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No. 37398
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I put off watching it because I wasn't keen on the violence and watching cute girls get killed, but I think for anyone who might feel that way the first ep deals with that about as perfectly as they can. They blow things so far over the top in the initial fight that it's impossible to take serious, and it's a clear indicator that you shouldn't think too hard about it. Besides, it seems like everyone that gets killed has it coming anyway.
The whole thing would fall apart if you thought too much about any of it anyway. It's an interesting concept for sure, it's basically a Yakuza story with maid cafes instead of families. The cafes themselves are like fronts, sending a cut of the profits to the families that these cafes belong to, and getting into it with rival families.
I think the "war" part of the tittle is a bit misleading, you could say there's some small turf war stuff and issues with a rival faction, but it's mostly about a small cafe that gets into trouble with it's new recruits, and how things spiral out of control from there.
Some possible spoilers here:
Early on I found it a bit weird how ep1 ends with our protagonist wanting to run away after learning the true nature of maid cafes and surviving what by all accounts should be a traumatic and terrifying experience, by ep2 she's mostly okay with it and all it takes is a very short pep talk from a stranger to make her want to stick it out. It felt like a bit of a jarring transition. In retrospect I'd wonder how she wouldn't know what maids are really like in this universe, since it's apparently a known thing to a degree in the public, at least by the end of the series anyway.
I guess that's just one of many ".....whatever!" type moments in this, which there's a lot of. I wouldn't really call it lazy writing so much as you just need to suspend your disbelief, since it's a fairly silly concept to start with. That said, it does feel a bit sloppy here and there, and could certainly have been better in a lot of places, but it does seem to get better as things go along. It's like everything ramps up by the end.
One thing I felt could have been done a lot better was the introduction of Zoya in ep3. They dump her entire backstory into the same ep she shows up in, and from then on has absolutely nothing to do for the rest of the series and contributes almost nothing. She could have been a one off character and nothing would have changed. Not only that, Ranko was set up as the muscle of the group, and Zoya basically takes away much of her agency. She probably would have worked better as a rival character for Ranko working at another cafe since they set that up in her intro but never went anywhere with it. Shiipon and Yumechi don't really get flushed out much either but they seem fine as just the normal/average maids that have been working there for a while and are settled in. The manager is great in every scene they're in and deliver some really well executed humor. I really felt for Ranko, she's a really tragic character for someone that gets introduced as just a trigger happy muscle, but man I really wish she could have had a happier ending. I complained about Zoya taking away some of Ranko's stick, but by the end she does give that status back pretty much a background ghost and lets ranko get the spotlight for a while there, only by that point all the maids basically turned into trained ass kickers. It's a bit weird because for the first half they give off the impression the characters in our main cafe are just a handful of normal girls trying to get by and keep their heads down in a line of work they know is really really bad, with ranko showing up fresh out of prison to stir the pot. Then lastly there's Nagomi, the protagonist. An all around good girl. She stumbled a bit but in the end stayed true to what maids should really be, and it seems strongly implied she's the main reason maids stopped being violent gangsters, by basically being a good person from start to finish. She's something of a tragic character in some ways too, but things could have gone a lot worse for her it seems. Oh and as for Okachimachi, fuck Okachimachi.
Overall, it started off really silly episodic and dumb fun, but as it went on it gets easy to become a bit more attached to the characters and sympathies with their plight as things start getting more and more serious. It feels like a very natural escalation that kind of eases you into this world. It's fun but bitter sweet too. A lot of it is hammed up a little too much, some of the deaths are awkwardly done, and The world makes little sense but that doesn't mater.
it was as >>36914 said, a fun ride.
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