Most of the time villains are written without any in between — they’re either irredeemable jerks or they get better. When it comes to Privaty of Nikke, she falls in between as someone who isn’t the bad guy but is permanently “forced” to be because of her position. Oh, and did we mention she’s a maid now? That’s right, Nikke‘s Perfect Maid event puts miss grumpy into the uniform.
When you’re an android in a totalitarian society, the worst luck you can have is getting assigned as the government dog. Privaty is a member of Triangle squad, who are essentially the secret police of the leadership. Their job is to carry out missions to eliminate or capture “threats”, which of course can be very subjective in this story. The protagonist himself is a “threat” because of his beliefs about Nikkes and their freedom. This is the catalyst for many clashes between himself and Privaty, to the point he knows her quite well.
He understands that there is no option but to obey or she gets a mind wipe. It’s easy for him to see the harshness is a facade, as she actually hates herself for what she does. Ironically, she has the least freedom of all Nikkes, despite being the one that enforces that oppression. Because of that, the protagonist has no malice about it, despite how often she makes his life hard.
It wasn’t difficult for the protagonist to figure out who Privaty really was because of how amusingly reactive she is. Even though she is a soldier, she’s a lot of bark and no bite, with childish habits, like guzzling down sugary canned coffee and having tantrums when others call her out. Those traits make her fun to tease, which is how her flirty somewhat one-sided rivalry with the protagonist began. Having her work in a maid cafe is just perfect because she has to act cute and dainty. All silliness aside, this is a very important moment for her character development. For once, she’s not in a setting where the bosses are watching and finally shows a different side.
Privaty is a lot of things, but one thing she’s not is a bad friend. The event mainly focuses on the maid Ade dealing with some imposter syndrome in regard to her skills as a maid. She prides herself on her perfect skills but has recently found herself feeling stale about it and to ponder exactly what perfection is. Privaty joins the cafe staff after a missile test goes wrong as a way to fix her mistakes. She’s not a perfect maid by any means, but she tries her best to fit the role and in doing so inspires Ade to feel a spark again.
When Ade is feeling her lowest, Privaty encourages her by saying there’s nothing wrong with having strong aspirations. Throughout the whole thing, she shows a very caring and helpful side we’ve never seen. Could this really be proof she’s not the person we think she is, that she’s simply the central government’s mouthpiece? From what it seems, her approach is situationally subjective, but her feelings are genuine.
We can expect that this unkind maid of the Perfect Maid event might start to show more kindness in the future if given a chance. If the central government is out of the equation, things can even change full circle for her.
