Meido

If you're surprised this is the image, stop being surprised.

"A maid is a mythical being that all of us have heard about, but have never seen."

— ZUN

In anime, the housekeeper is a girl or young, attractive woman with a frilled band in her hair, and is required by her employer to wear a housemaid outfit of variable taste like a dress, or blouse and skirt (often also an apron). Usually this runs more towards the "cute" end of the spectrum, although in seinen the main difference is how much shorter and more outlandish the skirt will be.

In general this type of character is used as a form of Fanservice, but usually not in the "sexy" sense as French Maid is. Rather this character tends to appeal to "moe", and is connected to the fantasy of a (theoretically) submissive girl or young woman who obediently cleans your room, cooks your meals, behaves well and dresses like the employer requires, and tends to your every need.

In a romantic series, a housemaid (or domestic service in general) is used as a socially acceptable excuse to put a young, romantically available female lead under the same roof as one or more (potentially wealthy and handsome, if not particularly socially adjusted) male characters. (Bonus if they are classmates with their new servant.) Because of this, this trope can appeal to young girls as well as men. It also inherently opens up issues of class or gender power disparity, as whoever hired her obviously has the income to spare money employing another person full-time, and has great leverage over their employee.

Meido in comedies frequently subvert expectations by being very (violently) dedicated to their jobs and (willfully) oblivious to whomever they look after. Others will have crushes on their bosses, whom they usually call goshujin-sama (master) or ojou-sama (mistress).

In extreme cases, a meido, or, in the case of a larger contingent of maids, the head maid, will be the de facto head of the household, while her hypothetical employer is treated either as too delicate to handle the management of whatever Fiction 500 financial empire earns them the money to hire the housemaids, or as too lazy and incompetent to be trusted with that power themselves. Especially in the latter case, they may behave more like strict (and disappointed) parents than employees. Expect these employers to have nothing better to do than to indulge in their childish whims. If children, the head housemaid may well behave like a stalker or abductor, purposefully sheltering their ward from anything that may take them away or "taint" them.

If the hypothetical head of the household is royalty or a head of state, the head housemaid might sometimes just be the Prime Minister, Interior Minister, Chief of Police, War Minister, and more all rolled into one.

Sometimes a female character will inexplicably wear an outfit which vaguely resembles a housemaid outfit. The chance of this increases dramatically if she is shown doing any housework. Also, more and more often, the housemaid is also a Robot Girl. (See Robot Maid)

If the meido in question happens to be an Action Girl as well, she gets instantly promoted to Ninja Maid.

Housemaids are a quick and semi-plausible excuse to introduce a character into a household, domestic experience notwithstanding. If a young heroine (lacking a college education) is suddenly destitute, then obtaining work as a domestic servant is historically the common solution.

Meido are of particular interest, insofar as they and nurses are among the very few Moe items that attract both Japanese and Westerners.

Compare to French Maid, the Hotter and Sexier origin of this trope. See also Elegant Gothic Lolita, a fashion style with similar appeal to meido. Guaranteed to occur in a Maid Cafe.

Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Mei Meido and Mai Meido^note their last names sound the same, but are written differently in Kanji, so they are not sisters (although the latter insists this to be the case) from The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You are maids to Hakari and Hahari Hanazono.
• Taeko in Ai Yori Aoshi is a cute clumsy maid.
• And Yet the Town Moves, the most half-assed Maid Cafe in anime history.
• Black Butler:
  • Mey Rin is one of these. She's not a very good maid. She's actually a skilled sniper.
  • The anime also has Angela and Hannah.
• Black Lagoon:
  • Roberta is currently employed as a maid but occasionally has need of her other skillset as an ex-Cuban-trained assassin par excellance. Her equipment is of both worlds and includes such interesting combination items as a shotgun-umbrella, incendiary grenade-bustle, and an armored portmanteau with integrated machinegun. However, she's not a very good maid.
  • Fabiola Iglesias is a housemaid working for the same family, serving directly under Roberta. A younger, more comic-relief character, she is still very good with blades and martial arts, although she admits her gun skills need work. While Fabiola also mentions that she is the only one of the Lovelace maids being trained by Roberta for combat, Revy still wonders if the entire Lovelace Plantation was a badass maid force that could storm the Iranian embassy if they wanted to. (All portents point to "Yes.")
• Bleach: A Flashback arc reveals that the Ishida family had a maid called Kanae Katagiri. She was brought into the family when she and Ryuuken Ishida were very young children to be his personal servant and bodyguard. She is unshakably loyal to him, has only his best interests at heart, and is both his first choice as a battle partner and a confidante. Oh, and she's fanservice, too: there's definitely Unresolved Sexual Tension between them. She ends up as Ryuuken's wife and the mother of his son, Uryuu, before being killed six years before the first manga chapter... the savvy will notice that this is the same date as the death of Ichigo's mother, Masaki, and, no, that's not a coincidence. Plot-Triggering Death indeed.
• Minoru from Chobits has a cadre of Robot Girl Persocom maids. The only one he has personal feelings for, Yuzuki, is the only one who's not in a Stripperiffic outfit, wearing a more modest full-length maid dress.
• Maura from Claudine works as a maid in the main character's family home.
• The Lamperouge household's maid Sayoko Shinozaki from Code Geass does housework, looks after the ill girl Nunnally, and occasionally battles cyborg assassins with ninja martial arts.
• Fiore from Chrono Crusade is a quiet girl who serves as Joshua's maid.
• Cross Ange gives us Momoka Oginome, Ange's loyal and cheerful maid who bears Undying Loyalty to her princess, even after Ange is revealed to be a Norma. She's so loyal that she races to Arzenal to look after Ange, and accompanies her on almost every endeavor.
• Minako from Dear Brother, a maidservant in the Ichinomiya summer home. And she is the only person who is allowed to enter Fukiko's Room Full of Crazy (she goes to the room just to clean said room) and she gets fired from her job by telling Nanako about Fukiko's room before going getting into further details (it has memorabilia of her first meeting with Takehiko.)
• Speaking of creepy lesbian maids, Destiny of the Shrine Maiden's resident maid had a crush on Chikane.
• Emma: A Victorian Romance is a more grounded take on the trope, since creator Kaori Mori did a great deal of research about how real Victorian-era maids worked and dressed, right down to Emma's mundane outfit (for Victorian England, anyway). So is Mori's other manga about English maids, Shirley (and its continuation Shirley Madison).
• Virgo of the Celestial Spirits in Fairy Tail is almost always dressed in a typical maid outfit. Makes sense considering that she's "the Maiden" in the Zodiac.
• Fate/kaleid liner PRISMA☆ILLYA:
  • Miyu was revealed to be one. Much to her horror (or perhaps... delight?), Illya turned out to have an uncontrollably massive Maid fetish.
  • Later, Rin gets tricked into working as one for Luvia when she's seriously in need of money.
  • Sella and Leysritt, while technically maids, don't fit the meido archetype, but there's a manga panel where Sella privately tries on a traditional maid outfit after finding out that Illya likes them.
• Fruits Basket has Mine Kuremae, who isn't really a maid but is first seen wearing a maid uniform. She actually made it herself, since she's such a Cosplay Otaku Girl that she wears her outfits to work because she likes them so much (though she does work at a store that sells customized outfits).
• Played with in the 2003 Fullmetal Alchemist anime when Dante takes over the body of a young maiden after her old body begins to fail her. She remains villainous and confident and rules the Homunculi as their master.
• Subverted in Full Moon. The Kouyama's house maid dresses modestly more like your typical maid, is quite round and plain-looking. She looks and sounds about... middle-aged?
• Sakuyo and Kikuyo from Girls und Panzer "Little Army" work for the Nishizumi family, cleaning, cooking, talking with Miho about her problems, and overseeing mock tank battles. It's implied that Sakuyo is a former student of Miho's mother.
• Pai in G-On Riders wears maid outfit after her Heel–Face Turn and causes some utterly funny scenes forgetting to change and going to school.
• As a Period Piece, Goodbye, My Rose Garden features maids historically appropriate to Victorian Britain. That said, Hanako fits the more moe angle of this trope and even fulfills the "falling in love with her employer" trope.
• In Gravion, the entire staff of Klein Sandman's castle other than his Battle Butler is composed of maids. Servant maids, guard maids, commando maids, hacker maids, mechanic maids, and even one member of the central robotics team who of course turns out to be a robot maid.
• In Gundam Build Fighters Try Island Wars, Minato Sakai unveils a new version of the highly embarrassing Super Fumina from the final episode of Try - a "Titans Meido" colors version. Fumina beats him upside the head over it.
• Very nearly the entire cast of Hanaukyō Maid Team are maids.
• Hand Maid May is an hand-sized Robot Girl maid called a Cyberdoll.
• In Happy Lesson, Ichimonji-sensei/Mutsuki-mama usually wears a maid-like outfit at home and naturally does much of the domestic chores.
• Parodied in Haré+Guu with Bell, Weda's creepy lesbian maid.
• Hayate the Combat Butler:
  • Maria. This. Perverse Sexual Lust. Hayate is shown wearing a maid dress thanks to a curse.
  • Saki also fills this quotient for Wataru (though without the respectful title). Chiharu is a secret maid.
  • Isumi and Nagi try to project the impression on occasion. Since they're both Ojous, they fail at varying degrees.
  • Izumi dresses as one (short skirt variation) as punishment by her father. All the other maids (and pseudo-maids) use the long skirt variation.
• The whole point of He Is My Master is to put two teenage girls (and later three) into fetish maid outfits◊. The first enjoys wearing it, the second hates wearing it, and the third enjoys the second one wearing it.
• In Hidamari Sketch, Yoshinoya-sensei dresses in a maid outfit for cleaning day. She doesn't clean in it, nor would she ever. It would get dirty, after all.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure has Kyo Nijimura, resident Expy of Jotaro Kujo and the Higashikata family's housekeeper. Kyo actually despises the family she works for, and is serving them only to uncover their darkest secrets. She's very much of a Ninja Maid as well, as seen when she confronts Josuke.
• Hayasaka from Kaguya-sama: Love Is War wears a maid outfit while on the job, though her official role is being Kaguya's valet rather than her maid. At least until she retires during the class trip arc.
• Kamen no Maid Guy subverts, parodies and basically dials the concept of "maid" up to 11.
  • As the title says, Kogarashi is a Maid Guy — a crossdressing heroic sociopath. The series also includes Shizuku and Tsurara, who are Ninja Maids.
  • The more straight version of this trope, Fubiki, who only subverts this in two ways: first, she has a tendency to beat Kogarashi with a giant spiked club when he misbehaves; second, she sometimes goes overboard with her maid duties, even becoming embarrassed when the other cast members catch her in normal clothes.
• In Ie Naki Ko Remi, the Mulligan family have a maid named Nelly who has red hair, big brown eyes and a pair of freckles. She's very protective of Remy once she finds out that she is Mrs. Mulligan's long lost daughter.
• Sara Uchida from Kasei Yakyoku, who is a maidservant in Akiko's family house, who is in a love triangle that involves her, Akiko and Takao.
• Ken Akamatsu. We can just call this Author Appeal and be done with it
  • Akamatsu's fascination with maids and other "innocent" fetish outfits goes all the way back to A.I. Love You.
  • After a (relatively) humorous breakdown, Motoko in Love Hina tries her hand at being domestic, including full maid regalia. In the manga she stole it from Kitsune, in the anime Haruka apparently had a maid outfit lying around.
  • The girls of his next series Negima! Magister Negi Magi wear maid outfits for sometimes no reason at all; primarily with the, as is common, Robot Girl Chachamaru (the rest of the cast once broke into her wardrobe).
    • For Chachamaru there's justification, she is Evangeline's servant. The other girls, well the excuse was that they'd just taken a bath and wanted clean clothes (they were in Evangeline's resort at the time).
    • During the Tournament Arc, Setsuna and Asuna get pressganged into wearing maid outfits to appeal to the crowd, mainly because they don't really have any pulls (like "last years champion", etc.)
    • Then later, while half the cast was Trapped in Another World, she dressed up several of the remaining classmates because she was bored. Evangeline seems to just have a thing for the Maid/Gothloli look.
    • Then some of the girls who were in the magic world ended up sold into slavery, complete with maid outfits.
    • Oddly enough, Fate appears to have a Meido fetish, as he seems to take every opportunity to make girls dress in Meido outfits. Including Anya and his minions.
  • The girls in UQ Holder! can often be seen in maid outfits while at Fairyland hall. Justified for Karin, Kirie, and Shinobu since they work there, but Mizore seems to do it strictly for cosplay purposes.
• Kyoshiro To Towa No Sora deconstructs this. Setsuna is essentially Kyoshiro's maid, taking care of everything he needs, but while he's simply using her status as an Absolute Angel to destroy the others and then her, Setsuna is hopelessly in love with him, trying her hardest to make everything nice for him in the hopes that maybe he'll show her some affection. Yet when he falls for Kuu instead (despite her being an Absolute Angel as well), she vows to continue helping him find her, even if she won't be repaid for it.
• Sent up in Lucky Star, where Patty wishes she had a Meido to do her chores so she could spend more time watching anime...and she specifically means a Meido, not a housekeeper. There's a difference!
• Elenore Baker from Madlax is a prime example of this. As well being Margaret's maid she acts as her personal assistant, body guard and all around companion. Her professionalism tends to lead people that she is "cold" or "mechanical or a robot" when the opposite is true. It is also because of that professionalism that she can't truly express how she feels for her master Margaret, so she does so in her work.
• The lead girls in Magikano and FLCL posing as maids clearly have no experience doing; it's an excuse for free room and board.
• Mahoromatic features a Robot Girl battle android who has one year remaining to live, and choses to spend it as the maid of her late Commander's son.
• In Maid-Sama!, the eponymous Student Council President Misaki works at a Maid Cafe to help support her single mother and younger sister. The job makes her a bit uncomfortable, between her dislike of men and her fears that her schoolmates will not take her seriously as president if they find out, but she stays on because the pay is good and her manager is very understanding and willing to accommodate her.
• Obviously, there's Tohru herself, but maids are treated as incredibly Serious Business by the adult humans in Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid. Kobayashi, Makoto, and Sanae "George" Saikawa are all massive maid Otakus (with Georgie to the point that she dresses up and pretends to be one when not at school), though Kobayashi seems to prefer real maids over the kind typically shown in anime since she drunkenly derides the latter as "just cosplay". The bandit that Tohru once met even equated becoming a maid with freedom.
• Fumi Himeno in My-HiME fits this trope to a T, in addition to being a Ninja Maid. My-Otome is built on this trope, with an on-camera lecture devoted entirely to "the correct way to greet your master".
• Pani Poni Dash!'s Media is a prime example of this, seen wearing an maid outfit in just about every one of her appearances during the series.
• In Pokémon Adventures, Latias disguises herself as a maid to help out Emerald in the Battle Pyramid. Later on she disguises herself as a news reporter, then a nurse.
• Pokémon the Series: Diamond and Pearl has a Maid Cafe episode, featuring both Dawn◊ and Ash donning french maid outfits.
• In Precarious Woman Executive Miss Black General, the Boss has the Secretary dress up as one to make up for (supposedly) breaking one of his figurines, while three of the General's clones wind up having to work at a maid café to earn a living.
• Kurume from RaButa has a maid named Fuyu who is also her Parental Substitute. Cool-Kyou Shinsha would later reuse her design in Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid as Tohru.
• Ranma ½:
  • Kasumi wears a maid-like apron at all times, and is generally sweet, domestic, and clueless.
  • Akane once disguised herself as a French maid (with bonnet and everything) to infiltrate the house of Picolet Chardin, who had taken female Ranma to make her his bride. Then Soun disguised himself the same way.
  • Female Ranma also disguised herself as a French maid in order to thwart Ryoga, who was trying to entertain both Akari and Akane (separately) at his home.
• Ayanokouji Yaito of Rockman.EXE has, in the anime, a personal army of twenty-odd maids in full French maid regalia, all attractive and with varying hairstyles. In any later episode featuring her, the viewer is usually treated to a montage of various maids about the town doing whatever task she's set them.
• In Sailor Moon SuperS: The Movie, Haruka is seen flirting with their maid only to get caught in the act by Michiru.
• Sayaka Dejima from Seitokai Yakuindomo is Aria's maid.
  Tsuda: They really exist?
• Chihiro Komiya from Shonen Maid is a male example. He works as a maid for his uncle because he feels he needs to earn his keep after his uncle took him him when his mother died.
• Amu Hinamori from Shugo Chara! has a maid, Amulet Clover, as one of her three primary charanari.
• Minto in Tokyo Mew Mew has her own squad of more traditional maids.
• To Love Ru:
  • A chapter has Rito's class gets ready to help clean around the city. The principal explains that he has picked out special uniforms for the girls. Just then, the girls (including Yami) show up and they are in maid outfits. Rito asks Yami why she is there, and she tells him that the principal invited her. Also Mikado wear this.
  • In the sequel "Darkness" when Saki makes her mansion staff sick with her cooking she recruits people to help out for a day. It ends up with Mea, Nana, Momo, Yami, Aya and Rin dressed up this way...because Momo thought the Tenjouin maid uniforms were "to orthodox and lacked sex appeal"....er, because she "didn't want to be a burden on Tenjouin-san."
• There's an entire army of Catgirl maids in UFO Princess Valkyrie.
• In Yuri is My Job!
  • In a flashback, Hime meets Nozaki, the Yano family maid, when she visits Mitsuki's family home. Nozaki doesn't wear any sort of traditional or fanservicey maid uniform, but simply wears an apron over her white shirt and black pants.
  • Kanoko, who has a one-sided crush on her best friend Hime, but refuses to confess, says her dream is to serve as a maid in Hime's household once Hime marries a rich man, with Kanoko being shown wearing a maid uniform with a collared dress and an apron and doing Hime's hair. Sumika points out that under that scenario, Hime will be married, but Kanoko replies that it will be a loveless marriage, so Kanoko won't have to worry about Hime choosing someone else.
• Chitose of Yuuna and the Haunted Hot Springs is the innkeeper of the hot springs, and is often dressed in the traditional outfit of a Japanese maid (a kimono and kappougi) when she's taking care of the inn. Sagiri takes on the job for the Yukemuri High cultural festival's Maid Cafe.

Asian Animation

• Wolnie wears this kind of outfit in episode 31 of Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: Joys of Seasons when she first experiences the effects of some forgetful grass that her husband Wolffy has fed her. Wolnie forgets who she is, but starts to act extremely nice towards Wolffy, becomes his maid, and is seen serving him breakfast.

Card Games

• Yu-Gi-Oh! has the Dragonmaids, which appear to be loosely inspired by the Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid series.

Fan Works

• Fate Revelation Online:
  • When Hexadecimal asks Ilya to teach him magecraft, she demands he use his Tailoring skill to get Asuna into a maid outfit. He argues her down to a maid outfit for Asuna (not her in it), and a butler outfit for Shirou.
  • Asuna demands to know why she's being singled out like this, which results in Ilya asking for Itagaki and One Snow to get maid outfits as well. Itagaki, who has a crush on Hexi, has a rather... specific problem with that plan.
    Itagaki: I wouldn't be happy if Hexi-sempai asked me to wear a maid dress because another girl asked for it.
  • Later, Ilya and Kirito both silently agree that no matter what happens, one day they will turn Asuna into "the cat-eared meido [Asunyan]."

Literature

• Black Summoner: Efil wears this style of outfit after being purchased by Kelvin, although she is not a maid herself, rather serving his archer support in battle. Kelvin later hires a mother and daughter pair of peasants he rescued from slavers to serve as maids, and dresses them accordingly.
• Marika Kato and her best friend in Bodacious Space Pirates work at a Maid Cafe.
• Erica and Liliana of Campione! both have personal maids, Arianna and Karen respectively, who are a year younger than them. They are both receiving tutelage as witches in return for their services. Arianna has several faults as a maid, but Erica likes her regardless. Karen by contrast is skilled both at her job and at manipulating Liliana due to the latter's lack of social skills; she also acts as a "spy", sending blackmail material to Erica.
• Maika in A Certain Magical Index. Academy City, where the story takes place, has maid schools.
• In Girls Kingdom, there are two tracks for Amonotsuka Academy: The The Societal Arts track for rich young ladies and the Domestic Arts track for those training to be their maids, and the school is set up so the two sides can easily interact and find the right match. The Domestic Arts uniform is even made so that the wearer can quickly make herself look like a maid just by putting on a headband and apron.
• Haruhi Suzumiya:
  • Mikuru is picked by Haruhi as the SOS Brigade's maid and makes her dress up as a maid while serving tea to the other members. While Mikuru really doesn't like being forced into cosplay, she does get used to the maid outfit.
  • Tsuruya and a couple of other girls from her class are dressed as maids and serve noodles and tap water for the School Festival.
  • Mori is both an Action Girl and a Maid at various times, but not the same appearance. So she may or may not be a Ninja Maid.
• I'm In Love With the Villainess: Rei blackmails Claire's father into letting her serve as one of Claire's maids.
• I'm the Evil Lord of an Intergalactic Empire!: Amagi is a Robot Maid Artificial Intelligence who serves as Liam's Parental Substitute, Sexbot, and prime minister all in one. The reason Amagi has all of those capabilities is due to the tendency of Blue Blood Feudal Future nobles to dump their domains on their children in Parental Abandonment while they move to the luxurious capital City Planet, and Liam's parents let him pick so he chose the most expensive one. Amagi struggles with self-esteem issues due to the social stigma against A.I.
• In INVADERS of the ROKUJYOUMA!?, Marietta Alsein is a maid from the Imperial Palace.
• Ladies versus Butlers!. In the whole servant-ed of the school, there are only four boys. The rest are girls who are all this. Sanae is one most focused on.
• A Mage's Power: Annala becomes a household maid as a summer job and wears a stylized version of a maid's traditional outfit as a uniform. The uniform is a ruse for Power Nullifiers and a Slave Collar.
• In Magician's Academy, we have Eneus, the Dog Girl Ninja Maid complete with a spear. Eitarou, her master. makes Humongous Mecha versions of her.
• Maoyu has a maid serving Maou, titled Head Maid, who wants to perfect meidodo(Way of the Maid), who thinks fighting for one's master and leading an army to victory is a must for a maid. She's one of the demons from the library clan, and probably has read too much manga.
• In Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation:
  • Lilia is a professional maid, having originally acted as a palace guards-maid before being hired by the Greyrat family. Later on her daughter Aisha becomes this for Rudeus specifically.
  • Eris' family had a large number of beast race maids, due in large part to the family's furry fetish. Rudeus wonders whether they were kidnapped from their villages and trained as maids specifically to be sold to the family.
• In Overlord (2012) there are two sets of Meido in Nazarick's Tomb: the Pleiades Combat Maids and the Homunculus Maids. The first set aren't actually maids but a combat squad design to hold the line in the event that anyone was able to make it to the last floor and hold off the enemy until Guild Members were able to arrive to give a final showdown, the Homunculus Maids on the other hands are standard maid characters that were design as decorations since in the game world the Tomb didn't actually need cleaning, but in the New World they now serve such a duty.
• Rebuild World: Discussed Trope. The presence of the Ninja Maid bodyguard sisters Shiori and Kanae results in the hunter Kurosawa talking to Shirakabe about his maid fetish and how it's about much more than just clothing. Later there's a Mauve Shirt hunter fantasizing about getting his own Robot Maid while taking the Shmuck Bait of activating one that gives him an Attack Hello in a ruin.
• Kuroha in Rental Magica often acts like a maid in their headquarters, primarily shown serving tea. Later on she also dresses as one, mainly for fun.
• Wilhelmina in Shakugan no Shana ~de arimasu (even though she's terrible at cooking).
• In Sister Princess, the family is taken care of by "oyaji", who is a fetching young lady. She acts as the butler, the chauffeur, the cook...basically, any off-screen job involved in the upkeep of Promise Island. (In the animated adaptation, "oyaji" is now a middle aged man in similar roles.)
• Torture Princess: Fremd Torturchen: Hina, a gynoid made of clockwork who becomes viewpoint character Kaito's main Love Interest, is put to work as a castle maid by Elisabeth and dresses in the customary frilly black dress and apron most of the time. Which results in absurd visuals when this meido waids into battle swinging a halbert with a blade the size of her entire torso.
• Trapped in a Dating Sim: The World of Otome Games is Tough for Mobs: While there are a few maids, by far the most moe is Yumeria, Kyle's mother (Kyle himself is arguably a Gender-Inverted example with him being designed for an Otome Game). Yumeria is a busty Cute Clumsy Girl with Green Thumb magic that made her subject to Fantastic Racism.

Manhua

• Infinite Apostles and Twelve War Girls: Loina is the maid of the Capella family.
• My Wife Is a Demon Queen: Elena is Sophisas' top maid.

Music

• Japanese rock group Band-Maid perform in this style of costume, deliberately contrasting the usual connotations of a maid with high-energy, aggressive rock that occasionally verges towards metal.

Tabletop Games

• Maid RPG. It's Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
• Tanto Cuore, a Dominion style card game themed around recruiting maids.

Theatre

• Even though it's set in Ancient Rome, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum describes this trope in the number "Everybody Ought To Have a Maid", with lyrics like "everybody ought to have a menial, consistently congenial, and quieter than a mouse", and "shuttering up the windows, cluttering up the bedroom, buttering up the master".

Toys

• Tamagotchi: Maidtchi is, as implied by the name, a maid who works to keep her house nice and tidy. And yes, she wears the typical outfit.

Video Games

• EXTRAPOWER: Attack of Darkforce: Idea, the humonculus maid in charge of Mayard's mansion. She's a demure, taciturn artificial girl who dresses in the classic maid dress even when throwing giant steel balls at alien dragonflies.
• In Xenoblade Chronicles 2, Tora's Blade Poppi α is an example of one, having been programmed for maidwork, with behavior and mannerisms similar to an innocent child.
• Felicia and her sister Flora from Fire Emblem Fates. The former is described as a "goddess of destruction" in her in-game profile for how clumsy she is when it comes to serving tea and food, while the latter is more competent at her job. They also both received combat training, with Felicia being the better fighter of the two.
• Mother 3 has Ms. Marshmallow, a robotic maid who takes care of Porky Minch's toy room in Thunder Tower.
• Samantha of Killer7 is both an example, and an aversion, due to a Split Personality. One is a typical maid, and the other is... less than ideal.
• Noel in Triangle Heart 3: Sweet Songs Forever is also a Robot Girl. She appears in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha with a sister, another maid.
• Nene in Tōka Gettan. There's a bunch of other Meido shown, but none of them are named.
• Roll from the Mega Man (Classic) series is a housekeeping robot and generally has cleaning-themed attacks when playable, although none of her outfits are particularly French (her Mega Man 8 clothes come close, though).
• In Mega Man X DiVE, Iris and Ciel got variants of these outfits for the Valentine's Day event on February 2021.
• One random NPC in The World Ends with You in more-or-less Present Day Shibuya, Japan wonders to himself if a girl he saw dressed up as a Maid was working at a Cosplay bar. This leads to him wondering if there are any maids who dress that way to clean houses. (You can buy the outfit in question after beating the game.)
• Lynette from Soulcalibur III is dressed like this, but sells clothing at various stores instead of cleaning houses.
• Daphnis from Tears to Tiara 2 is a male example, dressing and acting like a maid to be able to follow Elissa around as a bodyguard.
• Touhou Project:
  • Sakuya Izayoi, as the head maid of a vampire's mansion, leads a small army of (pretty incompetent) fairy maids. She does a maid's duty perfectly: cooking, cleaning, washing, babysitting, and also knife throwing, stopping the flow of time, etc. She used to hunt demons and vampires before that. Maybe. Nobody knows for sure.
  • Ruukoto, a nuclear-powered robot maid only seen in Reimu's ending. Next is Mugetsu, who's not a maid (actually a god of a dream-world), but dresses the part anyway because her sister likes maids. Then is Yumeko, who's basically blonde Sakuya without timehax (and she uses swords instead of knives).
  • Konpaku Youmu is formally a gardener of Hakugyokurou, but she's also its only staff. She cooks, cleans, babysits (her mistress Yuyuko is something of a Cloudcuckoolander), does household shopping, acts as security ...
• Daniella in Haunting Ground is an Ax-Crazy homonculus maid.
• Iroha from Samurai Shodown has the personality of a Meido, but dresses like a cross between a French Maid and a kunoichi.
• Persephone is a rather infamous Cute Monster Girl appearing in the DS Castlevanias. Described in the bestiary as "a demonic maid in the employ of an earthly baron", Persephone resembles a traditionally-uniformed, frilly-capped little lady that will politely bow down before you and then will attack you with some kung fu moves.
• A sidequest in Tales of Symphonia has Colette acting as a maid at Meltokio Castle, complete with the archetypal outfit. Maid outfits are often used as an alternate costume in the Tales Series. Tear and Judith get maid costumes to use. The latter woman can sweep the enemy to death if she has this costume and equips the reccurring Joke Item Deck Brush. Tales of Berseria has DLC maid costumes for the girls that are explicitly designed for sex appeal. Except Eleanor who is more cute than sexy.
• This is an outfit in Animal Crossing City Folk.
• Fiona from Arcana Heart goes into battle wearing a maid costume and wielding a BFS.
• Phantasy Star Universe:
  • Amorel gear (left-most picture on the bottom row◊), a set of parts for female CASTs (one of the diverse "species" in the game). Given the fact that a CAST is a robot...
  • Some of the body types for RAcaseals◊ in Phantasy Star Online made them look a bit like maids.
• Lunar Knights gives us Carmilla. Frilly headpiece and everything.
• Takeuchi's uniform looks like a maid outfit in Canvas 2, but she insists it's just a waitress outfit.
• In Tokimeki Memorial 2, Kaori Yae gets to wear a maid uniform during her School Festival Event. This Event occurs after she recovers from her 2-years long Heroic BSoD, with her having a fun time serving coffee to customers while wearing it; the scene was so memorable, her maid appearance stuck as an Iconic Outfit for her, with several official artworks and figurines with her wearing it.
• Mitsumete Knight: Prim Rohzbank, and later, Carol Palecki, are maids at Dolphan Castle.
• There is, of course, Custom Maid 3D which lets you, of course, create your own 3D maid.
• Mitsumete Knight R: Daibouken Hen has a maid uniform in its large variety of costumes for your female party members.
• Dragon Quest IX features a complete maid's outfit as one of the costume pieces. Oddly enough, it's one of the few costume pieces without gender restrictions.
• In Skullgirls, Peacock and Marie both started out as this. Peacock ditched the look after being mutilated by the Medici Mafia and rebuilt by Lab 8. Marie kept it even after becoming the Skullgirl.
• The first boss of Mind Your Manors takes the form of a fanged shadow wearing a purple maid's uniform.
• The special sprite for the Swordmaster class in One Way Heroics is this. Amusingly enough, instead of having a detailed portrait, this character has a drawing of a cat and the words "No sexy maid pic for you!".
• Neko Atsume has Sassy Fran, a cat in a maid outfit. She shows up occasionally if you have the Cardboard Café item laid out.
• In the Pokémon games, the Maid trainers dress this way.
• Sharon Kreuger in The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel is this, serving as a maid to the Reinford family and also to your playable team. She's also an enforcer of the mysterious organization Ouroboros and a badass at combat who joins your party at times in the second game, devastating enemies with her severing chains while also carrying a Craft that heals the entire party.
• The Maid of Fairewell Heights: Marshmallow's a high school girl working as a maid for money.
• Persona 5: Sadayo Kawakami, your homeroom teacher, moonlights as an in-call maid, a profession with sexual undertones, to make ends meet. When you accidentally discover this, she makes a deal with you, allowing you to slack off in class in exchange for keeping her double life a secret. Through her Confidant, you learn that she is practically forced into this profession and other part-time jobs as a result of the guardians of a student who died under her care Blackmailing her.
• Disgaea 5: Alliance of Vengeance: The Maid class is a generic (undead) humanoid you can create in the game. Like many humanoid demons, she can be made proficient with any weapon and magic (provided you have the methods to teach her said magic), but her specialty is being the Item Caddy. One personality even has them have... murderous tendencies if you choose to make her that way.

Visual Novels

• Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Trials and Tribulations: Jean Armstrong's cafe has the waitresses wear maid outfits. Maggey spends her entire jail term in hers and during her very brief stint as a waitress Maya wears one. Unfortunately her smaller...assets are not enough to move waitress fetishist Victor Kudo enough to make him testify. Mia is very annoyed to find she's only been channeled to give Maya a larger bust.
• The twins Hisui and Kohaku from Tsukihime are both maids who work for the Tohno family; while Hisui wears a typical maid outfit, Kohaku wears a kimono and kappougi, the more traditional outfit of a Japanese maid. Hisui has a crush on Shiki, more or less obvious depending on what path is chosen. She is also hugely dedicated and caring towards him. Kohaku is seemingly very devoted to her job, not to mention having a scary obsession with...guess who...Shiki. They become Ninja Maids in Melty Blood, supposedly because of the Reality Warper effect of the Big Bad. In the goofier parts of the game Kohaku even build multiple Robot Maid versions of Hisui. Mech-Hisui also makes an appearance in Battle Moon Wars, a fan-made Nasuverse crossover game.
• Umineko: When They Cry:
  • Shannon's a defensive Barrier Warrior, closer to a White Magician Girl.
  • Kanon is a male example and straight-up Battle Butler.
  • From an anti-fantasy perspective, the Stakes of Purgatory were imaginary friends of Yasu who were based on maids who worked for the Ushiromiya family.
• Several members of nobility in Analogue: A Hate Story have maids as servants.
  • In the sequel, Hate Plus, you get to see portraits of some of the maids.
  • In Analogue, *Hyun-ae gives you permission to change her outfit, one of the options she offers is a maid uniform. If you start Hate Plus with *Hyun-ae, the option is once again available.
• Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony gives us Kirumi Tojo, the Ultimate Maid. She is excellent at her job, as she is able to complete any task she is given, and there have been rumors she was even hired as a bodyguard (though she passes it off, stating she simply works as a maid). While trapped in the prison school, she cooks meals for the students and cleans their dorms, to the point where Kokichi asks her to "be his mom". Kirumi is very dedicated to her job to the point where she murders Ryoma in order to escape the school and see if her country was alright. For further context, she was appointed as the de facto prime minister since she was so good at assisting him. Her dedication becomes quite violent in the end since she refuses to Face Death with Dignity and attempts to run away from her execution.
• Grisaia Series: Sachi is not actually a maid, but she wears a maid outfit near-constantly and does most of the chores around the school, and her method of flirting with Yuuji is to make jokes about being a submissive, erotic maid. This all started when the other girls noticed her complex about always wanting to be helpful and willingly taking on the chores, and Michiru joked that she should wear a maid uniform as often as possible. Sachi being Sachi, she took that as a command and began following it.

Webcomics

• Volume 1 of Van Von Hunter features a psychopathic Cockney maid named Miriam who cleans floors with a knife.
• MegaTokyo:
  • Yuki Sonada dresses up as this to follow Piro into a Maid Cafe, disguising herself as one of the staff. It's implied that she steals the clothes right off someone's back, too.
  • Meido Meganekko Yuki with a (literal) Rent A Zilla all in one frame!
• Collar 6: Ginger first, then Stella and Claire.
• Spinnerette. Mecha Maid. Technically, it's an exoskeleton, and she does aikido... Never mind. That is all.
• Questionable Content: How Marigold imagines herself at one point.
• Sandra and Woo: When Richard meets Hitomi she's working at a Maid Cafe.

Web Original

• Ayasaki-san: Sana dresses in a maid costume as a penalty after Chiaki keeps beating her in a video game.
• That Other Wiki's Anthropomorphic Moe Personifications Wikipe-tan (center), Commons-tan (left), and Quote-tan (right)◊ are all designed with maid outfits.
• The Nijiura Maids created in the early 2000s on Japanese imageboard 2channel, a group of net characters in a similar vein to the OS-tans. Many of them avert the typical characteristics of this trope by having strange personalities and/or off-putting appearances; one example being the Addled Addict Yakui, the most well-known maid.
• Mani Mani People: Niko is frequently a maid working for Moroboshi.

Real Life

• Soviet (and Imperial Russian) school uniform for girls resemble stereotypical maid outfits quite a bit.
• There's a phonographical Japanese joke of "meido no miyage", which could mean either "maid's gift" or "gift from the underworld". Most notably, this pun crops up in the opening of the Haruhi-chan anime.

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