Hand Maid May Review
ハンドメイド・メイ

Since the Community Anime Reviews site frequently has lengthy down times, I’m republishing some of my OG reviews from there. I have corrected obvious spelling errors though. I will add new notes in parenthesis, labeled “ANB  note.”  😅 I won’t count these as part of the “Back to the Vaults” series as I have not rewatched them.

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Community Anime Review of Hand Maid May

(ANB note: This series was originally reviewed on 17-December-2022. I did a precursor “Back to the Vaults” review on this blog back in 2008. So even though this CAR review is older, I republish it for legacy sake.)

This is one of those “harem” series — “loser” (dateless) guy surrounded by hot babes, many of whom live with him. In many ways, this is very much like a dating-sim game made into an anime. However, despite how many titles have been done like this, Hand Maid May manages to excel in several areas. May is so kawaii (cute), sweet, and so precious that I couldn’t help but immediately like her and thus the series.

There are 10 episodes (the 11th is an OAV special) and it doesn’t take long for the place to get crowded with cyberdolls, people from the future, rivals, etc. Nanbara (Kazuya’s rival) and cyberdoll Sara provide most of the comedy for this series. The stories are pretty light-weight, but the excellent seiyuu work and characters win the day. I’ve often wondered if the series came from some manga, game, or short story collection since at times, the anime feels like it has skipped things the audience should know or rather assumes the audience to know (kinda like the Harry Potter movies did). However, this isn’t anything that put me off; it is just an observation.

The humor, cuteness, and sweetness of the series aside, it suffers from excessive fan-service. The first two episodes are so full of fan service that by the time they get to three and four (where we get some good humor and interesting cyberdolls), it is a relief to get normal amounts of fan-service. There’s no nudity which is a plus, but you’ll get to see most of the girls’s panties, and many times in very sexually suggestive ways.

DVD Release

On the subject of the DVD, the English dub is good! I really felt the English voice actors captured the spirit of the characters. The first DVD is annoying as you have to answer a question in order to get to the menu. After three failures, it will let you pass anyway. The scripts have the usual domestication (localization -ANB) and the subtitles exclude honorifics.

What was unusual was that in the subtitles, romaji appeared whenever Mami-san spoke in English. If you don’t know Japanese, the words won’t mean a lot beyond, “Oh, that must be the Japanese”. However, if you know a little Japanese to be dangerous, it actually ends up being a fun item. I wish the Japanese honorifics had been left in the subtitles, but oh well.

Bottom line:

Despite all the fanservice, this has managed to make its way into the list of my all-time favorite anime titles, though not quite the top-10. Sweet, very cute, and touching, Hand Maid May could have been longer, but what we got is pretty good.