EROMANGA
HALL OF FAME

Maid no Oshigoto. stands in the hall because it discards a convention of the older-woman-younger-boy genre, that the older woman is fond of the boy, and puts an adult's judgement about how to settle a situation at the centre of the telling.

It is an adult work in that genre about a maid of thirty-five who has looked after the young master since infancy, in a house with no mother in it, and the adolescent boy he has become. The premise is a transgression the boy commits and the question of how she will settle it. Its subject is the gap in age, and the gap between a hired servant and her employer's son.

Her choice does not come from affection. It is a judgement reached after weighing ways to keep the household undisturbed without wounding the boy. The back half of the thirty-four pages is given to her monologue: she does not lose her composure, she establishes what has happened, and she assembles her own next steps. The character design, too, is consistent in refusing to subtract years from her. When many readers tag the book "woman's point of view", it is this position of the narration they are naming.

Areki Raiho, the artist behind the circle Jinsei Yokosuberi., has been publishing maid books commercially as well since 2015. Released at Comic Market 95, this was the ninth work of a circle active since 2012, and it remains its largest. The series runs to five volumes, through a final chapter.

Where most of the older figures in this category are sisters or mothers, she is drawn as someone moved by the ethics of her trade. Sixth in the older-woman-younger-boy category, fourth among shota. The sequel, Maid no Oshigoto. II, is in the hall as well. The FANZA edition carries a separately drawn cover, and most of its readership is there.