Anime has a thing for maids. I don’t know why it’s a thing. I don’t know where this thing came from. I don’t know if there’s any way to stop it. I wish I had the answers, but anime’s obsession with maids just leaves me with more questions. Namely, who are all these messy bitches who have the hots for domestic servants?
Ranking the finest maids of anime is a difficult task, as anime is brimming with maids. What metric do I use? Cuteness? Lewdness? Most Moe? No. Being a maid is a job, and a hard one at that. To show some respect for the maids of anime, we’re going to rank them by how good they are their jobs. How clean they keep things. The only thing dirty about this article is your mind when you think about these characters. Gross.
10. Roberta – Black Lagoon
Black Lagoon’s Roberta is not a good maid. That’s because she’s an assassin. (It’s more common than you think.) Many of the maids in the anime world are absolutely bloodthirsty, and Roberta is no exception. She was trained as a guerrilla fighter and then as a contract killer in Cuba. She’s really good at that part of her job, but that’s not part of the traditional maid job description, so it doesn’t count. She also gets blood everywhere, and any good maid knows that bloodstains never come out. She earns one broom sweep out of ten.
9. Mey Rin – Black Butler
Mey Rin, of Black Butler, is also a bad maid. Well, bad in some ways—standard maid ways, I mean. Like Roberta, she is also a killer. She guards the house of Ciel Phantom hive with a sniper rifle, and by God she knows how to use it. When it comes to other maid skills, she has room to improve. She’s rather clumsy and tends to make more messes than she cleans up. However, she has a can-do attitude and lives to serve her employer. A for effort. Two sweeps out of ten.
8. Faris Nyan Nyan – Steins;Gate
Faris is not really a maid at all. She works at a maid cafe in Steins;Gate, where perverts like you people Googling this go to stare at girls dressed up in maid outfits. I don’t know why you all like it, but I think it’s a power thing. You like it when someone called you “Sir” or “Ma’am,” don’t you? You make me sick. Lucky for you, Faris is really good at her job. She’ll make you feel like she works for you, when in reality, she is using your emotions to get a fat tip. I assume she also does maid-like stuff at the cafe. She cleans up your mess after you leave, doesn’t she? Three sweeps out of ten.
7. Narberal Gamma – Overlord
Narberal Gamma is another killer maid. Technically, she is a “battle maid.” I wasn’t aware this was a term. Why was I not informed immediately? I need to fire my assistant. First I need to hire one. Then fire them. If Narberal were working for me, she would have never let this happen. Narberal is competent and quite good at her job in Overlord. However, she spills quite a bit of blood during her combat sorties. I’m sure that she leaves a mess wherever she goes, but at least she doesn’t bring it home with her. Four and a half sweeps out of ten.
6. Sadayo Kawakami – Persona 5
Persona 5 isn’t technically an anime. It’s a video game, but for our purposes, I have baptized it in the cool waters of the Anime River. It is now a born-again anime. Praise be. There is an actual anime for this series, but it is trash and is going to hell unless it repents. You know who else is going to hell? You and Sadayo for your fucked up romance. In Persona 5, you can romance your high school teacher who moonlights as a maid. You can even make her clean your house for you. I bet you think that’s so dreamy. She’s good at her job, but filthy like you, so she loses points. Six sweeps out of ten.
Related: Top 10 Best Harem Anime of All Time on Twinfinite
5. Saber – Fate series
Saber is a maid at a maid cafe. She is also King Arthur. How can these both be true? Because the Fate series creators are no doubt pervy as you and wanted to dress up their flagship character as a maid, so they shoehorned in some plot about how she needs a job even though she is literally a spirit and doesn’t need to pay rent. Saber is a good maid, at least, and she doesn’t take shit from her customers. She isn’t afraid to tell you that you’re making a mess, or that you’re using your silverware incorrectly. Or that she just doesn’t like you. That makes two of us. You’re the trash and you just wish Saber would take you out. She has better things to do, like earning seven sweeps out of ten.
4. Misaki Ayuzawa – Maid Sama!
Some would say that Misaki Ayuzamaof Maid Sama! is the most iconic maid on this list. After all, she is seen as the original template for the anime maid. Maybe she’s the Typhoid Mary of the anime maid obsession? Typhoid Maid? Whatever. She’s a hard-assed student council president by day and a dedicated maid by night. She wasn’t born with a silver spoon in her mouth, so she needs to earn money to make ends meet. She makes a little bit of a mess in her romantic life, but she cleans it all up by the end of the series. Eight sweeps out of ten.
3. Rem – Re:Zero
Re:Zero’s Rem is a good maid, and a traditional one. She doesn’t have to go to somewhere else for people to ogle her in her maid outfit; people will do that to her at home, but hopefully they don’t look too closely, or they’ll see that she’s an actual demon. Yep. That’s why she’s so infernally good at keeping the place spotless. She proves that cleanliness is NOT next to godliness. It’s actually closer to Satan. Nine sweeps out of ten.
2. Tama – Gin Tama
Gin Tama’s Tama is a robot, so she’s really good at being a maid. Her android body allows her to cook delicious meals by consuming the ingredients, cooking them inside of herself, and vomiting them back out. Can any other maid on this list do that? I thought not.
She’s like Spongebob during the episode where he turns the Krusty Krab into a fancy restaurant. All she knows is fine dining and breathing—that and a few human emotions. She’s got those, too. I’m sure one of them is disgust, which she feels whenever she catches you looking at her. She’s such a professional that she won’t let it get to her. She’ll kick your ass with her broom after she’s served dinner. Ten sweeps out of ten.
1. Levi Ackerman – Attack On Titan
Levi Ackerman is the maid of Attack on Titan and no one is going to change my mind. All he does is clean up other people’s messes. The house is dirty? He’ll get on his hands and knees and scrub the place spotless? Titans got into the city? He’ll just kill them all. A secret police force is attempting a coup? He’ll quite literally wipe the floor with them. He doesn’t have a uniform officially, but one look at Tumblr will tell you that the fandom has been drawing him in one since day one. He’s such a good maid that he doesn’t get ten sweeps. He knows that ten sweeps isn’t enough to make a house truly spotless. He gets as many sweeps as it takes to get the job done, like any self-respecting maid would.
(featured image: J.C. Staff)
