Tag: VRV

ANIME REVIEW: Indian Summer

Today’s review is aimed at our readers who may want to get into the spirit of Maid May along with us here at Anime Obscura, but who may not have a lot of free time. We get it… life is short, work is long, and sometimes even a 12-episode series can feel like a heavy lift. That’s why today we’re profiling Indian Summer, a three-episode OVA about an anime maid that you can knock out in an hour and a half without it even feeling like a binge.

Indian Summer presents us with a sci-fi, near-future world where life is much like it is right now, only advances in artificial intelligence and robotics have allowed the creation of functioning, thinking android robots that people can purchase. The story begins when Takaya Murase goes shopping for such a robot at the retailer Maid Works, intending to purchase a “pet-style” robot hardwired to be dedicated to his pleasure. Instead, though, his eye gets caught by a blonde “domestic-maid” style robot, and he takes her home. As it turns out, Murase is a huge otaku with a gigantic doll collection, and his intentions for his new maid are a bit perverse while not being nearly as perverse as they could have been: he just wants to constantly dress her up in new clothes and cosplay that he sews. Still, for this maid robot who just wanted to live a life of honest work doing domestic chores, it’s a lot to stomach.

She gradually warms to her young master after he gives her a name – Yui – and makes several gestures of kindness that slowly make her fall for him. However, this is definitely a case of “two steps forward, one step back,” as it’s only a matter of time until Murase commits some new offense to drive her patience past the breaking point. During the remainder of the series, the two meet and befriend an expanding cast of neighborhood weirdos. These include Minori, a tomboyish cafe waitress who leans into her identity as this anime’s busty fan service character; Ayumi and Kanae, a daughter and mother who seem to be constantly losing one another; and Kuon, another maid robot who is unable to find a master for some reason despite seeming objectively perfect. What ensues is a little drama, a lot of comedy, and a ton of randomness.

The first thing I want to talk about regarding Indian Summer may sound like a negative, but it’s more of a neutral (but important) observation: if you ask me, the most remarkable thing about this anime is that it exists at all, especially in the West. For all kinds of reasons, this anime feels like something that the market never asked for, either right now or at the time of its release. It was based off a short manga of the same name (Indian Summer / Koharu Biyori) written by Takehito Mizuki that received four volumes in Japan and only kinda-sorta got a US release, with the North American manga license being kicked around between small publishers ComicsOne and DrMaster and only having one or two volumes published. The anime’s Western release was a legacy of the final era of prolific American anime publisher ADV Films, during a time when they were feverishly snapping up every anime license they could get their hands on, right before the big anime market implosion of 2008-2010 took them out. Indian Summer released in 2008 and was one of ADV’s final titles. When ADV went under, it was transferred to their main successor company, Section23 / Sentai Filmworks, where it has remained ever since.

The format also makes this series a bit of an oddity in its time. The heyday of the short OVA series was during the early home video boom of the 1990s, when the VHS tape medium made short, self-contained adaptations of manga that could fit on a single video tape an affordable, appealing, and popular item for anime enthusiasts. However, Indian Summer came out in Japan in 2007, long after this boom ended and the market moved on to favoring 13 episode TV series or single movies. On top of that, its three episodes are all subdivided into two 15-minute segments each, a further deviation from the industry norm. So, with Indian Summer, we somehow got a license that was based off a relatively unknown manga, in an unpopular format, in the niche “anime maid” subcategory with a weird sense of humor, released in America by a company on the verge of dissolution… and yet it’s survived down to the present as an easily-streamable viewing experience. That begs the next important question: does that make us lucky or unlucky?

For the most part, I’d say we’re fortunate to still have Indian Summer. The most important question to answer with a comedy anime is whether or not it makes you laugh, and Indian Summer can be pretty damn hilarious. Yui’s innocence in the ways of the world can make for some really funny moments, with the episode where she gets tasked with watching a baby being easily one of my favorites. Watching her deal with changing a diaper was great, and so were her attempts to commune with the baby by dressing up like a toddler, to everyone else’s discomfort. This series is really good at subverting expectations for comedic effect, and it often bumps right against the edge of being transgressive without ever crossing the line into outright cringe. There isn’t a ton of time or space for the characters to develop within the series, but the cast as a whole is sweet and likable, and the style of most of the humor is good-natured.

This short series also gets thumbs-up from me in the production values standpoint. The visuals are a bit cartoonish to go along with its silly vibe, but the animation tends to be nice and fluid within that framework. I also thought the colors in this show were vibrant and bright. The series has a fair amount of ecchi moments, and these tend to be teasing and playful in a pleasant way rather than getting too uncomfortable. The character models are appealing, though I have to knock them a bit for all being a bit same-ish… their body types differ, but you almost could have face-swapped most of the female characters with no one noticing.

On the audio, this anime is subbed-only, but the subtitled voices are very well done. I’d single out Yui’s voice actress, Eri Kitamura, as doing a particularly great job. (Looking at her resume, she’s a prolific and experienced voice actress, so no surprise there.) The background music is fine without being remarkable, and the ending theme is sweet and makes for easy listening. The opening theme, is… uh… different. By that, I mean it’s damn weird. It reminds me of the opening to Kill Me Baby in terms of sounding kind of dissonant and strange on purpose, but thankfully it’s less grating on the ears than that opening. To give credit where credit’s due, it’s memorable. Murase painting kanji on the girl’s stomachs before launching them into the title screen and Yui’s strange opening spiel about “maido-bravo!” and the chorus of “helpu-meeee!” are something about this anime that always sticks in my brain more than its plot.

Lastly, I should mention that I appreciate Indian Summer for filling a bit of a void in the “short anime” niche. I’m one of those “working people without a ton of spare time” I mentioned in the opening paragraph, and sometimes it’s nice to watch a series that can be quickly and easily finished within a single day or two. However, with Indian Summer’s high randomness quotient, I would actually suggest taking it at an episode per day… which would still only take you three days.

In terms of negatives, that very randomness is probably my chief complaint about this anime. For a series that doesn’t have a lot of time to work with in the first place, it sure squanders a lot of it on strange tangents and gags that don’t really go anywhere. As probably the most glaring example, a full half of the final episode is an alternate-world joke that has nothing to do with the rest of the show. That’s time that could have been spent building toward a heartfelt or dramatic climax rather than cramming what we got of that into just 15 minutes. I realize that this is almost certainly a reflection of the manga it was based on, but the anime adaptation had an opportunity to give its source material a bit more direction and sense of plot-momentum like He Is My Master did. Honestly, part of me almost wishes this 3-episode show had chosen to be a 90-minute movie instead, loosely adapting the manga’s plot points to a single running story with a little more drama and direction while retaining its silly vibe.

Even so, I can appreciate Indian Summer for what it is and what’s doing. This silly anime is unpretentious in the extreme – it just wants to make you laugh with comedy of the naughty-silly variety delivered in short and energetic bursts, and it accomplishes that rather well. I doubt it’s going to top anyone’s list of favorite anime ever, but it’s a fun one to visit, and the short runtime makes it an easy one to come back to if it appeals to you. Indian Summer can be streamed in its entirety on HiDive or VRV. It received physical DVD releases from both ADV and Sentai Filmworks, and while both editions are now out of print, they are still very inexpensive on the used market at the time of this review.

Three anime maid series down, but Maid May is only half-over! Stick around, masters and mistresses, and we’ll see what else we can serve you with.

ANIME REVIEW: Hanaukyo Maid Team: La Verite

They say “nothing succeeds like excess,” a mantra that the anime maid subgenre seems to fully embrace. After all, the general idea behind the trope is a wish fulfillment fantasy about being fantastically rich (rich enough to afford live-in servants) and having at least one of those servants be a devoted, sweet girl who wants to take care of you. In a nutshell, traditional maid anime are about having it all. However, one maid anime stands above the rest in terms of pushing excess to its furthest limits. It’s Hanaukyo Maid Team: La Verite, and it’s this week’s anime review as Maid May continues here at Anime Obscura.

Before I get into the review itself, there’s some interesting history behind this anime and why it has the subheading “La Verite” (“The Truth / The True”). As a franchise, Hanaukyo Maid Team has been cursed with incredibly lousy luck, especially here in the West. It began as a manga by a Japanese husband-wife team under the pen name Morishige, and that manga was popular enough to merit an anime adaptation. However, the original Hanaukyo Maid Team anime (Hanaukyo Maid Tai) was plagued by production problems and quality control issues, and it was canceled after just fifteen 15-minute episodes. The series was rebooted under a new production studio as Hanaukyo Maid Team: La Verite, the anime we’re reviewing today, with considerably better results. However, the HMT curse seemed to repeat itself for releases in North America. The first three volumes of the manga were released by the small manga publisher Studio Ironcat, only to be canceled when that company went bankrupt. Hanaukyo Maid Team: La Verite was released by Geneon in its entirety in 2005, but that company also folded just two years later. Sentai Filmworks later picked up the rights to the series in North America and still retains them today without having gone bankrupt, a safe run of over a decade that I think proves the Hanaukyo Maid jinx didn’t carry on into the 2010s or beyond.

… Whew! In short, Hanaukyo Maid Team’s luck as a franchise has been about as bad as its protagonist’s luck was good. Speaking of ol’ Taro, let’s get into the story.

Taro Hanaukyo is a teenage boy who knows his life is about to change in a big way after his mother’s death. In accordance with his mom’s last wishes, he prepares to move in with his grandfather, who he has never met. However, Taro discovers to his shock that his grandfather is one of the richest men in Japan and owns a gigantic estate. Moreover, old Hokusai is also apparently an eccentric (and likely a bit of a pervert) who insists that his vast staff all be lovely young women wearing maid uniforms. They are the Hanaukyo Maid Team, a group which includes not only traditional domestic maids, but chefs, gardeners, security guards, scientists, inventors, accountants – everything the Hanaukyo family might ever need to remain fabulously wealthy, secure, and comfortable. There’s literally a maid for every aspect of daily life, including more questionable activities like bathing and getting dressed. There are also three nubile identical triplets who serve as the master’s “bedwarmers,” a role that is exactly as wholesome and innocent as it probably sounds.

In a final twist, Taro’s grandfather gave him the Willy Wonka treatment by departing the mansion right before his arrival and making Taro the new head of the family. The maids are beyond excited to meet and pamper their new master… to a degree that’s borderline dangerous to his physical and mental health. Thankfully, Taro is a humble lad with a good heart and a chill spirit, and with the help of several key maids, he takes to his new life like a duck to admittedly-troubled water.

Taro is an interesting character in that he ought to be contemptible, but he really isn’t. Even by the low standards expected of a harem anime lead, Taro is a total wimp. He’s supposedly in his late teens, but looks like he’s in elementary school, and he virtually never stands up for himself or puts his foot down when the situation gets out of hand. He can also be a bit whiny at times. Still, it’s hard to hate the guy because he’s neither a lech nor an absolute crybaby. Taro has a nearly invincible level of chill and humility, and – perhaps I’m revealing a bias here as a working adult I wouldn’t have shared as a teenager – Taro quickly reveals himself to be a damn good boss. He shows his staff of maids trust, respect, and deference, and he forgives them and helps them improve when they screw up. Altogether, the kid is all right.

As an anime, Hanaukyo Maid Team: La Verite follows the tried and true formula of “Introduction, Exploration of Cast with Character-Centered Episodes, Final Dramatic Arc, Conclusion”. Thankfully, the largest of these sections – the character episodes – are buoyed by an excellent supporting cast, most of whom bend traditional tropes just a bit. We have the strict, samurai-like head of security, Konowe, who is probably the most traditional of this anime’s characters, but a well-realized one. There’s also Konowe’s subordinate Yashima, a lovestruck lesbian with heart-eyes for her boss who happens to be a really cute dark-skinned anime girl as a great bonus. (Not sure if she’s supposed to be of Indian, African, or Polynesian extraction, but whatever her ethnicity, Yashima is adorable.)

Rounding out the cast further is Ikuyo-chan, the mansion’s resident mad scientist and probably its chief troublemaker. Ikuyo is a major geek and an aspiring manga artist, but her penchants for strange inventions and trolling people with false rumors are her main contributions to the mansion’s chaos. There’s also Ryuuka Jihiou, the visiting and nutty rich girl whose family is almost as wealthy as Taro’s, and the afore-mentioned “bedwarmer” triplets Lemon, Marron, and Melon, whose chief joy in life is attempting to seduce their boss.

Probably my favorite character in the whole series is Cynthia/Grace, a girl who possesses enormous talent but is burdened with a multiple personality disorder. I’m a sucker for stories of people whose dissociative identities get along either really poorly or really well as they try to navigate their daily lives, and while I won’t reveal how that plays out with this character, I do feel like it was handled thoughtfully and well in her case. Finally, we have the chief maid, Mariel, who is also Taro’s main love interest in the series. I initially felt Mariel’s demure and obliging personality made her disappointingly boring for a main heroine, but some of the later episodes reveal some secrets about her past that make both her and those traits considerably more interesting in retrospect.

From left to right: Cynthia/Grace, Mariel, Taro, and Ikuyo

As a point of observation, it’s important for potential viewers to know that the second episode rather than the first sets the tone for the rest of the series. Hanaukyo Maid Team is one of those anime that opens on a rather lewd note to hook the attention of viewers who are here for that kind of material, but at its core, this anime is much, much more heartwarming than it is pervy. Sure, Taro’s maids arguably constitute one of the largest anime “harems” of all of time, and Lemon, Marron, and Melon routinely throw their bodies at him, but romance and sex are not at the heart of this show or even at its forefront. The vast majority of it is about Taro and his staff of maids coming to appreciate each other as people in the platonic sense, and the number of them who are “after” Taro in a serious, romantic way arguably ranges between one to three, depending on how you interpret the girls’ intentions. Even among those who “like-like” him, most are subtle in their pursuit. Both the dramatic parts of this anime and its comedy aspects are well-executed, and while it won’t be everyone’s thing, the quality of the writing is higher than you might expect given the premise.

From a production values standpoint, Hanaukyo Maid Team: La Verite is extremely average – perhaps just a touch below average in the visual department. The character designs are nice, with goofy facial expressions sometimes being a high point. However, the animation itself is pretty lackluster and comes across as quite dated. Even compared to its competitors from the early 2000s, HMT doesn’t look great. (It’s not hideous – just “adequate” in an unimpressive sort of way.) However, there was a really bizarre exception to this. I am almost certain that Episode 11 of this series was animated by a completely different team than the rest of the series, and perhaps even by a different production company. Where we had been seeing minimal animation and a lot of “flat” shots with the camera facing forward-facing characters, we were suddenly treated to tons of odd and distorted angles, a lot more animation, and cartoonish facial expressions out the wazoo. On the negative side, several characters are drawn strangely in parts of this episode, especially some shots of Konowe where her face looks half-melted. To put it in context, imagine if a single episode of a series like Fruits Basket had been handed over to a new team to animate it in the style of FLCL or Kill La Kill.

I’m not certain what happened here, but I do have a theory. That episode was unusually action-packed compared to the entire rest of the series, and it’s possible that either the normal animation team had a panic attack and asked for outside assistance, or the production company overseeing them decided in advance (or after the fact, but prior to airing) that a different team’s services were required to do this episode justice. In any case, the old animation team was back to wrap things up for the epilogue in Episode 12. The one-off episode wasn’t a bad choice – in fact, it came across as a visual improvement except for the few odd shots of Konowe – but it’s another notch in the “damn, HMT had a weird and troubled production history” saga.

This terrifying front-door peephole shot is brought to you courtesy of Episode 11…

Hanaukyo Maid Team: La Verite fares slightly better in the musical and audio department than in the visual one. The background music for the series tends toward the classical and orchestral side of things, matching the anime’s gentle spirit and aristocratic vibe very nicely. The ending tune, “We’ll Serve You,” is sung by Lemon, Marron, and Melon and has a slightly jazzy vibe that I enjoyed quite a bit. I’m more on the fence regarding the opening tune, “Voice of the Heart”. It’s very sweet and matches the tone of the series, but it’s also a bit nostalgic and slow, making for a lethargic introduction to each episode. Typically, anime openings tend to be punchy, driving, and energetic to get viewers excited, and ending themes are emotional and slower. HMT essentially got that formula backwards. Again, both are good songs, but I wish it had switched them or come up with something that conveyed more excitement for the opener.

I should also mention that the English dub for this series (done by Geneon) is excellent. Geneon dubs have a bit of a mixed track record for me, sometimes coming across as being a bit low-energy, but that isn’t a problem here. The sweet characters sound sweet, the wacky characters are appropriately energetic, and the performances in general are quite good. I started singling out some English VAs as exceptional when first writing this review, but I soon realized my list encompassed more than half of the cast!

From left to right: Ikuyo, Yashima, Konowe, Cynthia/Grace, Ryuuka

I won’t lie to you and tell you that Hanaukyo Maid Team: La Verite is an all-time anime classic or top-tier, “must-watch” viewing material. It’s simply too average in too many ways to merit that level of praise. Nevertheless, it’s an anime I do recommend giving a try if you like the comedy genre because it was thoroughly pleasant to watch. This anime has a sweet core, it gets a lot of things right on the comedy side, and I thought its cast was interesting and likable. It also has a great final arc with much more drama than I would have thought this series capable of generating at the outset. While this last point won’t apply to all viewers, I also found this series strangely nostalgic despite viewing it for the first time this year. It’s very representative of the kinds of anime I was watching in high school in early 2000s that got me hooked on this medium in the first place, and it’s a fine example of a series done right from that era.

Watching Hanaukyo Maid Team today is easy enough, as the series can be streamed on either HiDive or VRV. However, if you’re a physical media collector, this one could be a big headache to procure. This anime was released twice on DVD, first by Geneon in a three-volume set, and then by Sentai Filmworks in a single “complete collection” set. Both are out of print and shockingly expensive, with a complete version of either release commanding prices of $50-120 USD on eBay at the time of this review. No Blu-ray of the series has ever been released. Because it is so pricey for a used release, I would recommend collectors only go after this one after you have already watched the whole series and ascertained whether or not it’s worth that kind of price tag to you. If you’re a completionist, want a more affordable physical memento of the series, or just loved this anime and count yourself a big fan, there was also a soundtrack CD released by Geneon back in the day that isn’t half-bad and is considerably cheaper than the anime itself.

In any case, Hanaukyo Maid Team is good fun. Even if it isn’t a top-tier anime, it’s perhaps the ultimate example and last word in maid anime, and here at Anime Obscura, we’ll take off our frilly French maid bonnet and curtsy to that accomplishment any day.