Perfect Education: Maid for You – Review

Perfect Education: Maid for You is the seventh installment in the ‘Perfect Education’ series; a set of films that feature men kidnapping beautiful young girls and ‘educating’ them to be the ideal partner. Maid for You deviates little from this formula but sets this installment in Tokyo’s Akihabara, the city’s go-to spot for electronics and all things nerdy. Like most pinku eiga films, Maid for You features sex scenes (now in 3D, yawn) and female nudity. While not out-right pornography, this film is definitely for a mature audience. In between the sex and the thin storyline, Maid for You is infused the story with a hearty dose of maid-sploitation and features every otaku stereotype in the book, to the point where the men are caricaturized as much as the women.

Opening with a hastily choreographed dance routine featuring maids singing a pop ballad, the film follows the young otaku Kabashima (Yanagi Kotaro), who works and lives in a 24-hour manga cafe in Akihabara. Kabashima’s only hobby seems to be mooning over the young Ichigo, a cute girl who works at a maido-kissa (maid café) in Akihabara. While leaving the café, Kabashima attempts to give Ichigo some homemade cookies for her 17th birthday. Perhaps because he approaches her in a dark alley wearing a hooded jacket, Ichigo attempts to run away. A brief struggle ensues and she is knocked unconscious. Clearly, the only option left to Kabashima at this point is to take her back to the manga café with him and tie her up. After holding her prisoner for a few days, Ichigo convinces Kabashima to let her take a shower. She seizes this opportunity to escape (while spraying water in his eyes and stabbing him with a tooth brush). The two again struggle, this time with Ichigo in a towel, and Kabashima has no choice but to rape her as punishment for her insolence. Of course Kabashima feels just horrible about this and tells Ichigo that she can leave…but Ichigo doesn’t want to go anymore! From this point forward, the film just shows the developing relationship between Kabashima and Ichigo (bizarrely enough Ichigo is now the aggressor in every subsequent sexual encounter). There is a brief subplot with a rival café customer who attacks Kabashima in an attempt to save Ichigo, but the entire purpose of the film is sex and exploitation.

After the boom in ‘moe’ culture, maid cafes became one of the most recognizable features of Akihabara. For those of you who don’t know, maid cafes feature young girls dressed in French maid outfits serving simple drinks and food to customers, drawing ketchup hearts on omelets rice, and referring to their clientele as ‘goshujin-sama’ (master). For the most part, they exist as a location for socially inept men to interact with women in a non-intimidating environment and the maids do their damnedest to personify desirable feminine traits, primarily cuteness and innocence. While maid cafes aren’t intended to be sexual in nature (moe is above sex), Maid for You obviously sexualizes the pure Ichigo. As far as acting in concerned, Ayano does a fair job with Ichigo’s character. As a former gravure idol (think swimsuits and big boobs), she surprisingly gives a better performance that most of the idols inserted into Japanese films. Strangely enough, this movie also features Maeda Ken (The Ramen Girl) and Takenaka Naoto (Hara-kiri: Death of a Samurai), but their roles are small and inconsequential. The film also annoyingly alternates between 2D and 3D; I find the 3D highly unnecessary and distracting. **The YouTube video below is of Movie III, which should give you an idea of the tone of the series.

There are two ways to watch Perfect Education: Maid for You. One is to get angry at the overt misogyny and promotion of this idea that women can be kidnapped and socialized into perfect lovers. After several real-life incidents in Japan that mirror the storyline, Maid for You does seem to be made in pretty bad taste. But let’s get one thing straight, most pinku eiga movies are exploitative and decidedly distasteful. They really aren’t good movies. Maid for You is not unusual or unique in any way and most viewers can probably just sit back and enjoy the film for what it is. If you’re curious about pinku eiga and Japanese exploitation cinema, pop in Perfect Education: Maid for You. If you have even one feminist bone in your body (or respect women at all), steer clear.