New Game!! Episode 8 Review: I'm Telling You, I Want a Maid Café

This week’s episode of New Game!! takes a closer look at Shizuku’s issues when it comes to attractive women, and Momiji’s rather unhealthy competitive nature. Are you even ready for this?

Japanese Original Episode Title: メイド喫茶がいいと言ったんだよ

Plot

The design team is responsible for taking out the new recruits and organizing a dinner party for them. After a few ideas are on the table (one of each is: ‘somewhere that serves a lot of alcohol’, which I absolutely agreed with), Ko just solves the issue with her usual not-giving-a-crap attitude and with randomly going over the suggestions. Shizuku, who for reasons unknown is really keen on going to a maid café, creates a maid café simulation for her employees, who were never blessed enough to experience such blatant embarrassment before. Momiji joins and somehow manages to make this into a competition, causing Shizuku a nosebleed, until she’s dragged out of the room by Umiko. Thanks Umiko.

Later, both the design and programming team end up eating hamburg steaks with the programming team thriving on socializing (boy, is that unreal or what) and the design team looking rather grim. They reminded me of every single company outing that doesn’t involve ridiculous levels of drinking.

Back at the office, the design team is trying to get Momiji to join them and eat at the café, but she’s too busy eating her massive rice ball on her own and very unwilling to share. Momiji somehow gets the message and decides to join the girls for a lunch day-out, where she declares war on Aoba, and vice-versa. There will be blood, I’m sure.

Episode Highlights

Hajime is every one of us: Her logic – flawless. Make sure the outing won’t suck so that we don’t seem lazy, but also do not make it too good or you’ll be forced to organize every single outing from now on. That girl, is a real genius, and her breasts are fucking great. Well done Hajime.

Priorities: Everyone spends so much time doing anything else but work. I am actually surprised this company is still standing, at least in design terms, cause I’m guessing Umiko would be having none of that. Then again, I guess lunch and dinner are much more important than work.

Shizuku is hopeless: What is wrong with that woman. I’m not entirely sure if she’s actually attracted to cute girls or if she just has some sort of weird fetish about them. I did enjoy the maid café section of the episode; it was pretty hilarious watching her tutoring them on how to do stuff… and taking awkward pictures of them. Aoba’s face was epic. Obviously, no work there either.

Hifumi wants none of this: Basically me 98% of the time in every occasion possible.

What is Momiji’s deal: So annoying, competitive, and unable to normally socialize with other people… I guess parents never loved her enough. Maybe they even wanted to call her Florence. Either way, she’s a bitch. Team Aoba.

Themes & Trivia

Maid Café: Even though I have never been to a maid café (because I’m pretty much against everything maid cafés represent), I thought I should give this a mention. Maid cafés are cosplay restaurants in Japan, where waitresses dressed in maid costumes act as servants and treat customers as masters, in a fashion way more familiar than it should be.

Hokkaido’s seafood: Japan’s most well-known seafood island, offering a vast variety of crab, sea urchin, squid, sushi, salmon, caviar, scallops… (stops to clean drool from all over the keyboard).

Food > work even in anime

Every time you feel some sort of paranoid guilt over taking more time than you should on your lunch break, please remember Aoba and the girls. Think of how much they love what they do and their blatant disregard for it in the face of food. No, seriously.

See you next week everyone, with another New Game!! episode review on MANGA.TOKYO!