Anime: Mai-Otome

Notice: I don’t write reviews for sequels and this case is no exception. My Otome is NOT the sequel of My Hime but an alternative universe. You know, like the Gundam franchise. All similarities between them are not circumstantial but more like slight alterations of the same idea (yes, like the Gundam franchise). At the same time it would help to have watched Hime or read my review about it, prior to watching Otome or reading this one. I mean, why shouldn’t you?

Animation is done by studio Sunrise, which means there will be cool robots, mosters and explosions. Directed by Ohara Masakazu who also made The Girl who Leapt through Time, and Accel World. Hardly a talented individual.

In my Hime review I described it as an otaku fan catering dark fairy tale. This new version on the other hand is actually a light fairy tale; the amount of gore, death, and insanity went down, while moeshitz went up. It almost feels like a normal sequel in this regard, only it ain’t; IT IS AN ALTERNATIVE UNIVERSE! But still, the core concept is the the same; some girls with monsters and superpowers are fighting for the salvation of the world from some cosmic horror.
… And if you believed that even for five seconds then you deserve a Ricky Roll video. IT’S ALL ABOUT THE CUTE GIRLS YOU FOOLS, WHO CARES ABOUT THE STORY!

As before, you are only supposed to allow your emotions being constantly manipulated by the looks of cute girls, overblown drama, and improbable resolutions just to have a happy ending. Only thing, it doesn’t try to shock you as the first series did; which was also the reason it had such a huge fan base (once upon a time). You see, Hime was happy-go-luck in the first half, school life and yuri romance with some battles with Pokemons here and there. In the second half it turned into a death tournament where THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE (queue for some Queen music in the background). Well Otome doesn’t try to do that; to the most part it is all about fluffy feeling. It does try to build tension in the last third by introducing a world threat again, yet it hardly feels exciting. It plays out in a very cliché manner and the death toll is close to zero, so you are simply not made to care.

What is even more disappointing is the setting itself. In this version it is a lot more techno-magical and it seemed at first like they would offer an insight to the ancient civilization that created all those weird artifacts in the first series. Yet it didn’t, it was left as nothing but background decoration instead of fleshing out the world and providing immersion to the finer details of the franchise. It all looks fine and mesmerizing with its high production values, when it goes to waste since it has nothing to do with the actual plot.

But let’s suppose for a minute that a viewer will not care about minor details such as a good story and focuses more on what really matters in this show. THE CUTE GIRLS! Lots of them! Date-sim and waifu material. Won’t that be enough to be content? No, it won’t. The girls are practically the same from the first series, with slightly different roles. And since there is a lot less death and insanity in this version, they are left as nothing but dried up stereotypes, like in so many similar shows. Heck, even the character roster is considerably shorter and their interaction more basic and unchanged to the most part. Why should you care?

This anime shot itself to the foot by refusing to evolve and instead devolved to pure mediocrity. Just like your average sequel does, only this is not a sequel. Whatever, I didn’t like it. The first wasn’t anything super either outside its superficial shock factor but at least you were given something more other than fan catering. This doesn’t do that. It’s worthless.

And now for some excused scorings.
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Strange how much difference a year makes. Few series receive as much hate as Mai Otome, simply because it had the misfortune of coming out after My HiME, with whom its characters are shared. Many series are hard to consider fairly in isolation; with these two, it is simply impossible. But on the whole I found Otome to be a far better series.

In contrast to its predecessor, Otome takes place on an explicitly different planet, Earl. This is not a decision to be made likely, but here it works well - with the basic plot being so thoroughly dependent on magic, setting it on another world actually makes things more plausible than HiME's Earth (where magic is real but this has made no major difference to human history). It's somewhat odd, therefore, that Otome goes for an explicitly technological justification of the girls' powers; at the very least, Clarke's third law must be in full effect. While the rules governing the Otomes' powers never seem quite as capricious as those for HiME, they're still completely arbitrary. Being able to claim that this is a planet colonized by people from Earth does give a good explanation for all the similarities to our world, but when the story is so fundamentally magical it would be better to simply call it magic, adopt a traditional fantasy counter-earth and be done with it.

Aside from that, though, Earl is astonishingly well-realized. We get a real sense of a whole world out there, with its own history and politics, with the struggles between the nations been especially well sketched out. We constantly hear brief references to some new far-off land or historical incident, but rather than making it feel haphazard, this gives a real sense of a world that is real and existing rather than just being a background for the series' action - partly because many of these offhand references are later taken up and tie into the main plot somehow.

The large-scale plot is pretty standard, but it's filled in with the same impressive attention to detail. We see only hints until quite late in the show, but it all meshes astonishingly well with the lead Arika's gradual discovery of who she really is - and the similar journeys of her friends. Very little time is given over to the big plot as such; rather, the series tells the personal stories of all its characters, and in composition they reveal the whole tale. At times this leads to a dazzling number of different plot threads to follow, but since each one is anchored to its character the viewer never loses track, and the series does a very impressive job of weaving them all together as it progresses. While there will always be a few loose threads, it achieves a satisfying ending (sadly still a rare thing in animé), with all the major questions answered.

The most striking thing about Mai Otome is the sheer number of characters. While there is one clear lead, beyond that the slope off is very gradual, such that while some of the remaining characters are clearly more important than others, at least a dozen could easily be called "major". The storytelling style allows the series to effectively devote all its time to characterization, and it's well used; everyone is well rounded and even realistic. The viewer comes to care about the characters, and this means that the moral dilemmas towards the end manage to be dramatic and poignant, unoriginal as they are. (Of course, it's possible that for a viewer who hasn't seen My HiME, the characterization would be stretched too thin; one thing that makes so many well-realized characters possible is the fact that we know half of them already).

Equally impressive is the voice cast, who manage to keep the voices of a very large number of characters clear, distinct, and fitting. The opening and ending themes are good - catchy, and upbeat in a way that first matches and then clashes brilliantly with the developing tone of the series - but the background music is even better, with a brilliantly tension-raising choral theme used to make the key moments stand out even more.

With the series so strong on so many fronts, the animation technically qualifies as a weak point, but you certainly wouldn't think so to look at it. While there's nothing original going on (and the character faces could perhaps stand to be a little more detailed), this is by no means a bad looking show. The clothing in particular is highly detailed, and while the backgrounds are nothing special in detail terms it's impressive how well everything conforms to the same aesthetic, a look balanced perfectly between alien and human. Visual effects are nice, although noticeably worse than those of Nanoha (a near-contemporary of this series); while the beams and lights are as clear as you could hope for, Mai Otome doesn't show magic having much impact on the environment. But the overall visual quality is consistently high, and it says a lot that other aspects of the series are better than that.

One place where the criticism is somewhat justified is the fanservice; there are four or so scenes that are very much fetish-based. But while the actual content may go further than HiME, these scenes are well integrated into the story, and in most cases serve to make Otome seem more rather than less realistic.

So, while the rest of the world may be unaccountably hostile to Mai Otome, I very much enjoyed it. While never startlingly original, it has a very good cast and an effective storytelling style that I hope will become more popular. Combined with good presentation this forms a series I have no hesitation in recommending, except perhaps to the most prudish of viewers.

OK... As this was one of my first reviews, I figured I should look over it again... and try to be a little bit more objective. As the previous review by me were REALLY biased and inaccurate, I've rewritten everything...

Animation:
The animation gives of a rather good feeling, nicely mixed with mild effects. It truly allows it's viewers to enjoy it without going over the top, making the experience unbearable.
However it's not perfect... but thanks to the BGMs it still lives through...

Sound:
I would say that you would have to be a boring person to not like the soundtrack presented in this series, and it's right there in the top with other great series such as Mai-HiME, .hack//, Code Geass ETC.

Story:
The story is, more or less, a total remake of the manga-version. It jumps head-first into the action, and unfortunately that also means that it jumps over quite a bit of underlying elements. They've left out almost everything exept the characters that's supposed to tell how Mai-HiME connects to all of this, if you want the full story you should also read the manga in order to understand everything (This of course takes some points from the otherwise superb story).

Character:
The characters in this series are 'evolving' throughout the series. Their personalities in the end of the series is almost not comparable to the same characters in the start of the series. And to top it of, the creators manages to do this without making it feel awkward or discomforting. As the characters feel very solid and individual the series wins a LOT on this.

Value/Enjoyment:
To this date I've watched through the whole series multiple times (Sorry, lost count... but I'm sure the number it above 10 by now...)
It's really recommended for both fans of the original series, Mai-HiME, and for newcomers. Both will get what they came for, A splendid experience!

In the end:
I guess this makes the review somewhat better than the 10/10 review that I wrote before ^^

Seen by itself, Mai-Otome is quite good. However, since the series takes place in an alternative dimension/timeline to Mai-Hime, there are inevitable connections and comparisons drawn that drag Mai-Otome down.

First of all, to those who are expecting any sort of continuity between the series, there is none. Many characters from Mai-Hime (henceforth MH) play roles in Mai-Otome (henceforth MO), and most of them retain their personality. That's it for continuity, though.

MO follows the story of 14 year old Arika, who comes to the nation of Wind Bloom and the Garderobe Academy in search of her mother, who was an Otome. An Otome is basically a gimped HiME - instead of having a Child and able to manifest their powers at will, they only have a battle suit (called a Robe) and they must have a contract with a Master who then must certify them for battle! It's a convoluted process and it means that nearly as much time is spent on getting certified and materializing the Robe as there is fighting.

Over the course of the story, Arika becomes an Otome and sets off on the classical circuit of discovering who her real friends are, how to truly use her powers, trying to stop her friends from killing each other, and dealing with the unexpected menace. While it sounds formulaic, that's not a bad thing - MO's formula is quite satisfactory.

The animation of the series is excellent, completely on par with MH. Colors are bright and vibrant, characters are well-designed, and the action is smooth. There is no cause for complaint here.

The sound, however, is disappointing. While MH had a wonderful OP/ED, MO has two average OPs and an equally average ED. Voice acting is good and many of the original characters are voiced by their same seiyuus, as far as my untrained ears could tell. Background music was, unfortunately, noticeably repetitive.

The story - oh, the story. While it's interesting and well thought out, there are absolutely no emotional breakpoints that MH was spectacular for. In MH, seeing Takumi and Tate disappear and Mai's corresponding mental breakdowns were amazing. There are very few deaths in MO and even when a character does die, the impact is nowhere near as staggering. One has to wonder if Sunrise thought they went overboard on MH?

Characters in MO are well designed. The old characters from MH have their personalities already established and most of them kick ass with the flair you remember from MH. The biggest aberration is Tate Yuuichi from MH translating to Major Sergay Wang in MO - his character was different enough on many levels that Sunrise decided to rename him, though his look is undeniably Tate. Mashiro is a flip from her calm leadership in MH, turning into a bratty princess/queen. Nao seems to have mellowed quite a bit as well.

The new characters are the young girls training to be Otomes. There are only four who are truly fleshed out, and of those four, none of them truly stand out. Nina is probably the best of the bunch, filling the role of the emotionally-repressed dark and moody girl. Arika is painfully naive and carefree, to the extent of being a bit cloying. Erstin and Irina are mostly grease for the show's gears and are never truly realized.

All the complaints with characters are relatively minor. The biggest complaint I have is that MO has too large a cast. Other shows (Infinite Ryvius comes to mind) have huge casts but manage to balance them well. MO has to try and squeeze in a few new characters while giving all of the MH crew at least a cameo. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that not all of the characters are in the same general location - they're spread across the world now.

I found MO to be a good value, definitely worth the time to acquire it. However, my enjoyment of the show was just simply brought down by its connection to MH. If the show stood alone on its own merits, stopped using all the characters from MH and just used some, and actually showed what the connection between MH and MO was, it would easily have been an unforgettable series. As it stands, it's merely a good series that inherited a lot of baggage from its predecessor without much to show for it.

To be quite honest, I didn't expect much right before I started this series. Seriously, a school for maids who serve ranking officials in the world? How could could that possibly be? Now, after watching the whole series in one go, I can honestly say, it can be pretty damn good.

(I tend to write long reviews, so just use CTRL+F to look for *** or the bolded parts, to look for my main points)

For those who don't know what this anime is about or don't care to read the information given on this site, Mai-Otome is about a girl named Arika who searches for her mother who used to be an Otome. However, she 1) has no clue what an Otome is and 2) has no clue where to start looking. She travels to the city of Wind Bloom and meets a girl named Nina who is one of these Otome and attends an Otome school called Galderobe. Arika seeks admission at Galderobe in order to search for more clues about the whereabouts of her mother and also to learn what it truly means to be an Otome. (And if you seriously didn't read the summary given by the site, Otome are females who act as bodyguards for high ranking officials and also keep the balance of technology in the world)

Animation- Amazing. Not the type of amazing that makes every character look phenomenally realistic, but I think that's all part of the appeal of this anime. There are many minor details sprinkled in the anime that I thought, helped bring out the effectiveness of the execution of the anime. The beginning of the anime, I thought to myself, "Hm, it seems that since so many hair styles have been used in anime already, they've resorted to wackier ones that have never been used before." Quite frankly, even though that is half the case, I think that the hair styles helped add to the uniqueness of this anime as well. Sure, one can argue that like in most animes, the hair colors span all the colors of the rainbow and even creates new colors, but I found that none of the character looked especially weird. Done very well for what it was trying to convey, Mai-Otome deserves high scores in animation

***Animation- 9/10- Not superbly done to be realistic, but the character designs, minor details and such all played a large part in increasing the overall value of the animation. Very fitting for this anime

Sound- Very, very, nicely done. I may be quite biased, but I must admit, the second that I finished the series, I went to get the whole OST (Original Sound Track). I loved both openings (though the second one significantly more than the first) and the ending is something I can't stop listening to (it's cutesy but also very nice to listen to). As for the rest of the anime, I found that the music wasn't out of place at all. There were, a few times, that it seemed as if the music didn't fit, but once I thought about the significance of what the scene tried to portray, the music worked perfectly. As for the voices, I didn't find any of the voices annoying and instead, found that they sounded quite natural. Perfect marks for sound.

***Sound- 10/10- Very nice openings and endings and the sound worked to help bring out emotions from all of the scenes. Voice actors did a good job as well.

Story- Neh. This is what I consider the worst part of the anime, which, is far from bad, but is still something that I have objections against. Of course, like most intelligent viewers, I can spot most of the obvious plot twists before they happens, but there are honestly, quite a few times that I wasn't able to fortell what would happen. Of course, half the time, it's because the anime both made sense and didn't. To be fair, it all made perfect sense if you went to check, but if you were watching the first time, you wouldn't understand how everything connects right off the bat. In a way, its designed not so you go from point A to B to C in your mind, rather, you go from A to B to D and you find out C later on. However, I felt that the story, altogether, was well done.

***Story- 8/10 - Both good and bad, it connected at times but other times, you needed to watch the whole series to understand exactly what was going on. I'm sure it was done on purpose, but nonetheless, it was confusing.

Character- Definitely done quite well. Before I started to watch this anime, I thought everyone would say lines like "I will live for the future" or "Because I have to do it for him/her!", but the characters definitely slowly developed. There were some characters that definitely should have been brought out more often or developed more, but I think that NOT knowing things about certain characters also helps add to character development at times. Arika, Mashiro and Nina all changed quite a bit, whether it was their beliefs or attitudes, but it definitely happened. Going too deeply into how the characters developed would definitely spoil much of the anime, but while the characters seem very one-sided in the beginning, they develop into more "realistic" characters. Arika isn't just an overly optimistic girl by the end of the anime and Nina demonstrates a deep trust with her friends, though she is originally portrayed as a cold character who only lives to serve her father. Definitely something that was done quite well, I think that the characters were very, very solid.

***Character- 9/10- Characters who were important were generally developed quite well. Either that or they were very solid characters to begin with.

Value and Enjoyment- I consider these two connected, so I'll describe both. As an anime, Mai-Otome definitely surprised me and it is a gem of an anime that I underestimated. I am quite thankful that I watched the first episode and continued watching (my Dragon Quest VIII broke in the middle of playing it and I needed something to do). Thankfully, this is what I decided to do with my time. I rewatched many parts of this anime, but honestly, I don't think there are any parts that I'll skip over if i decide to watch this again, even the opening and ending. As for enjoyment, I was surprised that I loved this anime so much. It definitely inspired me in the way that I don't think I can judge a book by its cover again (it's a saying, if you didn't know :P) and I hope that this review has made you decide to consider watching this anime as well, for I think that it will bring most viewers as must giddiness as I felt when I watched it.

**Value and Enjoyment- 9/10 and 10/10 respectively. Holds high rewatch value for all moments are integral to the story and none are boring, in my opinion. I thoroughly enjoyed this anime I hope that this review has convinced you to watch it as well!

Note 1- I don't weigh my numbers, as to make the grading system more fair (since it's not technically about the average, it's about the individual parts). However, If I were to grade this anime, I'd give it around a 9.

Note 2- I'm a developing writer and I would really appreciate feedback, even if its just telling me that I'm a bit verbose or a slight grammatical error, every little thing helps!

When I watched the first episode of My-Otome fansubbed I was both dissapointed and excited by the changes since My-HiME. After seeing all 26 and rewatching most of them I've left with much of the same feeling as when I started, being happy with some aspects and not happy with others.

The animation by Sunrise still looks wonderful as it did in HiME, with some of the returning characters looking better than their previous incarnations after adding a few years to their ages. The Otome themselves have some interesting variation in their Robes, with the returning characters' Robes based on their Childs in HiME as a nice throwback. The environments are all new and are very detailed and nice to look at, with the few cities visited looking unique though in some cases appear to have been copied directly from real-world locations. (Windbloom was quite reminiscant of St. Petersburg to yours truly in terms of architecture) Oveall the animation was pleasant on the eyes though at times not particularly exciting. Another weak point was the battles, only a few of which actually occured and none besides the last two episodes (which were mostly not Otome against Otome) were over 3 minutes under my count. Often they would be cut off and elicit a "what the heck?" reaction from me while watching. Some of the dialogue could have easily been cut out to show more of what it actually is to be an Otome fighting.

Nina's voice actress has to be my favorite new voice having heard her in the last episode, in which I feel in love with the way she portrayed Nina's conflict. Natsuki and Nao come in as returning voices and manage to get across the same basic character and subtlely adding wisdom and grace to the two that was not (as) present in HiME. Rie Tanaka's portrayal of Tomoe was also quite memorable, in particular one scene in which she goes from lovestruck to annoyed to all out angry. As usual Sunrise seems to have picked good actors to play complex characters and the performances show it.

That said, the story of Otome felt quite half-baked at the end of 26 episodes, though some unresolved issues may be resolved in the upcoming OVA. I began watching thinking that Otome would simply recycle old plot lines from HiME in a new setting, and found myself to be both thankfully wrong and unfortunately right whent it came down to it. Some interesting points were developed in the beginning, such as the fate of countries lying with a single woman, but what I really wanted to see, which was how other people saw the Otome and how they in turn felt about their images, was only briefly touched on. And only one Meister Otome actually died while fighting in the whole series, which made me wonder if Sunrise had cut back on the deaths after HiME's multiple deaths in the last episodes. Some plot points, such as the Queen/Princess identity issue, were frankly beaten to a pulp in early episodes and then resolved too quickly for comfort. It seemed like Sunrise simply got tired of that plot point and just decided to end it. And as the credits rolled many questions still remained, such as why HiME symbols appeared and just where this took place (Earth? Another Planet? Hell?). In the end I felt frustrated by some of these and felt that the points that had been settled were weaker and not as satisfying.

Characters were a strong point in HiME, and while the main cast was definately smaller there was less of a sense of fullfillment in the last scenes from seeing them again. Arika and Nina did develop without a doubt, but compared to HiME these had much less of an emotional impact on me and I honestly didn't really care about them at the end. I did like some of the changes to the older HiME gang, especially with Nao (who learned to use her charms for good... sort of) and Natsuki's authority that was only briefly glimpsed in HiME. She went from lone wolf to leader of the pack and was nice to see.

This series was somewhat like a movie involving actors you know and love in different roles, but still makes you miss the old despite the improvements. Ultimately the last episodes were rushed and the enjoyment came mostly out of seeing homages to HiME in the last few episodes that were seemingly thrown in just to keep the existing audience watching.

I did enjoy some aspects of this series, but ultimately I was staring at the screen and asking "What?" when it ended. I think there was real potential that was undeveloped, and left me thinking of a lyric from an old Motown song:

"A taste of honey's worse than none at all"