Review: HEROINE? SAINT? NO, I'M AN ALL-WORKS MAID (AND PROUD OF IT)!

Alright, time to tidy things up after that long, unplanned summer absence, and that means it's time to cover another round of maid manga.

HEROINE? SAINT? NO, I'M AN ALL-WORKS MAID (AND PROUD OF IT)! (Heroine? Seijo? Iie, All Works Maid desu (Horoki)!, based on the light novels by Atekichi and character designs by Yukiko with art by Keiko.  First published in 2022 and first published in North America in 2024.

PLOT:

Ritsuko was once a bright young Japanese girl who became so fascinated with maids that she wanted to be one.  Now she is Melody, a poor young orphan eager to begin her career as a maid of all work for the Rudleberg family.  It'll take a lot of hard work and powerful magic to bring the family's decrepit estate and rough-around-the-edges daughter up to to the standards of nobility, but Melody is more than up to the challenge!

Melody's life is about to get a lot more challenging as she follows her young mistress Luciana to school.  There are multiple people trying to find her, whether it's because of the secret of her parentage or those with ties to her past life.

STORY:

You know, I was actually all on-board for All-Works Maid at first glance.  After so many cookie-cutter reincarnated noblewomen, it was nice to see one who was just a commoner.  Sure, she inevitably has the super magic that seeming every reincarnated person in isekai gets, but Melody truly aspires to nothing else beyond being the best possible maid she can be.  She finds both purpose and satisfaction in putting things (or people) into order, and honestly who among us could possibly argue with the dream of actually being satisfied by your work?  Plus, there's something endearing about the almost motherly dynamic between her and Luciana, despite the two practically being peers.  Also, I'd be a raging hypocrite to judge her for having the same hyperfixation as Kaoru Mori.

Alas, the cozy time she had putting Luciana's life into order could not last forever, as amusing as it was.  Surprise! It turns out that this series is operating on most of the other cliches these sorts of lady-centric reincarnation light novel stories do.  Melody isn't just so commoner, but in fact that the lost illegitimate daughter of a duke.  She's not just magically gifted, she's got the best magic skills, to the point that she has to conceal them (along with her naturally silver-colored hair) and can perform incredible spells without the slightest effort.  Slowly but surely she starts amassing handsome young noblemen around her.  Then the shoe truly drops: Melody is not the only reincarnated person in this world.  Furthermore, this world is in fact the world of an otome game that one of these people were playing during the plane crash (!) that killed them all.  

At this point, all I could do was metaphorically throw up my hands in defeat.  Is it truly too much to ask these light novel writers to maybe not pile on ALL of light novel clichés like a literary cow pie?  Is it too much to suggest that all that self-indulgent nonsense smothers any personality the story might have ever possessed?  Could we not just have had a nice story about a young woman who wanted to be a maid and then got precisely what she wanted the second time around?

ART:

There's so little difference between the look of Yukiko's illustrations from the light novels and the artwork by Keiko here that I could be convinced they were one and the same person.  Mind you, I'm not complaining - the general style here is very soft, sweet, and shojo-coded.  The girls are all short and cute with big round eyes and plenty of fancy dresses.  Even Melody's maid uniform is precise as a pin (although this is due it being in part manifested by her magic and her own obsessive knowledge of maids' uniforms).  The menfolk are taller and generically handsome in a way that fits with this being the world of an otome game.  The only issue I take with the art is with the paneling and page composition, which is ironically quite cluttered.  If Keiko gave herself a little more space and maybe eased up on the all the dialogue balloons, her art could shine a little better and the story itself would be a little easier to parse.

RATING:

I really wanted to like All-Works Maid, and for a while I was genuinely charmed.  Then all the usual light novel nonsense came marching in to make a mess of everything.  Maybe others could roll with the clichés and keep reading, but I fear that my time with Melody's journey to become the best maid she can be will be ending here.

This manga is published by Seven Seas.  This series in ongoing in Japan with 7 volumes available.  3 volumes are available and are currently in print.