Welcome home, Master! – It is the siren call of the Victorian anime maid that is so long beloved in anime. They are keeping house, fighting off assassins, fighting yakuza wars, but always at the door ready to greet those that they serve.
Who can say for sure why Japan has such a lasting love affair with maids even long after the culture they come from have moved on from them. Maybe it is the frilly uniforms, maybe it is the subservience, though probably a bit of both if maid aficionados are honest. I like to think that it is because maids just really tickle the imagination. Regardless, maids are alive and well in anime.
If you share a passion for maids and are looking for more anime recommendations prominently featuring maids, head on down below.
Best Maid Anime
Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid
Maids have always been lurking around anime on the periphery, but Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid brought them back into a spotlight in modern anime for a bit.
This series follows an office lady who, while out drinking, wanders into a forest and saves a dragon by pulling out a sword. The next day, she finds that dragon on her doorstep, dressed as a maid, and ready to serve.
While the series focuses on the relationship between this dragon maid and her normal master, it also focuses on other dragons who have made their home among the humans as well. All of them a little quirky and all of them comical. However, what you don’t expect from this comedy series is for it to turn into a lovely family-type series with a family unit build between the office lady, her dragon maid, and a very young dragon that lives with them.
Akiba Maid War
Maids in anime are rarely ever just maids. They are often something else as well. Akiba Maid War takes full advantage of that by focusing on a rundown maid cafe in Akihabara, capital of maid cafes.
Instead of just following a maid cafe in a competitive market of maid cafes, Akiba Maid Cafe frames its story as maid cafes that act like yakuza families. This means guns, violence, and an intimidating attitude to everyone but customers. It is nothing short of amazing to watch a maid flip the switch from “woman who would beat you to death with a bat and spit on your body” to “woman who would cheerfully welcome you home and cast a magic spell over your omelet rice” like they do in the series.
Akiba Maid Cafe is an experience, and probably the best yakuza anime you’ll ever watch.
Class President is a Maid
If you enjoy your anime romantic comedies, Class President is a Maid is one of the more beloved entries, and it also happens to be maid-themed.
This series follows a recently co-ed school where the female class president rose up to her station by being tough enough to keep rowdy boys in line. However, she has a secret. She helps support her family by working after school at a maid cafe.
The cuteness of her maid persona and the strictness of her school persona don’t exactly work well together, which means it is a big problem when a popular boy discovers where she works and starts hanging around. However, he keeps her secret and the pair grow closer.
Emma
As I mentioned before, a maid in anime is rarely ever just a maid. They are assassins, bodyguards, or even dragons. Emma is for those that want that classic maid experience. Those that want an anime that follows a maid in the era where maids were common – Victorian Era England.
The series follows the titular Emma who works as a maid for a governess and ends up falling in love with a man above her station. The man loves her back, but his family is new nobility, and him marrying below his station would be a serious faux pas. This means there is nothing but opposition to their relationship, but love is complicated like that.
Emma ends up as a lovely period romance that enjoys the classic period drama tropes in an anime wrapper.
The Duke of Death and His Maid
This series follows a young noble who kills every living thing that he touches after being inflicted with a curse. To keep everyone safe, he is sent to live in a mansion in the forest with his elderly butler and a beautiful young maid that has served his family since she was a child.
In their seclusion, the maid enjoys teasing her master who refuses to touch her. This teasing eventually grows into a shared love between them, spurring the young noble to learn how to break his curse.
While this sounds like a lovely romance – and it is – the series enjoys more focus on the comical teasing than progression towards breaking the curse. However, it does turn from fun teasing-based romance to a more serious supernatural anime as it goes on.
Mahoromatic
Mahoromatic follows a combat android who was built to secretly fight alien invaders. However, she is getting to the end of her lifespan. If she doesn’t fight, she could live for up to a year. To live out her remaining days, she takes a job as a maid for a high school boy who lives alone after the death of his parents.
This series features your standard rom-com between a normal guy and his cute combat waifu. However, while Mahoromatic is as comical as it sounds, it also has a dramatic element since she has a rather short amount of time left. It’s not Plastic Memories-levels of serious about it, but it is there and becomes more important as the series goes on and their relationship deepens.
Shounen Maid
You will notice a distinct lack of butlers on this list. This is by design. Yes, maids and butlers are two sides of the same coin, but not the same side of that coin. Shounen Maid provides the hot take that boys can indeed be maids and not butlers.
Shounen Maid follows a boy whose mother died and he is left without a family and a home. He has a clandestine meeting with a wealthy stranger who turns out to be his long-lost uncle. His uncle takes him to his dusty mansion where the boy, who is a bit of clean freak, sets to cleaning. Of course, his uncle makes him a maid uniform to clean in for completely not weird reasons.
While the set up does sound suspiciously degenerate, Shounen Maid is really just a light-hearted slice of life anime.
Kamen no Maid Guy
Until Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid, Kamen no Maid Guy was peak “weird maid” anime where it was about extremely odd maids.
This series follows two siblings that are the lone surviving heirs of a wealthy tycoon. Until they come of age, they are assigned two maids to serve and protect them. One is a beautiful young maid and the other is a big burly dude in a maid uniform.
Of course, there are those out to take these heirs out of the picture, but that’s okay because those two maids are extremely talented in combat.
They may be bodyguards, but that doesn’t mean that these maids aren’t dedicated to their jobs as maids either. Expect a lot of comedy and big over-the-top action in this series.
The Maid I Hired Recently Is Mysterious
In a similar setup to The Duke of Death and His Maid, The Maid I Hired Recently Is Mysterious follows a young noble who lives alone after his parents died. Realizing he doesn’t actually know how to do many basic things, he hires a maid. However, the things she does mystify him constantly, leading him to think her mysterious.
This anime has the main character act like the maid has some mysterious or perhaps supernatural secret, but she is really just a devoted maid. That is where the comedy comes from. Though it does perhaps lean too long on that singular joke before moving on. However, this series is charming in the way it moves on to the main character growing as a person through the support of his maid.
UzaMaid
In a similar vein as Kamen No Maid Guy, UzaMaid follows a girl who lost her mother and goes to live with her father in Japan. To help care for his daughter while he is busy with work, he hires an ex-JSDF agent to come live as their housekeeper and keep the girl safe.
Now, UzaMaid is one of those very questionable maid anime because the ex-military maid is a woman, but also a lolicon. A pretty aggressive one, too. This means she is constantly after the affections of her young ward. It’s not ecchi, but still pretty questionable content.
And Yet The Town Moves
And Yet The Town Moves is a maid cafe anime about a regular cafe that jumped on the maid cafe trend and became one. Yet, really all they did was make everyone wear maid uniforms.
This series is an absurd comedy that just so happens to feature a lot of maid uniforms. It aids a lot of the jokes, but maids aren’t the “joke” like in series such as Akiba Maid Wars.
Hanaukyo Maid Team
Hanaukyo Maid Team starts off pretty familiar. A boy loses his family, goes to live with his grandfather, and finds out his grandfather is just ridiculously wealthy. The boy is now the owner of a huge mansion with hundreds of maids to take care of his every whim.
As you would expect, this is an ecchi harem series with what is essentially a blank check to introduce as many female maids as they want. Although, it does keep things pretty manageable. This is the series for those that really just can’t get enough maids in their life.
Me & Robako
This series takes place in a world where you can order robotic maids and receive them in the mail. The main character finds out that his friends both have cute and super helpful robot maids and convinces his mother to order one.
However, what he gets is not a cute maid. He gets a muscly maid who is clumsy doing chores and powerful enough to destroy a house when she fumbles things. It is the opposite of what he wanted, but exactly what he needed.
This series is, as you would expect, a gag comedy. It is silly and weird, and an excellent “weird maid” comedy for fans who are looking for exactly that.
He Is My Master
He Is My Master is the rare maid anime that follows the maids as main characters rather than the master. In this case, two girls run away from home and the only work they could find is to work as maids in the mansion of a 14-year-old millionaire that treats maids like you would expect a 14-year-old millionaire to treat maids – like a degenerate pervert.
He Is My Master is, as you would expect, an ecchi comedy where the situation is dubious, but ecchi comedy anime fans don’t come for wholesome situations and character dynamics, now do they?
Do you have more maid anime recommendations? Let fans know in the comments section below.
