Friday 27 September 2013

Servant x Service - Episode 13 (Completed)

Things seemed to be going so swimmingly at last between Hasebe and Yamagami... at least, they were until that revelation at the end of last week's penultimate episode of Servant x Service.

After announcing to his other co-workers (Lucy excluded, of course) that it was in fact Hasebe's father who signed off on her insane name, we get to dig a little into the reasons why - reasons which unfortunately mean that simply reassuring Hasebe that it isn't his fault fall upon deaf ears, as it was his father's worry about Hasebe junior suffering from a fever that caused him to be less than thorough in his work in the first place.


Of course, there's nothing to be done about the past, so the next question is how Hasebe should handle the situation.  Chihaya doesn't really have anything constructive to add here, but regardless she seems to be on the right track by assuming that any course of action will cause Lucy to hate him.  The trouble is, the unease and tension around the office in the wake of this information is only making things a whole lot worse, meaning that Hasebe is going to have to do something...

Luckily, this something takes us on to a rather sweet little ending mixed in with some of the show's typical humour - an innate knowledge of what to do with its cast and when for maximum comedy value.  The gags in this final episode really sum up Servant x Service as a whole - it isn't breaking new ground in terms of its comedy, and it's simply Working in a more grown-up setting in a lot of ways, but that doesn't diminish the fact that it's actually rather a lot of fun and more than capable of producing plenty of laughs, even from material that would otherwise be tired and boring when presented by a lesser series.  That some pretty typical humour can be given a fresh lease of life by a show like this is something akin to alchemy, but the result is a little bit of summer magic that I think I'm going to miss more than I'd care to admit.

Of course, Servant x Service will never leave me entirely - that bloody opening theme is going to be stuck in my head forever, I tell you.

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