Servant x Service - manga overview

 Servant x Service (サーバント×サービス) is a slice of life comedy manga by Takatsu Karino.  The manga is compiled into 4 tankoubon and 2 omnibus editions in English.  The manga also received a 13 episode anime adaptation in 2013.

    The in depth overview of the plot of the story can be found here, the revisit of the anime.  This separate look at the story is largely to compare the source material with the more accessible anime adaptation and to debate the need for one over the other.  For a quick recap, the story primarily focuses on 20 year old new civil servant office worker, Yamagami Lucy.  She has joined the ranks of government employee in her Hokkaido based city in order to exact revenge on the person who rubber stamped her birth registration paper work.  Due to her parents indecision, Lucy ended up with a first name comprising of more than a dozen names, frequently being listed on official documents as "Lucy (abbr)".  The oddity of being named Lucy alone would be difficult enough to deal with as a child, but the continued name length encouraged rampant harassment by her peers in grade school.  This has led her to a life of meekness and self hatred.  Her goal, find the civil servant responsible for allowing her name and giving him a piece of her mind.

    Lucy has other things to worry about in her new job, working in one of he public welfare divisions, as her peers and immediate coworkers have their own eccentricities.  A fellow new hire, Hasebe Yutaka, plays the part of a lose playboy with low morals and even lower work ethic.  He's following in the steps of his older family members who have been life long public servants.  Hes talented, intelligent and confident but chooses to put as little effort into life as possible and blatantly demonstrates his lack of work ethic.  As time goes on he begins to openly court Lucy, using her inexperience in dealing with men to his advantage, stopping at the line of dangerous behavior around her.  Lucy believes everything hes doing is designed to harass and tease her, instead of him being awkward when dealing with a woman he likes for the first time.  Their co-works convince Lucy that Hasebe is an untrustworthy playboy, who is just interested in her as a one time conquest and would leave her in the gutter as soon as she responded favorably to him.

    The anime adaptation was faithful for the vast majority of the content in the manga.   It followed the progression of the books in roughly the same order while greatly enhancing the effect and flow of the story through expanded scenes and a greater depth of the characters through animation.  In this alone, the anime is the superior version of the material, breathing a lot more life into the cast an their antics than the manga was able to do in its yonkoma format.  The anime does not cover everything in the manga though.  If someone wanted to know the entire story but not retread the same plot lines covered by the adaptation, they could pick up with "Work:55" in the 3rd tankoubon/2nd omnibus and start from there with almost all new material.   The additional material beyond the anime expands on the relationship between Chihaya and Ichimiya, delves deeper into Hasebe's dilemma surrounding his courtship of Lucy and more.  As with many adaptations, the reason for the divergence in story is that the anime was produced before the manga was concluded.

    Overall I feel the anime is a stronger product, taking the amusing source material of the manga and significantly enhancing its delivery and appeal.  Not to belittle the efforts of Takatsu and their art, but the story really shines with motion and sound, filling the space between panels with more comedy than the manga can achieve.  Sadly, this means a large portion of the manga is unneeded following the production of the anime.  That doesn't mean it isn't worth reading, but the anime does such a better job at delivering it that it's almost pointless to pick up the first volume.  The story is cute, lovable and mature in an immature way.

The manga was printed in North America by Yen Press an compiled into two omnibus editions that are readily available.