The world of light novels is quickly expanding here in the U.S. Del Rey’s latest addition to the fray is Maid Machinegun. The story follows Alliyah, a young maid in Akihabara, as she tries to fulfill her dreams of being the best maid ever.
Then why does she have a machine gun on the cover? And why is her Japanese so bad? Well, there’s a reason for everything, but you'll have to read the book to answer those questions. Let's take a quick look at the book after the jump.
Maid Machinegun (light novel)
Published by Del Rey
Originally released on May 20th, 2008
Within the hustle and bustle of Akihabara, there are hundreds of maid cafes. Each one offers its own theme and food, but what makes and breaks each café is the quality of maids that are working there. That’s Alliyah’s thinking, anyways. Maid Machinegun is just about that: the maids that make up a cafe located within the heart of Akihabara. The writer, Alliyah (a penname, obviously), used her own experiences as a maid to write this book.
We follow Alliyah through the book as she attempts to become the perfect maid – or at least one that doesn’t fail at every task she attempts. Her coworkers are all different types of characters – Yukino, the stern, experience maid; Ruruka, the near-psychotic and spaced-out maid (A cross between School Rumble’s Karasuma and Wallflower’s Sunako); and Makoto-tencho, the ever-elusive manager.
Alliyah breaks her book up into what seem to be posts, with some commentary from the other maids and café guests. The book acts as a primer for anyone who has a curiosity with what maid cafes are like. Alliyah will periodically go off into rants and paranoid tangents, because she’s the spacey type of character that we often see in manga and anime, giving her a bit of a charming personality.
Alliyah's biggest problem is that she doesn't really know Akihabara. Sure, she knows where stores are, how to get from place to place, but she doesn't understand the heart of Akihabara. She doesn't know what it's like to wait in the freezing cold for the latest ero-ge release, nor what it's like to sneak panty shots of girls on the crowded street. In other words, she's just floating around in a sea of otaku, oblivious to what makes them tick. So, her adventures lead her around to Comiket, otaku dives, and a lecture on the finer points of yaoi.
For a good 80% of the book, though, the plot slowly advances, seemingly building to nothing, only to make giant leaps and bounds that had me in slight disbelief, finding myself almost cheated with the ending. It left itself disarray, with what I found to be a ton of plot holes and random events. Then again, I might be taking this book way too seriously.
Maid Machinegun is essentially a fun little romp in the hay with the life of maids, maid politics, and decides to try and end things with a bang – in a style that, I must admit, is perfectly like Alliyah. So perhaps, it’s not so bad. If you’re looking for something to read on the beach, or on a rainy day, pick up Maid Machinegun – it’ll be a better value than that volume of Rosario + Vampire that you’ve been eyeing.
Score: 7.0
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