The Maid I Hired Recently Is Mysterious

Episode 9

It feels like The Maid I Hired Recently Is Mysterious just took a massive detour. Instead of moving forward with the tension and romantic progression from last week's episode, this episode instead focuses on a completely new character, and while she could have revealed more about Lilith given their past relationship, we just end up retreading the same ground from the past couple of episodes just from a slightly different perspective. I know that Yuuri declaring his love for Lilith and expressing it is supposed to tie into the character development of this new character, but I feel like that should've either come much later or could've been rewritten in a way to have occurred earlier in the show.

At least Nakashima seems cute (I'm a sucker for a girl with sharp teeth), and there are some insights and interesting lessons to be gained from her character. For example, there is the idea of how a more innocent and straightforward approach to expressing affection is healthier than what is often considered the more mature, adult way of doing things. Yuuri has no filter and is very direct, so he has no problem constantly expressing his love, whereas Nakashima feels like she needs to hide it even though it's painfully obvious, because that's what adults do. It does feel a bit weird that the show almost made it seem like there were reasons why Lilith needed to hide the fact that she was with Yuuri when this episode didn't really give any indication of that. Instead, it just seems like she quit her job and was refusing the rather obsessive letters that were asking her to come back, so similar to last week, I'm not really sure why the show needed to frame this as some kind of mystery.

What's more, at the end of the episode we get this weird sentence that Lilith now doesn't know how to talk to Yuuri after he confessed to her. I'm not sure if that's just another example of her not knowing how to express herself due to the expectation of maturity, which would tie into this episode's message, or if it's because she's also trying to figure out what her feelings are. I really hope it's the former, because if it's the latter then it feels a little redundant and unnecessary. Given the weird shift the series has taken with its character development, it's gonna be a bit hard to appreciate episodes on their own when they are still so conservative with these developments. There are only a few episodes left in the show so I hope that it decides to clarify these things sooner rather than later.

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The Maid I Hired Recently Is Mysterious is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.