3ET: Servant x Service

The shy one, the one with boobs, the slacker.

Studio: A-1 Pictures

Director: Yamamoto Yasutaka (Mondaiji-tachi ga Isekai kara Kuru Sou Desu yo?, Shinryaku!? Ika-Musume)

Main Cast: Kayano Ai as Yamagami Lucy (...), Suzuki Tatsuhisa as Hasebe Yutaka, Nakahara Mai as Miyoshi Saya

Writer: Shimoyama Kento (Bleach, Binbougami-ga!)

Music: MONACA (Working!, Star Driver: Kagayaki no Takuto)


Yep, it's time for the "comedy is subjective" post. You know, the one where I talk about how everyone laughs at different things. How one person can laugh hysterically at a certain joke, while another one sits there barely cracking a smile. It is common knowledge that of all genres in anime (and film in general), the one that people most often have diverging opinions on is comedy. And I'll try not to talk about why a certain comedy is funny; because that would be incredibly boring. So, whether I pass or fail a show that is a pure comedy (one that has little to no value outside of making you laugh), is way more subjective and comes with a massive caveat. With that, let's talk about Servant x Service.

The setup for the jokes, also known as the plot, is that three people are starting at a ward office (think a DMV or Secretary of State for any readers in Michigan), and we follow their antics. The closest thing the show has to a main character is Yamagami Lucy (...), whose given name is abbreviated due to her parents' silliness and a bureaucrat's incompetence. She works at the ward office because she wants revenge on the bureaucrat who screwed up her name, and to her her life. This makes her the only person who works at the ward office who actually dreamed of working at the ward office. Miyoshi Saya is a painfully shy woman who usually finds herself listening to customers rant at her, especially old women. Rounding out the trio is Hasebe Yutaka, a brilliant worker who lives to slack off as much as possible and collect the e-mails of as many women as he can.

"I'm pregnant."

This is the part where I say that I passed the show because I found it funny. Instead of explaining what I found funny, I think I'll explain why. Perhaps it is because I've worked in offices for a lot of my adult life, and so the humor hits really close to home for me. I think part of my enjoyment also comes from how the show is a light satire of bureaucracy in general. But, I think what I love about Servant x Service is how much I identify with Yutaka, the slacker. In high school, I was surrounded by, and was one of, those people who didn't try that hard and still got good grades. We drove our teachers crazy by not paying a lot of attention, yet still doing well on tests. In a related story, our favorite movie was the Mike Judge film Office Space. That's not to say that Yutaka doesn't care about his job (or wants to burn down the building), in fact he does it quite well. It's just that his motivation to do well is so he can finish quickly and go back to slacking off. And I can identify with that.

"I'm hiding from my boss' crazy sister. She's going to eat my soul."

That's not to say that Servant x Service is a great show, far from it. While I like their manager Ichimiya Taishi (Takahiro Sakurai) as a slightly incompetent, but well-meaning boss; I found his little sister, Touko (Ookubo Rumi) to be obnoxious. She is the basic emotionally dishonest type of high school girl who pops up in way too many anime these days, and while she didn't push me away from the show, her segments felt like they dragged on longer than they should have. Thankfully though, the show thus far has shown an ability to stop a joke before it gets too old, and I hope they have enough new jokes to keep this up the rest of the series.

In the end, I feel like this show does exactly what it sets out to do. Servant x Service sets out to be a light comedy that doesn't explore the depths of the human soul, it just tries to tell some jokes and poke fun at an bureaucracy. I think it helps that the cast of the show is largely adults, and it seems like the show is targeted at people with experiences like mine. So, since I'm enjoying it, I'll keep watching, simple as that.