The comic triple is a rule of writing comedy that states that the uses of things in threes, often featuring an element of repetition, are funnier than when they come in any other number. That means that Wakame Konbu's The Maid I Hired Recently Is Mysterious is way off the mark in simple numeric terms. Whether this is because the book is focused around a single joke or because elements of that one gag are repeated ad nauseum is up to your own interpretation, but the fact remains that as a comedy, this volume largely misses the mark.

The Maid I Hired Recently Is Mysterious is Wakame Konbu's third title to get an English-language release, and if nothing else, we can safely say that they are not the sort of creator to just write the same plot over and over again. While this series focuses on the relationship between a twelve-ish-year-old boy and his maid, The Great Jahy Will Not Be Defeated! is a magical girl spoof about one of the defeated villains, and the premise of Breasts Are My Favorite Things in the World! is fairly self-explanatory. In fact, we could say the same for this series: the title really does tell you both the basic premise and the overarching plot of at least the first volume.

There is, however, a fine line between “doing what it says on the tin” and “ungodly amounts of repetition.” In its debut volume, The Maid I Hired Recently Is Mysterious absolutely crosses it. Not only does each chapter open with the title being thought or spoken by Yuuri, the protagonist of the story, but his assertions about why Lilith is so “mysterious” always come down to three basic things: she's too good a cook, she's too good at keeping the enormous mansion clean, and she makes Yuuri feel funny. While this does follow the aforementioned comedic rule of three in spirit, in practice, not enough is done with any of the “mysteries” to distinguish any one of them as building on the other two, nor are they particularly funny in and of themselves. Adding to this lack of humor are Lilith's stock responses to Yuuri's observations or queries: every single time, she would make some sort of suggestive comment about adding “her love” as a secret ingredient to the food or about the kind of relationship she'd like to have with Yuuri, and then she blushes. How very droll.

Lilith's reactions may be a bit of a turn-off for readers who might otherwise not be bothered by the repetitive formula that each very short chapter follows. The implication is very strong that Lilith likes Yuuri in a romantic way, as we can see when he makes statements that can be misinterpreted as him propositioning or proposing to her. While we don't know how old either of the characters actually are, they appear to be in the twelve and sixteen ranges, with Yuuri as the younger. That's not a gap of years that would matter later on in life, but in terms of emotional maturity, there's a pretty big difference between twelve and sixteen, or twelve and any adult or higher teen age. While Lilith may not have come to work for Yuuri specifically because she has a crush on him, the suggestion that she developed one afterwards is a little unsettling in the context, especially because Yuuri really doesn't seem to understand his own emotions where she's concerned. We know, in a kind of wink-and-nudge sense, that some of the feelings Lilith provokes in him are because he likes her, but he's unaware. And really, what could be truly going on may be as simple as a lonely orphan finally having someone to care for and about him, without any romantic element at all.

This feels very much like a lost opportunity for the story. Had this instead followed Yuuri and Lilith as they formed a family, assuaging Yuuri's loneliness without all of the suggestive nonsense, the book could have been quite moving. There are hints of this that pop up every now and then, but they're almost inevitably squashed by Lilith blushing or making a vaguely sexual comment. Had the comedy worked better in this volume, that would be an entirely different question; since it doesn't, we're left to wish that Konbu had leaned into a separate aspect of the story – or at least had more than a single joke to last the entire hundred-odd pages of the volume.

There is one brighter spot here, and that's the art. While Lilith's maid uniform is patently ridiculous, it is nicely drawn, and Konbu has a way of filling up panels so that the lack of backgrounds doesn't lead to empty-feeling pages. But the most interesting piece of the art is that the book is printed in black, white, and purple – Lilith's eyes are always colored purple, as are the accompanying sound effects whenever she makes one of her suggestive comments. Admittedly, I always liked this style of printing – with just a touch of a single color in an otherwise black and white book – but it works especially well here.

Sadly, that's not quite enough to make the whole book worth recommending. The Maid I Hired Recently Is Mysterious doesn't do anything beyond what the title indicates, and that's really not enough to carry an entire book, even one as short as this one. The best thing that can be said is that it does what it says it will, and it's at least different from Konbu's other two available titles.