Untethered OVAs, for me, are a bother, in that I end up getting plunked into the middle of something and since there is not going to be anything to come home to or go on from, it is merely a way to spend a half-hour, looking at the problems of others. Such is the case with “Rescue Me”.

Masayuki Mitzutani’s parents have gone overseas to some fabulous, high-paying job, leaving him alone in the house and for an unspecified length of time. And can anyone explain to me why this is considered ‘normal’? Crap, my parents didn’t even want to leave me in the car when they did grocery shopping! Well, in any case, he is looking forward to a free and unfettered life for however long they will be gone. However, to his surprise, they have hired Sayaka Shimizu (that blue-haired harridan), a fellow student from his school, to work as his maid for however long they will be gone.

Masayuki wants his life to be peaceful, but alongside Sayaka’s over-arching affections, he also has to fend off the attention of his kohai (Anna Ozono, brown hair), his younger aunt (Yuka Takamura, blondie), and his aunt’s yandere lesbian admirer (Mai Takagi, dark-hair). This is an ecchi-heavy-ecchi series. Some might feel it veers dangerously close to hentai, as there are a ton of ‘situations’, where each of them want some quality time with Mitzutani, hopefully alone and preferably naked. But is it funny?

I bring this up in that you have to play the line carefully. Yes, there is nothing more humorous than a man, wanting to protect HIS virtue from flirtatious women in flirtatious situations and the ladies involved will go to any lengths to be the first to pluck the cherries from the tree. That means a ton of bust-thrusting and derriere dilemmas as our hapless hero is besieged at every turn with barely-clad babes, each proffering their assets as best as they can.

Hey, they are all going to a hot springs! Hyuk, hyuk, so you know what is going to go down. It’s not a bad offering, but I felt I was cudgeled about the neck and shoulders with all the hijinks; hijinks that were going to lead to nowhere, not even to a better understanding about things. To this end, the comedy went flat, as they were trying too hard to be both funny and sexy. And in the end, as I predicted, we are back where we started with nothing to really show for our efforts.

If you wanted to take in An Evening of OVAs, this would be a nice addition to that offering; otherwise, it’s much ado about nothing new.

On a scale of 1 to 10:

Artwork           8 (Cute girls, as expected)
Plot                  7 (Quite typical)
Pacing              7 (Almost too frantic)
Effectiveness   7 (Time makes it hard to set up things better)
Conclusion      5 (It reaches a ‘coupler point’, but hasn’t ended)
Fan Service     5 (A similar show would be “Maburaho”)

Overall            6 (Needed more time to tell its story)

And remember, it’s first run until you’ve seen it. I guess panties are a no-no!