Anime Review - Mai-HiME

Mai-HiME

Anime Review
By Le Chupacabra

Sunrise
26 episodes
Age Rating: 15+

Tokiha Mai and her younger brother have just been offered scholarships at the prestigious Fuuka Academy. It’s a good thing for the orphaned children now that they can enjoy a quality education without financial woes. However, money is the least of their worries when they’re caught in the crossfire of a vicious battle between two teenage girls armed with strange weapons. Things start getting heated once Mai discovers the secret links between Fuuka Academy and these female warriors called ‘HiME’ (Highly-advanced Materialising Equipment).

While almost flawless, Mai-HiME still lacks what makes anime like FullMetal Alchemist and Monster peerless… but as far as sheer entertainment is concerned, it ranks as one of the finest!

Mai-HiME starts off conforming to staples set by many shounen (for teenage boys, essentially) anime. In fact, early on it’s quite easy to write this one off as unspectacular and cliché. It’s a good thing that it doesn’t take too long to obliterate such impressions!

Mai-HiME wonderfully mixes together action, comedy and drama into a hearty concoction that leaves you unusually satisfied.

The story strikes a perfect balance between familiarity and freshness. Then it goes one step further and rewards viewers with a bevy of tantalizing plot twists that will have you glued to the screen. The pacing is slightly off however; the first half progresses quite reluctantly as characters are introduced and the audience is immersed into the world of Mai-HiME. The latter portion flies along at a breakneck pace with unexpected revelations at every corner. The transition is rather sudden, however it doesn’t harm what is otherwise a rather enjoyable yarn.

It seems that new characters are consistently brought into the limelight for the first half of Mai-HiME and as a result, it has quite an extensive roster. While this is typically disastrous for an anime of standard length (26 episodes), Mai-HiME pulls it off with aplomb. Without delving too much into each personality, Mai-HiME is still able to develop its characters through a skilful mixture of dialogue and interactions. As a result, these guys and gals are quite genuine people and you definitely feel for them.

Mai-HiME has a very clean and rather beautiful art style that should sate most palates. It’s also nice to see a consistency being maintained in that there is no drop in quality for the full run of the anime. The designs are quite brilliant, particularly those of the Orphans (the monsters that the HiME fight) and Children (the creatures that choose to help HiME in their battles). The characters themselves have a lot of personality in terms of looks alone. The animation for the battles is great stuff and combined with some fine choreography, it makes for quality viewing.

Something I personally love about Mai-HiME is the music. The opening song is an energetic J-pop track that you’ll find hard to skip while watching. The closing theme does a fantastic job of segueing with the ending portions much like ‘Tobira no Mukou he’ did in FullMetal Alchemist. The music within the anime itself really shines and the battle themes are brilliant.

Finding problems with Mai-HiME will really boil down to personal preference. Some initial episodes are somewhat hackneyed in that they’re evocative of the ‘Monster of the Week’ formula. Overall, the anime also lacks any aspirations to be superlative like the ones I have mentioned. In a sense, Mai-HiME tends to be solid in every aspect without excelling particularly in any. The ending may also bring about a smidgen of stupor in that it outdoes a Disney film for being too good to be true. Otherwise, I have nothing else to complain about.

Just because I think Mai-HiME is ideal in many ways, it’s still not one to be compared with the likes of FMA or other truly peerless anime. On the other hand, Mai-HiME knows exactly what it wants to achieve and it does so with conviction. As a result, it’s a ridiculously entertaining anime that you really must watch.