The Maid I Hired Recently Is Mysterious

Episode 2

After the first episode, I was a little bit worried that The Maid I Hired Recently had run its central gimmick into the ground. But while the beats of the jokes and the timing of the punchlines all feel very familiar to me, I was also caught off guard by some of the things said in this episode, and I do like the reversal where our main character unknowingly catches his maid off guard when she attempts to tease him.

However, this episode did make me wonder if Yuuri is genuinely aware of some of the things that he is saying or implying. It's one thing to confuse your infatuation with somebody as witchcraft. That sounds like something that a kid would reasonably do. But Yuuri goes so far as to declare that he wants to marry his maid and directly confront the fact that she has a lot of love for him, and given the inflection with which these declarations were spoken, I can't help but take him seriously even if the show frames things otherwise. I also assume that he's not flustering her on purpose even though he's also displaying a reasonable amount of perception. If The Maid I Hired Recently is going to up the ante with Yuuri turning the table on Lilith, then it needs to have better follow-ups to those situations than just resetting everything after the gag, as it does make everything feel a lot more shallow than I think it wants to be.

Having said that, I do have to give props to how carefully the show is handling the mystery surrounding Lilith's identity and objectives. It's clear that she has money and probably doesn't need to work as a maid since she's buying Yuuri new clothes and even a new game console. That would also explain why she wasn't too worried about pay – she's primarily taken this job as a way to be close to Yuuri. She's clearly in love with this boy, but whether that's familial or romantic in nature has yet to fully be determined. It does get my mind moving a bit and makes me curious to learn more, so at the very least I appreciate the thoughtfulness there. That said, I hope that the show relies less on its central gimmick moving forward and starts leaning more into developing its mystery and characters because I truly think that's where the heart of the story is going to be.

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The Maid I Hired Recently Is Mysterious is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.