Title: Inu x Boku Secret Service
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance, Supernatural
Rating: 5.8/10
Summary: The Shirakiin house’s daughter, Shirakiin Riricho, who has a complex about being unable to live independently and unprotected, feels the need to move out and live on her own under the condition of residing in the mansion named “Ayakashi Kan.” In this mansion, only those who have cleared a very strict examination could reside in it, and for each resident, they are accompanied with one agent of the Secret Service (S.S.). Although Riricho has rejected the company of the S.S., while residing in the mansion she finds out that the agent dedicated to protecting her is actually the Fox Spirit whom she previously rescued.
Review: Inu x Boku: Secret Service is one of those anime that kept me entertained just enough to keep watching through the season. It didn’t offer anything special or new probably because there was really no point to it. The most interesting thing about it was the romance between the characters. That isn’t to say that the romance between the characters was that great, I’m just saying it was the most interesting within the series. I think the problem was that the anime didn’t utilize the unique aspects it had making it a typical romance anime.
The artwork for
Inu x Boku was pretty good if you are into its typical artwork. I’m not one against sticking with what works so overall I liked how it played out. The characters were typical other than their special supernatural powers, and it had the normal character designs. The series stuck with the same outfits and scenery. It was rare to see a scene that didn’t take place in the special mansion or school. It felt like the producers just didn’t feel like taking things above and beyond or think of something new. The colors were bright and kept a very calm atmosphere. The designs and backgrounds were very simplistic with the occasional well shaded scene. Nothing really against it, but it did take away a lot from the more serious moments of the anime. Then again, there were rarely any serious moments in this anime.
I’m not really sure what they were trying to do with
Inu x Boku because it seemed like something was going to go down but then suddenly all story dissipated. It was a free fun-loving anime that had no real hook to get you to continue watching. The reason why I’m poking so hard on this anime for not being more entertaining is because they had a lot of elements they could have played around with. The biggest and most disappointing was the supernatural side to the anime. It’s like they introduced it to make it different from the typical romance then just let it fall into the background. They go into the past of some of the characters which was rather nice. The anime did a decent job getting the viewer to like the characters. Unfortunately this didn’t really make it anything special because there are tons of romance anime with good background stories. There were only a couple scenes where you see how awesome their powers were. Without expanding on the only thing they had going for them I can’t give this anime a very high score. Additionally the drama was so childish that it wasn’t real drama. It was more like a time killer or set up to a slice of life episode. My final bit of ranting before moving on to the soundtrack is about the character Miketsukami. That’s right, I had a problem with the main male lead. He was on a whole new level of creepy to me. On top of being a bodyguard, he was also a bit of a stalker. He had this low self-esteem aura around him. The series also reveals his “deep dark secret” which quite frankly wasn’t all that horrible.
[spoiler] He seduced women to get out of his cage of a room. After which he felt guilty and realized that he has no real emotions of his own because he was “putting on a mask” for his entire life. Then his “savior” came along and made him feel real emotions. Boring… [/spoiler]
The soundtrack was pretty good for Inu x Boku. I snagged the full version of the opening Nirvana by MUCC. I’m pleased to say that the full version is just as good, if not better, than the TV version. Most of the endings weren’t as good as the opening but I do give credit for having, correct me if I’m wrong, six endings in a short twelve episode season. I would say seven but I believe Nirvana was also used as an ending which doesn’t really count. I didn’t complain though since I did like the opening quite a bit. The background music was fitting so no complaints there either.
Final statements: I wanted to give this anime a passing grade because it did keep me relatively entertained through the season, but it is hard to justify with such little going for it. It was just like a lot of the other romance anime I’ve seen and they didn’t take it to its full potential. And quite frankly I found the romance to be a little on the creepy side. I’m sorry but this is an avoid watch because there are a lot of better options out there.
