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Synopsis: Izumi Sawatari and her younger sister, Mitsuki Sawatari, have run away from home and are in need of employment. The only jobs available are as maids in the mansion of 14-year-old millionaire, Yoshitaka Nakabayashi. What seems like simple work is soon revealed to be far more than the girls bargained for when they find Yoshitaka to be an authoritative employer who demands they call him “Master”.

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Let’s start things off by discussing how terrible this title is. He is My Master just sounds like hentai, doesn’t it? The title sounds like it should be an ecchi and misogynistic mess, and it’s probably the biggest reason why I’ve stayed away from this anime for so long. Well, now that I’ve watched it, I can say beyond the shadow of a doubt that while it’s not hentai, it definitely an ecchi and misogynistic mess, and for that reason, this should be a a little shorter than the average anime review.

The story is beyond stupid. Two sisters run away from home and wind up working as maids for an arrogant, selfish, immature, pervy asshole. Their parents aren’t that much better (their dad is a perv and their mom just smiles and sees nothing wrong with anyone’s actions), which sets the stage for the girls preferring to stay with the asshole kid instead of going back home to their lousy parents. The premise sounds incredibly frustrating, and it is. I wanted to drop this anime so much, but the world needs its yuri reviews, so I had to soldier on. Don’t be a yuri blogger, kids. It’s not worth it. 😛

Most of the show is just this boy bossing the girls (mostly just Izumi) around, and then Izumi kicking his ass for all of the perverted things he does. Sure, there’s a little more to it, but the end result is generally the same. He is My Master is a questionable comedy that always puts Izumi in bad situations, then we’re supposed to laugh as she’s taken advantage of and treated poorly by her “master”, her sister, her sister’s rape-y pet alligator, her female admirer, and her inept parents. Long story short, the story isn’t terrible, it’s just incredibly stupid and demeaning.

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Moving on to the characters, at least they’re a little better. Izumi’s your typical female character that always gets pissed at the pervy male character, but despite all that, at least she doesn’t end up falling in love with him (though I’d say there still is some Stockholm syndrome involved). Yeah, it’s impossible not to hate this situation. Izumi’s probably the most likable character in the show, yet it’s kind of hard to feel that bad for her when she doesn’t really do anything to remove herself from these cancers. And Izumi’s supposed to be 14, so that’s even more reason to dislike what she has to endure.

Mitsuki, Izumi’s younger sister, is seemingly only around to make everything worse. She enables her “master”, Yoshitaka, and has no problem being his submissive maid. Because of this, she’s spared his wrath, so Izumi becomes the one he torments. She’s not as bad as Yoshitaka, but I still didn’t like her at all.

Aside from Izumi, the only character I didn’t fully dislike was Anna. Anna’s the yuri character, but when she first appeared, she was wanting to go out with Yoshitaka. Anna only changed her tune when Izumi went to great lengths in order to prevent her from making that mistake, so Anna also becomes a maid and turns her affection to Izumi instead. That’s great and easily one of the best aspects of this show, but the problem with this is, Anna is also a pervy character.

Under “normal” circumstances, I would probably overlook that and just enjoy how thirsty she is, but Anna isn’t that different from Yoshitaka in that regard, so it would be kind of hypocritical of me to condemn him but applaud Anna for behavior like this. Still, Anna’s the reason I watched this anime, and even though the yuri she provides isn’t enough to make me like this show, she makes it a little more bearable. Oh yeah, Izumi’s littlest sister, was also okay, but she’s barely around.

And then there’s the boy, Yoshitaka. Besides how I’ve described him thus far, you should know that his parents recently died in a car accident, yet he’s happy, because he now has money and freedom. Yeah, he’s a really shitty person (even if his dad is also a perv), so I’m gonna stop talking about him.

I dislike them so much, but I have to admit that everyone in the show has a lot of personality, so I can’t give the characters a bad score. It’s just a shame that they’re all jerks.

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Sometimes when watching anime, the animation and sound doesn’t make much of an impression on me. In this particular case, the sound/music didn’t really stand out to me, but at least I liked the art style of this anime. It was kinda cute and playful and suited this slapstick comedy really well. Gainax and Shaft worked on this, so that would explain why this aspect of the show was done pretty well. I already mentioned that this was pretty ecchi, yet the level of fanservice could’ve been even worse, given the amount of perverted characters in this show. If this were airing today, I’d expect the Blu-ray release to be uncensored. It’s that kind of show.

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For all the negative things that people associate with Maria†Holic, I think that He is My Master is worse, and it doesn’t even have a Yuri Anime Legend like Kanako to fall back on.

Being as unbiased as I can be, I wouldn’t specifically call He is My Master bad, it’s just a tasteless anime whose content and characters I simply can’t bring myself to enjoy. To me, it’s less than the sum of its parts, so while I don’t think it’s really as bad as the total enjoyment score I’m giving it might suggest, some yuri can’t prevent this show from being an anime that I can’t forget about soon enough.

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+ Doesn’t lack personality
+ Looks appealing
+ Still not worse than coronavirus

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– Hate to see Izumi treated so poorly
– Almost everyone is a total perv
– Way too easy to hate Yoshitaka

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