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Kazuya is your average computer nerd, slaving away at his computer day in and day out, in-between interruptions from his voluptuous neighbor, Kasumi, who may or may not have a thing for him. However, his quiet world is about to change when his best friend/greatest enemy, the super annoying Nanbara (every harem anime needs one super annoying character, it seems), sends Kazuya a virus that, when activated, orders an extremely expensive CBD Doll and has it sent to Kazuya’s apartment. She cooks, she cleans, she shops, she’s 1/6th Kazuya’s size. She is Hand Maid May!
One of the problems with this series has nothing to do with the creators, and more to do with Pioneer, the American distributor. The westernized translation is so-so, with many phrases and cultural jokes either mistranslated, or over-translated. The Japanese honorifics (suffixes to names) chan, sama, dono, san, and other suffixes just don’t translate well into English, it seems.
The sama honorific, for instance, is translated as Miss, Mr, Princess, Queen, or not translated at all. This can be a bit annoying, but regardless of these distractions, Hand Maid May is a real treat. It’s your standard Comedy/Ecchi/Harem anime, and everything in it has been done before. However, I’ve come to realize that it doesn’t really matter how many variations of the same type of anime you’ve seen before, as long as the one you’re watching has been done well.
Hand Maid May is blessed with absolutely beautiful character designs. The series follows the standard for harem anime, with the majority of the cast being women who all end up living with the male lead. The women are drawn beautifully, and with great attention to detail. With only 10 episodes in which to develop nearly a dozen characters, the beauty of the women is a fair substitute for character development, allowing us to care about them without clogging up what little screen time they have with back-story. Then again, all but 1 of the women in Hand Maid May are recently activated robots, so a deep and involving back-story isn’t possible anyway. Since most of Hand Maid May takes place inside or around Kazuya’s apartment, the animators were free to add a lot of small touches and details to the few backgrounds that were needed for each episode, resulting in plenty of eye candy to see besides the attractive robots.
The opening music, as well as the opening animation, are pleasant and cheerful, though not quite good enough to bother sitting through them in each episode. I hate to admit it, but while there may have been music during Hand Maid May’s 10 episodes, I have no memory of it. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, since I also have no memory of any scene that needed music but didn’t have any, or of any scene that had inappropriate or out-of-place music. The sound effects I did notice, done cheerfully and energetically, with amusing sounds used for the many pratfalls and slapstick humor.
I’m beginning to notice a pattern in harem anime male leads. Male lead characters in harem anime are not developed to any real extent. A wimp in the first episode will likely still be a wimp in the 26th episode, with the only change being the amount of women hanging onto him. Another thing I’ve noticed is that this hardly matters. What matters is that we like the main character, not that he’s developed at all.
This same question came up in a recent discussion of Elfen Lied, a series which could be considered a harem anime with a very dark and violent tone. The male lead in Elfen Lied, a character named Kouta, has received a lot of complaints in reviews and in IRC chat rooms for being boring and underdeveloped. I agree with this assessment. Kouta IS boring, and underdeveloped, but he’s also likable, which is what really matters. Perhaps the main reason for male leads in harem anime having so little development is because the creators know that the men who watch these series are mentally going to supplant themselves into the drivers seat anyway. Part of the thrill of watching a harem anime is imagining yourself in the main characters shoes, surrounded by all these beautiful women who are in love with him.
Hand Maid May has a very likable cast of characters. May herself is energetic and eager to please. Imagine Chobits, but with Somomo as the main female lead. Sara, the vixen of the group, is sexy and amusing as a CBD doll who begins the series as a collection agent attempting to retrieve May, ending up as one of Kazuya’s female satellites. Rena is the cliché “cute and adorable” character, a staple of any harem anime. Kasumi is the female neighbor who, surprisingly, breaks from the cliché by not beating Kazuya to a pulp whenever they meet, or screaming “baka!” at him whenever she fails to confess her love. Characters are continually being introduced, episode-by-episode, all the way up through episode 7, making me wish there had been another 10 episodes in which to watch them at play.
The story is a simple one. May comes to live with Kazuya, cooking, cleaning, and slowly falling in love with him. Through random chance and circumstance, new CBD dolls come to live with Kazuya, one after another. This is all done with humor, joy, and heavy helpings of innocent (and not-so-innocent) ecchi. The final 2 episodes get a little darker than I would have liked, but the series ends well regardless, with a big picnic that walks us through each character. Make sure to continue watching after the ending credits in episode 10 for some extra goodies!
Hand Maid May does not break the stereotypes of its genres. Instead, it embraces them, ecstatically, and with great fervor. It’s fun, cheerful, and while the ending makes little sense, I didn’t much care, because the comedy and ecchi never stopped coming. Similar to series such as Ah My Goddess TV, even the direst of moments are broken with sudden sparks of slapstick humor. In short, watching Hand Maid May is a fun way to spend a lazy and cloudy summer afternoon.
