I like maids. You like maids too, right? We all like maids. Everyone likes maids. There’s nothing wrong with that, as far as anime fandom goes. But sometimes, the whole goshujin-sama concept can be a little…disconcerting. No, this isn’t about taking the concept too far and why moe is the cancer that’s killing anime; it isn’t a rant about sexism in Japan, or an elaborate way of saying that my fetish > your fetish. It’s simply a voicing of opinion: a short complaint on the ironic little subdivision of moe called maid moe.
Reading Hinano’s post on the insistence of the man to protect the woman in nearly all Japanese media, including female-targeted otome games, I started thinking that her complaints sounded a little familiar. Being a male visual novel fan, however, this isn’t about agreeing or disagreeing: it’s mainly the irony that caught my eye, the irony that a female-targeted story would put the female characters in a lower position. Whether or not that’s a wise move on the part of the Japanese otome game industry doesn’t matter much to me, though, because it already led me to finding a similar case quite close to home.
Maids. Servants. The trend of having a female character whose sole job is to please and provide for a male. She can be a literal maid like the twins in Tsukihime, or she can simply be a doting little sister like Kaede Fuyou, but the end result is the same: they exist only for one man, usually the protagonist who you play as.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t dislike maids. I actually find them quite interesting! Shows like Maria Holic, Hayate no Gotoku, Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu, and about a million other anime out there wouldn’t be the same without the presence of the maid characters. Maid costumes are great, too, albeit from a different perspective. But having said that, doesn’t something about the single-minded attitude of those servant-type characters bother you?
Like they say, different strokes for different folks is the rule of thumb when it comes to moe. There’s nothing right or wrong about being attracted to a certain personality type. However, just as the protective bishounen of shoujo manga are supposed to be a dream come true for the female readers, there’s something about the pure devotion of eroge girls like Nemu Asakura that turns me off, even if their incessant showering of affection is supposed to be a good thing. Maybe I just like the traditional moe characters that pander to the male instinct to protect, but either way, I know I’d enjoy my visual novels a lot more if I could help a clumsy girl cook breakfast instead of being served the meal in bed.
~ ETERNAL
つづく
