Kikaijikake no Marie Mini Anime

Once a martial arts prodigy, Marie now carries a naturally deadpan expression and a mountain of debt. Her solution? Take a job as a maid in the mansion of Arthur Louis Zetes, heir to a massive conglomerate. The catch: Arthur doesn't trust humans. Years of assassination attempts from his jealous stepbrother have made him paranoid around people, so his household staff are all robots. To get the job, Marie has to pretend she's one of them — an emotionless machine just doing her duties. Lucky for her, she's got the poker face for it. What starts as a simple gig to pay off debts gets complicated fast. Arthur, who keeps his guard up around every living person, starts being genuinely kind to his new "robot" maid, and Marie has to deal with the fact that she's catching feelings for someone who literally only opens up to her because he thinks she's not human. Meanwhile, she's quietly using her combat skills to protect him from threats he doesn't even know about. It's a 12-episode ONA from studio AQUA ARIS, based on a shoujo manga, and the whole thing runs on that tension between the comedy of Marie's ridiculous charade and the slow-burn romance underneath it. If you liked the maid dynamics in Maid Sama or the "secretly competent servant" energy of Hayate the Combat Butler, this hits a similar sweet spot — just with the added wrinkle of Marie not being allowed to act human around the guy she's falling for.