@ zzeroparticle: I couldn’t think of too many examples so I had to cite the ones that are actually good. Even for the characters referenced, though, their maid-attributes didn’t contribute to my liking (or not disliking) them.

@ CCY: In most normal VNs, the maid would be willing enough to do her job like you said, so it isn’t much of an issue. I think it’s more like zzeroparticle said: the single-mindedness is what I don’t like, and that technically has nothing to do with being a maid. It’s just more likely to find mindless devotion in maids than in any other archetype.

@ Micchi: You and digitalboy now have me thinking about loli maids, but I’m not sure if it’s a good combination. An artist’s opinion would probably help because I’m awful at visualizing things.

@ Chris: Indeed, I expect that’s why maids are so common in anime, but it’s the “wish fulfillment” part that bothers me, mainly because it doesn’t fulfill my wishes. Incidentally, it’s a little ironic that maids can be considered attractive thanks to their actions – the whole concept of moe is about letting the male protect the female, not the opposite.

@ choux: If the maid and protagonist act more or less normally around each other, then it wouldn’t bother me, just like an over-devoted imouto would bother me even if she’s not a maid. But yes, meido-heaven and breakfast in bed certainly would be like a paradise IRL, but it’ll always miss the mark for me in terms of moe.

@ Hyatt: They’re pretty indeed. Maid costumes have to be one of Japan’s greatest inventions, even if they weren’t the ones who invented it.

I do agree that it seems to be mostly wish fulfilment though, as well as a self-repeating dialogue as to what Japanese women are expected to be in this day and age. Subservient, domesticated, ever attentive to their goshujin-sama’s needs. It’s probably a bit telling that “goshujin” can refer to either a person’s husband or their master. Now that I think about it, the maid kind of resembles the yamato-nadeshiko-brand childhood friend in terms of kindness, femininity, and dedication to the male lead. Maybe it can even be taken as an extension of what kind of wife such a figure would grow up to be. You know, except in a sexy uniform.

It is good that we’re seeing sort of a reversal of this in the butler trend that’s been happening lately, due in no small part I think to the success Kuroshitsuji has had with female anime fans. Though it is a shame that for all the maid cafes popping up left and right around Akihabara, there are, as far as I know, only a few butler cafes. ;-; Such a pity.

To the first point, the subservient maid as wish fulfillment, if you think about it you only see the fawning/subservient maid type girl in those late night niche anime that cater to the hardcore anime otaku. I can’t remember the last major mainstream anime hit in Japan that featured these girls. So, I think that the subservient maid girl is a dream “come” true for those otaku that have little to no social skills when it comes to dealing with real girls/women.

Now, the maid as stand in for how Japanese society still views a woman’s role in society. While Japan may seem likes it’s a high speed train rushing towards the future the reality is that a woman’s role in Japanese society is still closer to what her role in Japan was 50 years ago. For the most part when Japanese women enter the workforce they’re only considered temporary workers unless they’re in certain professions like nursing. Even though a woman may have a college degree when they enter a company they’re considered non-career track and are expected to stay only long enough to reach retirement (marriage). Those women while they may have assigned job duties they’re still expected to make coffee/tea of the men, pick up their laundry, get their lunches, and perform other housewife like duties. The term for these women are the office lady or (OLs or ofisu redi) and some firms still consider their female workers to be office hana or “office flowers” meaning that their only job is to look good and act pleasant and only stay long enough to be plucked.

Like A Butler. The protagonist ends up being the butler for his childhood friend due to certain circumstances. Come to think of it, I need to play this.

Also, yes. Need more loli maids.

/spam

In a sense, it’s not too different from popular visual novels (many of the typical archetypes fit well; just picture Hayate converted to a VN) and it’d be a good twist. So many interesting ideas, so little writing time.

But yeah, now I’m just derailing myself; I agree with your viewpoint on maids, as well as understand why others could like such archetypes. I think there’s an important difference between devoted girls and maids; the first type chooses to live their life towards the purpose of one person, while the second may not have been able to make that choice.

I feel it could lead to differences in character dynamics, although I can’t think of a maid / master duo where the two weren’t predisposed toward each other to start.

Interesting that in the examples you cited, the maids are enjoyable because they actually have some personality to them beyond the affection-machines that seem to afflict the others.