| about
trismugistus.com
and digital-bondage.net
are my web sites.
trismugistus.com
is where I upload my anime, manga and tv&film reviews,
and also where I occasionally post short stories and longer
works I've written.
digital-bondage.net
is my wallpaper site and provides anime, manga and other
desktop wallpapers in a variety of resolutions. I also
have a few tutorials and some resources, such as psds
for you to download.
I also run a site called scan-city.org,
which provides scans from the latest japanese anime magazines
for you to download and use in your wallpapers.
You can also read my blog here
or check out my anime list here. |
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| details |
| The Genre: Comedy/Sci-fi/Romance |
| The Format: 12 episodes across 3 disks from
ADV |
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| The plot: Suguru's horrible cleaning skills
have his friends calling his home the "haunted
house," and being an orphan, he needs help!
Enter Mahoro, a beautiful 19 year old who catches
bullets with her fingers, claims to be an android
and who wants to be his maid! Mahoro is a combat
android who has a choice - her existence will end
in 37 days if she continues to fight - or she can
become a maid for an orphaned teen and live for
398 more days! Now, Suguru's school friends are
suspicious and his well-endowed teacher is going
over the edge with jealousy. How will he react when
he discovers that she only has 398 days to live
and that she has chosen him for a reason? |
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| opinion
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| If I was to admit to you that I’m a Gainax
fanboy, would you hold it against me?
I mean I’m a huge fan of Eva, FLCL and all,
but I think my fanboy-ness was really kicked off
Wings of Honneamise. I loved that film.
It was like proper sci-fi in a period where all
that seemed to be available for us sci-fi geeks
was huge, badly animated space battles and naff
mecha shows. Don’t get me wrong, I like a
good huge space battle and robots pounding on each
other, but they’re not proper sci-fi. |
Proper sci-fi is about exploring questions.
Questions like “What if?” or “Why?”
are favourites, but it’s also about
exploring more complicated current day issues
and extrapolating them into the future to
make a point.
I’m digressing somewhat, but it is
relevant to a degree. There’s more sci-fi
in Mahoromatic than it might initially appear.
This show comes across very much as a romantic
comedy with a good portion of fan-service
thrown in for good measure. Nothing particularly
daring there then, but underneath there are
some strong sci-fi elements that for me add
a greater level of interest.
Mahoro is a combat Android built by the Saint
organisation. This seemingly private, or possibly
pseudo-governmental organisation has apparently
been tasked with keeping the Earth safe from
a bunch of aliens. And for some reason or
another, the battles with the aliens are sort
of stage-managed. |
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|
That’s not the right phrase – what
I mean is the aliens don’t appear to be interested
in an all-out assault on Earth, but instead send
small groups of androids to attack or undertake
specific, small-scale missions. It’s more
like formalised duelling than actual invasion.
However, Mahoro has come near to the end of her
operational life and is essentially given the opportunity
to retire. She chooses to live out her days as a
maid for one Suguru Misato. This is getting into
classic Japanese romantic territory - she enters
into servitude; they fall in love, etc, etc.
But that’s not what’s going on at all.
She chooses to look after Suguru because he is the
orphaned son of her former commander, whose death
she was instrumental in. So really it’s all
about commitment, loyalty, respect and things like
that. She feels a sense of responsibility for this
boy, as well as a kind of maternal instinct.
So there we have it, in essence. An interesting
set up, but then things play out in a fairly predictable,
formulaic way each episode, right? |
 |
Well not really, no. Here again, Mahoromatic
manages to pull something of a rabbit out of its
hat. It doesn’t keep recycling the same gags
and set-ups over and over again (well okay, some
gags are re-used a fair bit, but we’re not
talking Love Hina here). Indeed, some episodes have
almost no comedy in them, whilst others are entirely
humorous. Some episodes lack action, whilst others
are romps from beginning to end.
The series therefore manages to stay fresh and
interesting from beginning to end.
And while I’m on the subject of the end,
I should probably put my main criticism of this
series on the table. It doesn’t end properly.
Seriously, you’ll get to the end of the third
disk and think to yourself “And...? So what
happens now, then?” Why it does this is because
it’s essentially only half of a full series.
I don’t know if it was because the money
ran out, or they got commissioned for a second series
half way through, or even that it was planned this
way, but you can watch the first and second series
right-through like a single, twenty-odd episode
series and not realise it’s two separate things. |
 |
Unfortunately, at this time only the first
series is on release in the UK, so let's hope
we get the second one sometime soon. The problem
with this is it’s frustrating. When
I watch a TV series like this, I like to watch
them in a single chunk. I don’t mean
I watch it all in one day, necessarily, but
maybe over the course of a week I watch it
through, and that’s all that’s
on my DVD player.
In the case of anime I then watch the dub
version in the next week (or highlights off
if it’s an appalling dub) and maybe
start formulating a review sometime in the
following month. Then it’s a case of
scanning the covers, building up the web page
from the bits and pieces and putting it in
the update queue.
So when I watched this series I did so with
a kind of mounting annoyance. There’s
not enough of it. I was left so gagging for
more I was almost tempted to buy the US version
of the second series. (I didn’t, I watched
my fansubs of the second series instead, but
you get the point.) |
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Still, what’s there is very good, and I
really can’t fault any of it.
Mind you, I don’t think it’ll be everyone’s
cup of tea. You should be aware that if you really
don’t like romantic comedy it's a very strong
element to the show. Similarly if the very thought
of fan-service makes you seethe with rage or disgust,r
it’s best avoided.
But for normal people you should enjoy it... And
then send a letter of impatient annoyance to ADV
demanding they acquire the sub-licence for the second
part off of Pioneer.
Well, just one last thing to cover – the
package itself. Whilst it’s not exactly crammed
with extras, the episode count is decent enough
and the dub is of a reasonable standard. The show
looks excellent and a high production value is clear
throughout, both on the original Japanese side as
well as the US version, which this is simply a R2
release of. |
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| summary |
| The Summary: Mahoromatic is perfectly pitched
and paced to deliver exactly what it sets out to
from the very first minute to the last. |
| The Score: 5/5 |
| The Pictures:
(click for larger versions) |
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