Miss Kobayashi's Maid Dragon 1
Hmm. Thought it was alright, but this didn't capture me. I buy into a lot of what the show is - Tohru and Kobayashi have easy and immediate chemistry and the warm, bouncy aesthetic is pleasant and really appealing. But a lot of the humour sort of just slid off me. I'm bad at analyzing humour specifically so I won't really get too deep into this, but the show has a bad habit of rummaging through a big tub of one-off skits and just tossing them out to see where they land. Sometimes it's kind of amusing, other times it's definitely not, and a lot of its' jokes feel like they either didn't really have time to develop at all or drag on far longer than the concept is good for. And a lot of them draw from the same well of Tohru being ignorant of something or other humans find natural. I'd like to cite some of the specific examples but a good chunk of the skits kind of blurred together for me and I'm finding it hard to think of many. Which is probably a bad sign.
The one that stood out the worst to me was probably the scene in the bar, which felt more than anything else to me like something that would've played a lot better in a manga versus television. Every piece in it just drags and what humour there is in how impenetrable Kobayashi's discussion is with her coworker dies far before they get drunk, wherein it repeats the same joke, but more intense.
The best way I can put it is that this episode felt like eleven episodes from a two-minute short that they sort of just clipped together. While you can understand that events follow one another, there's just a sense you get from each scene that feels distinctly separate from what comes before or after.
I'd be more sour on the episode in general, but the last two minutes left me more positive on it than the bulk of the episode would have had me feeling. It wasn't game-changing or anything, but it was a nice moment that reflected how comfortable (and slightly more physically intimate) the pair was becoming with one another, and the consistent emphasis on Tohru throughout makes it clear how important it is to her personally. It's just nice.
Though while I did really like that scene, if the episode were better plotted I feel like it'd have been a lot more effective than it was. There's nothing that clearly makes that night any more special than the others that must have occurred given the passage of time. I feel like this episode would've been better if it were structured over the course of one full day as opposed to a haphazard collection of moments over a couple. It kind of comes up more just because it's the end of the episode and it has to than something that naturally follows what comes before.
Which brings us to...
Miss Kobayashi's Maid Dragon 2
Much better! I'm not sure I have the stamina to really talk much more about the show but this episode deserves a little more than 'I liked that a lot better'. The episode shifts a bit from mostly straightforward skit comedy to more subdued character stuff with a side of humour, and I think it winds up working a lot better. Not just in better defining the characters, but it benefits the humour a lot too.
I can't really think of a better example than Kanna's introduction which sort of demonstrates where the show improves from both ends of things. The scene is purely on how the characters play off one another, and the decision to keep Tohru out of it until her and Kobayashi set up the conversation by themselves is a smart one, and everything that follows in Kanna's misunderstanding (well, sort of) of the situation just feels natural. It helps that much more than the previous episode, there's a much tighter understanding of the expiration dates on its' jokes, and it escalates stuff like Kanna's idea of 'seduction' just enough before moving on from it. And more straightforward gags that nailed the comedic timing imo, like with Kanna deciding to just kill Kobayashi only to meekly beat at her stomach instead. It creates an expectation at a split second and the mundane payoff in contrast to the explosive punchlines the show gets you used to got me laughing a bit.
And it's doubly impressive because the show pretty smoothly transitions into a more serious moment of acceptance when Kobayashi invites Kanna to stay with them. It has jokes to tell, but the episode is content to let the characters breathe and relax with each other. It's a fine line that the show rides and I'm surprised how well it manages.
I think sonicmj put it a lot better than I could have (and tried), in that the show just has an undeniable warmth and humanity to it. I genuinely like the cast and their dynamics with one another, and I'm curious to know more about them. It'll be interesting to see how the show handles the cast the OP promises will expand too.
