In Transistor Tea Set ~ Denkigai Jizu, Suzu is a mecha otaku who lives and works in the dark depths of the Electic Town area of Akihabara. Her close friend, a younger girl named Sairi, has a raging crush on her, and helps Suzu cope with daily tasks like waking up and eating.
Suzu is not wholly unaware of Sairi’s feelings, occasionally asking Sairi if she likes her. Sairi is a typical tsundere, so it’s no surprise that her reaction is to scream “Idiot!” and run off.
Sadly for Sairi, Suzu still carries a torch for an old childhood friend, Midori, who had to leave Akihabara to go overseas. They promised to meet again, but that was many years ago. So, when Suzu gets a mysterious phone call and runs home to find that the front part of her shop has been turned into a maid cafe, it’s three steps beyond “a shock.” Complicating matters, is Midori, returned at long last, acting as the cafe’s maid. Midori sucks at cooking, cleaning, making tea and pretty much everything and anything maids might be expected to do. What she wants to do is to be close to Suzu, who probably wants the same thing, but is reacting with typical “comedic” rejection.
The chapters are filled with a lot of self-referential otaku humor, along with some very silly throwaway setups. In one chapter, Midori asks Suzu to build a robo-Maid. She does, but it loses its head (literally) and escapes into the town to create a swath of horror among late-night Akihabara dwellers. I expect the headless robo-Maid to return in some later chapter. You can’t just walk away from something like that. ^_^
The final chapter of the book follows a ghost/love story that has a happy ending and only tangentially involves Suzu and co.
Yuri is the totally one-sided crush Sairi has for not-unaware, but not probably interested, Suzu, and the mutual, but uneven, feelings Midori and Suzu have for one another. It’s not likely to go anywhere, which is kind of a shame, I think I’d like Suzu more if she opened up to Midori, but it’s also not the point of the story.
Ratings:
Art – 6
Characters – 7
Story – 6
Yuri – 5
Service – 6
Overall – 6
The point of the story is that Suzu is a schoolgirl uniform-wearing robotics fetishist and Midori dresses like a maid. The end. ^_^
If that’s Suzu on the cover shot, she must also loves engaging in water balloon fights, as she is keeping water balloons cunningly concealed in the front of her sweater.
So while she may need help with the ordinary tasks like waking up and eating, that does not mean she is not wily.
‘How dare a woman be a mecha otaku, turn that shop into a maid cafe, on the double!’ – Would you honestly -want- the Yuri to go anywhere?