English Dub Review: Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid “Home Visit! (And Homes not Visited)”

This episode is filled with laughs and wrong. Enjoy it.

Spoilers Below

Kanna’s friend Riko invites the younger dragon over for a playdate and says that Tohru is welcome too. Her home has its own maid, Georgie, and she’d love to meet Kanna’s maid to swap… maid… stories… Whatever. Kobayashi decides to join as well, given her maid fanaticism. The three vanish up into Georgie’s room, leaving the two young girls to play on their own.

Georgie is a Victorian maid to the nines. She wears a costume not authentic to the fandom, but to the realities of the times. She serves the finest fresh Darjeeling tea on pristine, Victorian china. To be honest, Tohru is feeling a bit outclassed by Georgie’s easy service and professional knowledge. However, evidence comes up that Georgie is not an actual maid for the family, but is Riko’s older sister.

What seemed to be Riko’s simple “Oh she’s so cute” crush on Kanna is really a bit more. She begins to blush profusely when Kanna flops on her bed and begins to lose all sense of herself when they play Twister. Wait, Twister? Why do you just have that lying at the ready, you sly girl? Kanna decides it’s time for video games, but without a good gaming chair for back support, what to use? Riko, of course! Sitting in Riko’s lap, Kanna plays away, but the human can’t take it any longer. She admits that she wants to be closer to the dragon. Maybe even… Married? Kana turns, knocking Riko onto the floor and lying over her. We are spared this getting any worse by Tohru bursting in and begging to be saved. Back at the apartment, Kanna looks out the nighttime window at the rain,  mouthing something… Something… that ends with “Dragon Style”? Whaaaaaaaaa?

The next day, Lucoa comes over. She, too, has settled in the human world and needs Kobayashi’s help in smoothing things out with her new “landlord”. A young boy from a family of mages was attempting to summon a demon, and Lucoa decided to jump through instead for his benefit. Convinced she is a demon, he refuses to trust her. During the negotiations, Tohru brings up that Lucoa should provide him with something in exchange for letting her stay with him. She has to think about that one. Gold beyond knowledge? Nope, his dad is an alchemist. Advanced agricultural technology? He doesn’t want to be a farmer. How about phenomenal cosmic power? Nah, he’d rather earn it. She’s left with her last asset. “My body.” Quetzalcoatl! He’s a child! He seems to also be pure of heart because he wants none of that. This is a lost cause.

On the other hand, Fafnir and Takiya are getting along famously. Fafnir plays all sorts of games all day, involves himself wholeheartedly in all of Takiya’s otakudoms, and playtests the bullet hell game Takiya’s been making. The two go out to do some shopping, but Fafnir stays outside. When Tohru spots Fafnir on the streets, she’s reminded of something he said. When it comes to humans, there are keepers and losers. You can tell losers pretty quickly, but it takes a while to know a keeper. Takiya comes out, asking why Fafnir didn’t come in. Fafnir merely responds with “You’re a keeper, Takiya.”

I think I laughed the hardest at this episode than all the rest. There was a lot more risque humor throughout, but they always came in so suddenly and earnestly I found myself blurting out “WUT?” and chuckling anyways. This episode displays the sense of humor I was expecting (nay, fearing) from the show but it surprisingly didn’t turn me off. Having spent this long getting to know and love the characters actually helped make this a bit more palatable. Further, the episode reveals more of the universe. Mages are in our world, and they come from another. And the mage boy’s father? He owns the company that Kobayashi and Takiya work at. Well, that’s a plot point that isn’t going away anytime soon. We also have an explanation that Lucoa isn’t really a dragon, but an ex-goddess, and really was the Quetzalcoatl of myth. The voice acting was quite fun and was half the reason the comedy worked. The tonality Lucoa uses in offering her body to the mage boy wasn’t lewd, but humorous, almost as if she knew he wasn’t going to take her up on it. I give this episode eight cups of Darjeeling out of ten.