling and that there might be a mastermind coordinating all of them in the background somewhere. And not only this but this mastermind might also be somehow connected to his parents' disappearance many years ago. Couple all of this with a religious nun that appears out of nowhere later on, that also has a connection with Shu's past, and this is a wild story to take in. Make no mistake, there is a LOT of plot in this show. The episodes feel like they are on fast forward most of the time, due to how much plot needs to be crammed in, in each and every single one of them. This show felt from episode one that it wanted to be a romantic comedy ecchi show that had a lot of gratuitous kissing and sex scenes between Shu and Kisara and Ayano. And, had it had the time, I wouldn't put it past it to not devolve itself to that level. But there's just so much story that needs to be shown, so much exposition and world building that has to go into each screen time minute that it just never had the chance to take that route. Instead, what we get is a truly insane action-mystery TV series, that forces our characters into unraveling plots of government conspiracies, figuring out the identity of an insider that's been leaking information to the mastermind, uncovering the entity that's been behind all of this and then dealing with the aftermath of all the demonic incidents that had taken place, which have all been carefully orchestrated by said mastermind to allow for the unlocking of a portal that will unleash demons upon that city and bring about the end of humanity. And yes, Shu's sister is also alive. And she'll play a role in all of this too. Needless to say, this show is not just insane, it's simply unhinged. There's action, there's emotional moments between Shu and Kisara as their relationship is also put to the test many times, there's mystery and then there's also the occasional romantic comedy moments. And sex, there's also a lot of sex. I can't go into any more information without going into spoilers but, suffice it to say, I take every bad thing I said about this show back. It is absolutely worth the watch, at least just to see how absolutely mind melting an anime can slowly become if it decides to go the unhinged route. Every episode is crammed full with plot exposition, incredible well animated action sequences and just an unbelievable amount of suspense. And, while I wouldn't call this a romance in any way, it does have some genuinely heartfelt moments between Shu and Kisara, with an almost heartbreaking moment near the end of the show. And I didn't even cover half the plot with everything that I just wrote about it. If this sounds like your cup of tea, be my guest: try it! If you want your action series to be more grounded into reality, I suggest you give this one a skip though, as the overwhelmingly insane plot will most likely throw you off.

4. The Maid I hired recently is Mysterious

If all of the above entries seemed too insane for your tastes and you want something a bit more grounded into reality, here's a slice of life romance series! Ever heard of the The Great Jahy Will Not Be Defeated! manga? If you had, you should know that this series is based on a manga from the same artist as that one. The story follows a young rich boy named Yuuri who, one day, learns that both of his parents had died in a tragic car accident and that their family's mansion and all of their wealth is now passed down to him. He has no siblings and no relatives close to him to rely on, so he is left alone with all this sudden wealth. Moreover, immediately after the deaths of his parents, all the servants that worked at his mansion and had served his parents, decide to offer their resignations, effectively leaving Yuuri to live by himself in his family's house, with no one else to support him. Yuuri is saddened by all of these events, unsure how to proceed with his life as he is now completely alone. But, thankfully, soon after, a mysterious young maid named Lilith arrives at his mansion's doorstep, out of nowhere, and almost forces herself into his life. She offers to work as a maid for him full time, without demanding any pay for herself. This, naturally, along with the fact that she appeared right after everyone else had left him, makes Yuuri very suspicious of her. This is even further emphasized by the fact that she refuses to provide any reasons for why she wishes to help him in this way. Alas, Yuuri is eventually persuaded by her to allow her to work for him, although he continuously is wary of her presence, always suspecting ulterior motives from her and, sometimes, even spying on her to make sure she doesn't do anything evil behind his back. When I first read the plot synopsis for this show, I genuinely thought that there was an interesting backstory to this mysterious maid, suspecting that she does have ulterior motives of a sinister kind or that there may be some more to this story than first meets the eye. But soon after beginning to watch the show myself, I realized that this was not the case at all. While Yuuri does have good reasons to be suspicious of her and is, initially, very wary of her presence, it's soon revealed that there are no sinister motives behind the maid's actions, at all. She simply wishes to serve Yuuri as his loyal maid, help him with chores around the house, cook delicious meals for him, wash his clothes and provide company and guidance for him, as she is a bit older than him and tries to be a helpful guardian towards him. Yuuri, for his part, slowly begins to fall in love with her, feeling his heart begin to race whenever she's around him, realizing that he's bewitched by her delicious food and even feeling very lonely when she's not around him anymore. Funnily enough, due to his young age, Yuuri always confuses all of these feelings of affection towards her as him being mind controlled by her in some way, as he goes out and accuses her of casting spells on him, but inadvertently revealing that, he, in fact, is attracted to her, much to her embarrassment. And when he confronts her about this, she even further confuses him by cheekily keeping her true intentions vague and not denying any of his accusations, responding with an ambiguous “Who knows?”, which only acts to increase his suspicions of her. This gag is repeated many episodes between them, which, at first, I thought was cute and charming, but eventually this dynamic between them grew old very fast for me. I was getting bored by Yuuri constantly suspecting her of evil intentions, when the episodes clearly showed that he is just a confused little boy that is mislabeling affection and feelings of love, with mind control. Thankfully, the show eventually grows out of this routine and it's revealed that Yuuri does, eventually, grow to trust her more and more as time passes on. Moreover, along with advice from his female best friend and classmate, Tsukasa Gojouin (who is an avid fan of forbidden romance stories and immediately figures out that Yuuri is, in fact, in love with his maid), Yuuri soon learns that his feelings of suspicion are, in fact, feelings of love towards Lilith. And afterwards, he becomes protective and even possessive of his maid, going out of his way to make sure that nobody else takes her away from him. This is a classic love story. I like this show because it's very grounded in reality and has the feelings of romance between the two grow steadily and naturally over the course of its season. Also, I am thankful that the show does eventually provide an explanation for Lilith's desire to serve Yuuri, as it's later revealed that there is a connection between her and Yuuri's family, from the past. And I'm very pleased that Yuuri, despite being very young (his age is never revealed to us but it's heavily implied that he's in middle school), he still manages to sort his feelings out, in the end, and accept that his feelings for Lilith are natural and he should cherish their time together. Other maids will also appear slowly over the course of this show, helping the characters further discover their feelings for each other. Overall, this was just a simple feel-good story. It doesn't have a complex plot, it's very grounded into reality and it explores the wonders of coming of age and coming to terms with one's own feelings. While the show never progressed to the point of advancing Yuuri's and Lilith's relationship too much, by the end, it leaves us off with a satisfying conclusion in which, while Yuuri still didn't fully figure out the true nature of his feelings, he is far more accepting of his affection now and is open to fully allowing Lilith into his life as more than just a maid. Personally, I found this to be a very charming and innocent story of growth of love between two people. And the ending felt appropriate and pleasant, giving a satisfying conclusion to a short story. It's a timeless tale of love that is family friendly and easily accessible to anyone, of any age. It is a humble story with not that many plot twists but, in the end, a good story doesn't need to be complex or exciting all the time. Sometimes, the best stories are the straightforward ones.

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