Servant x Service - Reviews

too lengthy for me. everything was dragged out till the very end but not bad still cute 

It's okay. Very middling. Boring at times, slow too. But also cute.

A-1 Picture’s 2013 slice-of-life comedy is a nice diversion from the norm with the setting being a work environment. Not for this story anything remotely glamourous either… All the action takes place in a Japanese civil service “ward” office. The sort of place people go to get marriage & birth certificates. The office is manned by the civil servants of the title, and kicks off with the joining of three new recruits: Lucy Yamagami, Yutaka Hasebe and Saya Miyoshi. The story is densely packed with multiple threads, making it hard to summarise the plot, but it can be boiled down to office romance. Hasebe is a true renaissance man. He is good at everything he does, is gifted and extremely bright, yet he is under-motivated and lazy. He has the hots for Lucy yet she cannot take his advances seriously because of her extremely low self-esteem. Her problem is that she has an irrational hang-up about her (more than) sixteen middle-names. (Yes! Really!) Apparently, her mother and father could not choose a name so decide to go with all of them. Lucy has been teased through her school career about the excess names and is now very sensitive about it. She is after revenge. Rather than take the matter up with her parents she has joined the civil service office where the registrar filled out her birth certificate. She blames the registrar believing that he should have prevented her parents from using all the names. Yes, this is an extremely silly plot angle but it drives much of her story and motivation.

Their boss Taishi Ichimiya is secretly dating co-worker Megumi Chihaya. She has a thing for cosplay and spends her time trying to get other female characters into revealing risqué costumes. Ichimiya is plagued by his little sister, high schooler Touhko Ichimiya, who regularly turns up at the office to make everyone’s life hell. Meanwhile Miyoshi has a regular client Mrs Tanaka, a chatty grandmother who is angling to get the girl into marriage arrangements with her grandson. And so on, and so on… It is crazy as hell and a lot of fun to watch. The characters are all well formed with a ton of back-story each. Everyone is larger-than life and none more so than the team’s section head who is a remotely operated animatronic stuffed toy. Yes, really. The story flies by with the many plot-lines flowing around each other in a sophisticated fashion. It never bores and the audience should not tire of these office shenanigans. The timing and pace of events is all spot-on. If only real-life office work was quite this much fun. We are all left wanting more but one season is all we get of a show adapted from the manga (2007 to 2014) written and illustrated by Karino Takatsu. The critics were not kind yet this story is far more entertaining and funnier than their criticisms implied. It is certainly worth a spin if you are up for some more adult-orientated office humour.

Servant x Service starts out slow, but the characters and the relationships between them create a story that's so sweet you might get cavities. I especially liked the relationship between the main couple, Lucy and Hasebe. They were so adorable! I loved watching him transform from an irresponsible playboy who asks her out for fun to someone who really cares about her. There's also plenty of comedy from the supporting cast. How often do you find (even in anime) a manager who's a stuffed rabbit? 10/10 would watch again. 

        This is a spoilers-free review of Servant x Service. 
        
        Servant x Service is a manga-adapted, slice-of-life (hereby referred to as SOL) genre anime that ran for 13 episodes. It was produced by A-1 Pictures, whom would be recognizable from another major SOL anime work, Working!! or Wagnaria!!. This anime and Working!! share too many smiliarities to count, from animation style to character design to other tropes, but the animation studio did a good job not making the two animes carbon copies of each other. So in other words, if you liked Working!!, you will like this anime; if you end up liking Servant x Service, you will likely enjoy Working!!.

       Since this is a SOL anime, it can be easy to dismiss this anime as having no story. That viewpoint has the miscrepancy of totally missing out on well-formed romance and comedy elements found in this anime. Servant x Service is no rom-com by classification alone, but it might remind you of one. The story is about the ridiculous pursuit of love, revenge, and business, though with a extremely laidback tone. Since the whole setting of the story is in the welfare office with all the workers and clients, you get a unique setting compared to most conventional anime. While Working!! is also in a work setting, the tone of this anime in terms of humor is much more relaxed (and to some, might not feel forced at all). Since the setting is more commonplace per se, it is easy to feel like you are standing in the office with the other characters, becuase it is just that relatable.

      Speaking of those characters, they are well-crafted, unique, and charming in the roleplay of this anime. While the story revolves around the arrival of three new recruits to the office, there are more characters gradually introduced. Despite this, you'll be amazed how much A-1 Pictures was able to do with a cast of only about 7 or 8 consistent characters. And the design and development of these characters is just amazing! The main character, Lucy, is a sexually-oblivious bookworm who came to the office for revenge. Other notable ones include a robotic plush toy, a tsundere obsessed with welfare laws, and much more unique traits in all the rest of the cast. I enjoyed pretty much all of them, and each one was given attention in the overall story's plot, so nobody feels too undeveloped as a person. Plus, since it is literally an office, you get the viewing pleasure of office romances unfolding more and more as you watch. 

     Now lets talk design. Production quality as a whole from a 2013 season anime is pretty solid. The characters and backgrounds are well drawn and filled in, and the animation is smooth and consistent. If you happened to watch Working!! beforehand, you will notice some major positive differences in production quality by comparison. The sound is pretty simple; sound effects are not used often, and the music is reused over somewhat frequently. This not is not the type of anime to watch for sound quality! However, the OP is fantastically catchy, and I did really enjoy the well-done visuals of the OP as well.

     My only crtique aside from average sound quality is that this really is the type of anime that is short. Don't get me wrong; the pacing is slow enough that you won't feel rushed, so don't worry too much about the pacing. Regardless, there is only 13 episodes, and even though story and romance development was excellent, I wish there was even just two or three episodes more to extrapolate further. It is a minor gripe though, since in reality most of the story's objectives were completed on time and wrapped up with a bow in the end.

   If you are looking for a relaxing and charming SOL to watch that is not too long but very satisfying, check out Servant x Service. If you are holed up in an office all the time, you might either think it is relevant or that it is like being at work. But if you truly liked it, then do check out Working!!, which is similar in many ways.