Servant X Service Episode 9
What They Say:
In a certain ward of a certain city in Hokkaido…The ward office where Yamagami Lucy has been hired employs many unique characters on its staff. Yamagami and her colleagues are full of energy and secrets as they’re hard at work (?!) in this workplace comedy!
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Servant X Service has done a pretty decent job in the last couple of episodes of working through some good character material for Hasebe, both with him on screen and involved and off screen as others reveal bit about him and their own thoughts on him. Pairing him with Yamagami certainly makes sense in its own way and the two have an amusing chemistry together that in some ways seems to bring out the worst in each of them. Unfortunately, a lot of it has been out of the workplace where the show tends to slow down a bit more. But getting what we know about each of them, and Yamagami’s drinking habits, definitely works nicely and they’ve been fun to watch as a whole. But the show is also in a dangerous spot of getting stuck in dealing with just them instead of the group as a whole.
Thankfully, we do get some time with others at the start here as we get a flashback piece involving Chihaya when she was new to the ward office and we got the section chief trying to get her to chance her clothing choices since it was so plain. Since she’s huge into cosplay, she only thinks of that and not regular attire which caused the problem. Once she does so, she starts to pursue Ichimaya a bit more, which throws him off nicely and makes for some fun sequence as it goes along and we see how the two interacted early on. This also segues into the present as we get the upcoming date between Yamagami and Hasebe and Chihaya has taken it upon herself to help get Yamagami dressed for it. She has her own views of how the date will go, which is mildly dirty, and just fun to watch since it makes Yamagami so uncomfortable.
The whole shopping experience is hilarious since Yamagami is just so clueless and Chihaya deadpans her way through it and makes Yamagami even more uncomfortable. There’s some cute bits that comes from the way the group interacts at this point and while it’s kept kind of small, outside of some minor lobs tossed in by Miyoshi that creates its own chaos, it’s kept to just a few characters. What becomes fun is the misinformation that makes its way into play here that has Hasebe freaking out over a supposed marriage that he was unaware about and the Section Chief toying with him about it as well. The way it plays out is just comical from there with the misunderstanding and Yamagami not aware of it while carrying on being happy about some things that have gone well for her. The disparity just keeps hitting poor Hasebe.
In Summary:
Though the relationship between Hasebe and Yamagami continues to dominate the series, we’re getting a little more involvement and unintentional interference by others that makes for some very good fun here. The nature of office relationships – intimate or not – is always subject to changes because of others and those movements here work nicely to make things awkward for Yamagami at times when Chihaya takes her shopping or for Hasebe when the wrong kind of info comes down and he realizes things may be going very differently than he imagined they might. How an actual date will go is anyone’s guess at this point but it’s one that will just be fun, which the series has managed to do well so far.
Grade: B
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Apple TV via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.