Ladies versus Butlers! - Episode 8

Even though its summer vacation, it seems that everyone still has some school work to do, with the upper-class ladies and the various maids and butlers made to team up and spend three days and two nights together so that the former can learn just what the latter has to do for a living.

The trouble is, Sernia Flameheart wasn't really paying too much attention to those instructions, and thus chooses Hino to be her partner in the hope of teaching him a lesson in how to adjust his attitude, only to be deflated when she finds out she has no real control over him for this task at all.


To be honest any semblance of work seems to soon go out the window however, with this episode taking in a spell on the beach (of course, you didn't think Ladies versus Butlers! would go by without some kind of beach episode did you?), playing chess, and Hino getting drunk on a single liqueur and behaving in a decidedly inappropriate (yet admittedly vaguely humorous) manner. Things become a little more fraught when Tomomi pops by for the day with Daichi in tow, increasing the tension between herself and Flameheart when it comes to being the subject of Hino's affections.

Once again, this particular episode of Ladies versus Butlers! manages to be at least somewhat engaging despite both its tendencies towards fan service and its predictable plot set pieces - Although the drunkenness on Hino's part was unexpected, the later "CPR gag" has been so overused that I'm amazed they managed to drag it from its rocking chair in a nearby retirement home. To be honest, it's almost incredible that this show is actually starting to build up its characters and a proper love triangle at last, something which it showed little interest in doing up to this point - This most certainly isn't a bad thing and is succeeding in making the series more enjoyable rather than just an excuse to shoehorn some breasts into the frame, although I must confess it doesn't make it some kind of anime classic either. Still, it's more watchable than I thought Ladies versus Butlers! might be by this juncture, and that's got to be worth something.