Reviews for Mai-HiME (7.46) kd43

I'll be honest: I really wasn't a big fan of this series. Yes, it had its moments, but overall it just wasn't very good.

Story
Perhaps the best thing that can be said about the storyline was that it didn't really drag. Other than that, though...

The biggest issue with the story was that it never really succeeded at pulling at my heartstrings. Which is strange, really, when you consider the sorts of things that actually occur during the course of events. I don't want to be a spoiler, so I'll just say that things do actually start to get fairly dramatic about halfway through, and events actually manage to spiral downwards in an interesting way for a while.

Unfortunately, the ending of the series was flat-out weak. *MINOR SPOILER* (plenty of foreshadowing for this though) There was a confrontation in episode 25 where I was left thinking "why the hell are they fighting with everything else going on".

Much worse was the last episode itself. The resolution was shockingly deus ex machina (that's a term for when a solution to everyone's problems magically appears out of nowhere, with nary a bit of foreshadowing). I don't neccesarily mind the choice that they made for how things would work out, but it just didn't make sense in the context of everything that had gone before.
And the other big problem with the story was...

Character
The characters here were incredibly weak. The sad thing was that they were obviously trying to do a good job with it; the problem was they never were able to create any kind of real attachment to any of the characters, good or bad.

A big part of that was that the main character was fairly weak; the "on again, off again" status of her and Tate, the boy she's interested in just didn't work. Tate's indecisiveness about who he's interested in as well just made it worse. Mikoto as a ing character really didn't work; she's supposed to be sort of cute in a dumb way, and she's obviously supposed to be there for the fanservice with Mai's breasts, but there really didn't seem to be anything else there. Even when things got dramatic with her, it just seemed forced and out of character.

Of course, these are the sorts of things that happen when the show's creators make a conscious decision to go with mediocre jokes and overuse of fanservice in lieu of character development. Even in the second half, when they were trying to make the show more serious, there was still enough fanservice that it was a noticeable part of the experience. Because they had gone far too long in the series without giving the characters any depth, it was very hard to care when everybody's lives suddenly went to hell. It certainly seemed like that the creators were trying to create real emotion and drama, but because no emotion connection to the characters had been developed, the entire second half just felt awkward and occassionally cheesy instead.

It reminded me a lot of Vandread; they were clearly trying to have some serious drama, and yet they so overused fanservice and dumb comedy that I could never decide whether they were actually being serious or trying to parody the situation; you could easily make an argument for either, and that's never a good thing.

Animation
This was definitely the highlight of the series. The drawings looked good, and there never seemed to be any hitches with the look, even in the heat of battle.

Sound
The voice acting was good; however, both the OP and ED were eminently forgettable, and that takes a big bite out of the rating. Of course, it was pretty funny how the OP sub ended with "I want to look at them forever" along with a, um, big picture of Mai and her friends (somehow I do think that was intentional, but of course I can't prove it).

Value
There's no good reason to go through this series again. There aren't any awesome scenes, and the story is much too weak to want to sit through it again.

Enjoyment
I actually did enjoy watching it; the pacing was reasonably fast, and while there were plenty of grimace-inducing moments, at least it never got boring. If you want to shut down your brain for a while and watch something stupid (or just get some laughs at a series that tries and fails at being serious), this is a decent choice, I guess. Don't put it at the top of your list, but if you're desperate, it's not awful.