Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid

Episodes 1-2

If you were to make a list of mythological creatures that would make good live-in maids, dragons would probably be near the bottom of it. Fortunately for us, things like logic don't apply when Coolkyoushinja puts pen to paper, and Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid's first two episodes, adapting chapters of the first manga volume, are delightfully absurd. They also give us something we haven't seen much of in the ongoing monster girl craze: a monster girl in love with a woman. While it's mostly played for laughs, it is a very nice change to the standard formula and one of many ways this series sets itself apart.

The basics of the story are set up in episode one. One night, programmer Kobayashi gets drunk and somehow ends up on a mountain somewhere. There she meets Tohru, a giant Western-style green dragon, and in the course of their conversation, she invites lonely Tohru to come live with her ‒ and promptly forgets about it. Tohru, however, decides to take her up on the offer. Taking on a mostly-human form and inspiration from maid café cosplayers, she sets herself up as Kobayashi's maid. She can do all the usual maid things: laundry (in her mouth), cooking (her own tail), cleaning (with fire), and of course turning back into a dragon to fly her beloved to work. How convenient!

Naturally, a lot of the comedy comes from how not-good Tohru is at most of these basic human tasks, along with the fact that Miss Kobayashi doesn't really want her there and can't figure out how to get rid of her, or at least how to get her to stop sucking on her underwear. She's definitely the straight man to Tohru's absurdity, and while the story works best when the focus is on Tohru (and Kanna in episode two), their interactions are fun in that they point out how totally normal Tohru thinks she's being when she's really horrifying Kobayashi beyond belief. This is balanced out by the episode two addition of white dragon Kanna, who has gotten herself into trouble in the world that dragons come from and needs a place to stay. Since Kobayashi has to work, that means Tohru gets to teach Kanna about the human world, with some very mixed results (although I'm sure we all knew that kid who did use a teeter-totter as catapult practice). Of course, Tohru does make an attempt to learn, and one of my favorite scenes thus far is in episode two when Tohru tries to take inspiration from the folktale of “The Grateful Crane” to get Kobayashi to eat her tail meat.

At this point, Kobayashi herself is the least interesting character, but that feels intentional. She's the equivalent of the bland nice guy who usually finds himself at the center of a monster girl harem, and that's a trope the story doesn't seem interested in changing, despite the gender switch. Miss Kobayashi does have an obsession with Victorian maids – some of the best artwork in the series is the detailed art on her walls – but other than that, she feels very much like a basic cookie cutter harem protagonist. She even wears masculine clothes to work and only has a male friend, which makes me wonder if her gender wasn't a last-minute decision. Regardless, she does provide a good backdrop for Tohru's antics and a sympathetic ear when Tohru discusses her dark past. It's clear that being Miss Kobayashi's maid is an escape for her; in episode one Tohru comments that most of her dragon friends and acquaintances are dead, and in episode two, she refuses to go to a department store because it reminds her of the castles where dragon-killing knights live in her world. If the show can handle her tragic background as deftly as it does the comedic elements, there could be more to this series than expected in terms of emotional content.

Visually, the show looks great. There's excellent attention to little details, from the dragon designs to the color of dragon tail meat versus beef, and the transformation from human to dragon and vice versa is much smoother than we usually see. I love the way that dragons in human form are all sturdier than humans, with thicker limbs and more weight to them, as well as being taller than the average person, as if to compensate for the fact that they're hiding a lot of mass in their human frames. Thus far, the only real sour note has been in episode one, when Kobayashi and her buddy take Tohru out drinking with them. After imbibing too much, Kobayashi rips Tohru's clothes off to try to get her into another outfit. This is uncomfortable on two levels: one, it's clearly not what Tohru wants, and two, it goes completely against the show's own logic – Tohru says that she wears the same outfit all the time because it is the form her scales take, so how could Kobayashi strip her? Isn't she essentially skinning her? Yes, it's a comedy, but for one that takes into account that dragons play like dogs or cats (with teeth) because they're basically animals, it just feels like a cheap excuse for fanservice.

That aside, Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid is off to a good, fun start. Episode one is a little funnier than episode two, but both have plenty of chuckles, and the gorgeous animation is just the icing on the cake. Whether you like monster girls or silly humor, this is worth checking out.

Rating: B+

Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.