Kobayashi-san Chi no Maid Dragon Episode 10: Troupe Dragon, On Stage!

A new Violet Evergarden CM is out!

Impression

First, I’d like to promote something for Cool Kyoushinsha, the mangaka behind the Maid Dragon manga. He’ll have a new manga series coming out at the end of March! It’s called Agents of the Gods’ Love, and it’s penned by him and drawn by Yasu. One of those collaboration works. Looks like a romcom at first sight, although I’d need a synopsis (of which there isn’t yet one at the time of writing) to confirm. It’ll be cute, I promise. Probably worth trying out at the very least if you like Maid Dragon (which you must do if you’re still reading my posts) as the quality and humour will be something to look forward to, even if the themes are different.

Onto the episode. It was wonderful, of course. Finds a way as it always does. Ten weeks in, and I’m still struggling to maintain my loyalty to Tooru and her smile every time I see Kanna do something almost unbearably cute. I feel you, Saikawa. I really do. Kanna has the same expression on almost the entire time, but it’s her small movements, like how she pokes Kobayashi’s cheek or rubs Saikawa’s head, that makes her so cute to stare at. Also, the quasi 4-koma skits with her looking forward to Santa’s arrival were one of the best 4-koma sets in the entire adaptation thus far. The others were fine, and there were some relatively weaker ones like Elma not being able to choose what she wanted to eat or Shouta suffocating in Lucoa’s Lucoas every night, but today’s one was brilliant, especially when Kobayashi came home to those bright neon lights and a hastily-carved out chimney, finally getting the message that Kanna was looking forward to ‘Santa’ giving her a Christmas present but not being able to put it in her stocking because Kanna never fell back asleep after the floorboard creaked. I’ve really been loving this recent focus on Kobayashi treating Kanna as a daughter (or at least, I’ve started noticing it more).

Tooru’s smile remains the most precious of them all. I was actually expecting either her or Saikawa to be the little matchstick girl. Her because she’s a maid, and feels like she’d fit the role, and Saikawa because she’s a relatively normal little girl aside from her occasional fits of lust over Kanna. I mean, I thought about Kanna playing the role too, but that’s not even realistic. She’s too cute. Why would anyone not buy from her if she offered matches to them? What heartless monster wouldn’t buy her entire stock of matches so she could go home and have a warm and happy Christmas? Although to be fair, and I can’t remember the exact details of the story, it might not have been so great for her at home given that whoever’s waiting for her at home was the one who sent her out in these conditions on Christmas Eve to begin with. When reading it as a kid, I remember thinking she might actually have gone to a better place. Some versions exaggerate her extent of poverty I think, so it varies. Anyway, Kanna. So I thought it couldn’t be Kanna, and the rest don’t qualify because they’re either not a girl or not a little girl. Especially Lucoa. Little girls don’t have such outrageous Lucoas. And Elma is so fit for bullying that I don’t think she’d be able to incite the necessary levels of pity and compassion that you’re supposed to feel when looking at the little matchstick girl.

The greatest joy I got out of the entire play was being able to see everyone in cosplay outfits. Or just different outfits in general, as Lucoa subtly moved into different sets of winter clothing that varied in lewdness. The last black sweater she wore had the right amount of modesty, I think. In contrast, I wasn’t sure how to react to the first one, with so much skin exposed. Jesus Christ. I also loved Kanna and Shouta dressed up as magical girls (actually, I loved the fact that magical girls genuinely made it into the play at all, as well as how it was Fafnir who proposed it) and Tooru dressed in white. With her hair down. I’m not sure how to describe it or explain it, but I always love it when a character who usually her hair up lets it down. Takes my breath away. Tooru and Kanna are guilty of this. Especially Kanna, who is a vicious repeat offender.

The night-time ride Tooru took Kobayashi on made me feel depressed more than anything. It feels like something we’d see in the last episode, which first makes you happy as you realise it’s not, and subsequently sad because you realise it will be, very very soon. I think it’s a one-cour, anyway. It’s no longer characteristic for the industry to have a two-cour show airing in back-to-back seasons, let alone KyoAni who does that even less.

Lastly, I want to end with another shameless plug. This isn’t one for Cool Kyoushinsha, but rather for KyoAni and their upcoming adaptation of Violet Evergarden they currently have in the works. It came out with a beautiful CM just a little under last year, which became a hot topic for a multitude of reasons, including: (1) it’s a KyoAni adaptation; (2) it’s breathtakingly beautiful even for a KyoAni adaptation; and (3) the light novel it is (or may be loosely) based on won KyoAni’s unwinnable competition. Lots of hype was raised, including baseless assertions (by people like me) that it would be KyoAni’s magnum opus or that it would make anime great again. And now, a new CM is out for it! My mentioning this isn’t entirely on my own initiative, as the CM was first shown in Japan as a commercial right after the end of today’s Maid Dragon episode, but nonetheless it’s something I definitely want to flag up because I’m super excited for it and you should be too. I mention it almost every season preview, complaining about how a date hasn’t been confirmed for its airing yet. But with this CM, we’re getting there. Doesn’t it look beautiful? Isn’t Violet so impossibly perfect? Won’t it be such an AOTS? And we have incredible gems like a sequel to Kino no Tabi coming up too. What a time to be alive.

CM1 (2016)

CM2 (2017)