Inkling Anime Review: Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid

Has their ever been a moment where you came back home after a laborious day at your job, and thought to yourself “I sure wish I had my own trusty maid?” Have you also ever wondered how things would be if the maid was also a dragon? Kobayashi, our main protagonist, experiences this scenario first-hand when a dragon named Tohru decides to dedicate her life towards serving as her maid after a heart-to-heart conversation that Miss Kobayashi barely remembers. On a fairly ho-hum morning, Kobayashi gets ready to exit her apartment for another long day at work. As she opens the front door, she is instantly face-to-face with a green and fierce-looking dragon.

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As you would imagine, Miss Kobayashi, is immensely perplexed and unnerved at what she sees. In a state of bewilderment, she decides to just dismiss this all as just some bizarre dream, and kindly invites the dragon-maid (in her human-state) inside her living quarters. After chatting with each other, we soon come to the discovery that Kobayashi (a couple of days ago) wandered up a forested summit when she was drunk, and coincidentally bumped into Tohru and inquired to her if she wanted to stay at her place. As this hazy memory begins to reemerge in her mind, Kobayashi initially decides to decline Tohru’s request to serve as a house maid. But when she realized that she is almost late for work, she asks Tohru to give her a lift. This momentary assistance is what influenced Kobayashi to give Tohru a chance as a house maid, which ultimately leads us to the delightful adventures of this show.

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Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid is a slice-of-life anime that primarily draws our attention towards some monotonous facets of day-to-day life, but I rarely found the anime dull or tiresome at any point. The conversations and interactions between each of the characters throughout the series is definitely the bread and butter of this anime since I always found myself laughing amiably or smiling with glee. The cast of this show is fronted by Miss Kobayashi, she’s a human and works as a computer programmer for a tech-based company. At first she comes off as rather distant and Scroogelike towards others. But after Tohru happily came into her life, she gradually becomes more amiable and warmhearted as an individual. Kobayashi also has an otaku friend named Takiya, who also happens to work at the same company as her. I found his dual-personality to be a bit weird and overly-sensational, I did sometimes mistake his otaku persona to be a completely different character from the way he behaves at the office.

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Another character that we get introduced to is a loli-dragon named Kanna. She is pretty reserved around others but she can be uncompromisingly blunt and candid whenever she does speak up, which I always found to be quite entertaining and humerous. One other dragon that also appears in this anime is Lucoa. I found her to be quite forgettable since the only discernable characteristic of her was that she happens to have gargantuan breasts, and I did sort of get tired of the constant oppai fanservice after a couple of episodes.

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While this anime is sort of thin on narrative scope since most of the show is episodic in nature with a lot of the episode having it’s own story, I didn’t see it as a detriment. I’m happy that it embraced it’s simplicity since I feel like including a more straightforward and consistent plot would’ve lessened the comedic impact that the show had on me as a viewer.

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The animation of Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid was handled by Kyoto Animation, and I thought the visual quality throughout was top-notch. The colors are strikingly vivid and really pop out, especially with the eyes and the occasional action-oriented moments. At first I found the background designs somewhat plain and generic, but I think it grew on me with each passing episode and complimented the character designs well. I also really liked how the characters were drawn out since they were each distinguishable and easy to tell apart, which is a pet peeve I have with some anime.

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All in all, Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid was an exceptionally charming and pleasant show to watch. It delivers both as a comedy and as an emotionally heartfelt story of companionship and empathy. If you love dragons and maids, I’d highly recommend this anime. Just please don’t lewd the dragon loli.