"Ladies versus Butlers!" One big Disaster!
I find that most anime series dealing with butlers have been both successful and entertaining. Hayate the Combat Butler, They Are My Noble Masters and Kuroshitsuji are three fine examples of butler-based anime series that prove my point. When I heard about Ladies versus Butlers!, I thought I was going to watch a great comedy that would help turn the anime world away from the funk it got itself into last year. Alas, I was dead wrong.
Based on the light novel series by Tsukasa Kōzuki, Ladies versus Butlers! follows the adventures random pointless moments of Akiharu, a new transfer student and butler-wannabe that everyone assumes is a delinquent by Day One. How, you may ask? Let's see...how about every single screw-up that can happen in a harem series taking place in ten minutes. No lie, there's breast-grabbing, chase sequences and girls being stripped of clothing. On top of that, once the craziness is over the animators decide to add a pointless scene of the female characters bathing nude without the conspicuous fog covering their bodies. Usually that spells "must-see TV," but here it reads "writers came up with nothing, so let's just have a dumb irrelevant chase sequence followed by a worthless fan-service cut-away."
On top of all that nonsense it appears that Akiharu is one of only five boys at this high school for etiquette. They use the "strict requirements" excuse, which means another harem may be on the horizon. Out of all the female characters, two seem to be the main focus of LxB. The first is Tomomi, who is a childhood friend of Akiharu, who behind that cute smile is the sinister snicker of a devil. The other is Selnia, who just about is the fall girl to almost every one of Akiharu's screw-ups (no thanks to Tomomi). Only one maid, Sanae, seems to have the spotlight on her side; and what a surprise: she's clumsy and always manages to have her naughty bits rubbing up accidentally in Akiharu's face.
I managed to get through two episodes of Ladies versus Butlers, and so far there seems to be no plot to be found. To be honest I could care less to stick around to find out if there is one. Sure the animation is great, but just because it looks nice doesn't mean you should sit put and watch it. I know anime is supposed to be fantasy, but there needs to be some sort of realism in it. Alas, there is none to be found. It must've ran away with the comedy part of the show, which LxB is also lacking. This anime just seems to want to do one thing: fan-service, which is what about 85% of anime last year wanted to do. Apparently anime fans in Japan have yet to discover what Kevin Smith likes to call "quasi-indie films." (Read his Chasing Dogma comic to see what I mean.)
Ladies versus Butlers has "earned" itself a D-. I guess all that boobage was doing its best to hide the fact that it's a craptacular show, but sadly it didn't work this time around. If the anime world keeps making series of this sort, there may be little to no hope of rescuing it from its never-ending creative block.
