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MAHOROMATIC AUTOMATIC MAIDEN COMPLETE COLLECTION DVD BOX SET |
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Sunday, 04 February 2007 |
 | | ▪ | RELEASED BY: | | GENEON ENTERTAINMENT | | | ▪ | ASPECT RATIO: | | 16:9 ANAMORPHIC WIDESCREEN | | | ▪ | AUDIO: | | ENGLISH AND JAPANESE DD 2.0 | | | ▪ | RUNNING TIME: | | 687 MIN | | | ▪ | RATING: | | 16UP | | | ▪ | RELEASE DATE: | | 11/08/2005 | | | ▪ | REVIEW DATE: | | 02/05/2007 | | | ▪ | REVIEWED BY: | | DAVEY C. JONES |
SYNOPSIS:
Complete collection has the two all 27 eps on 7 discs plus it comes with a music CD and booklet. It has the complete 12 episode first season, all 14 eps of the second season Mahoromatic: Something More Beautiful, and the Summer Special. All of it held together in thinpacks collected in a high quality art box and slip cover.
REVIEW:
Three words for you: crazy fan service
Oh yeah, the harem comedy with the cute android girl. Is there any better anime genre than that? Of course not! There’s the sweet android maid, an over-sexed teacher, Ms. Shikijo, who loves to drink and reminds me a lot of one of my favorite all time anime females – Misato from Evangelion; and there’re the meddling female classmates and later on another combat android cutey!
Happy sigh.
The first season stays pretty light, a whole lot of fluffy and a big chunk of fan service naughty. You can thank Ms. Shikijo for that. We get to laugh, drool and smile as we watch Mahoro unite lovelorn ghosts, secretly fight with aliens, battle her over-sexed rival Ms. Shikijo and fall in love with dorky lonely dude Suguru. It gets a bit heavy on the drama at the end when Mahoro has to fight against the alien Saint warrior Ryuga which gives us some action. The animation is solid. It’s done by GAINAX (Evangelion, Gunbuster, Wings of Honeamise, FLCL) so you know the animation is well done.
The end of season 1 gets downright dramatic with the possibility of Mahoro’s secret being revealed. See, there’s a reason why she chose dorky dude Suguru to stay with and it’s a whopper of a reason. Weird thing is that the first series ends with that part never dealt with and the whole issue of Mahoro’s limited lifespan barely touched. There is a gut busing hilarious yaoi moment between Suguru and Ryuga though.
So with no really solid end to the first season it’s good that this box set has the entire collection. Moving onto the second series, Mahoromatic: Something More Beautiful, not a lot has changed at first. We have a lot more of the crazy day-to-day stuff with Mahoro, Suguru and the gang. It comes with a cast addition in the form of cute combat android Minawa who also gives the show the angst later on.
The show forgoes anything to do with alien invasions, forget about the secret haunting Mahoro (at least for most of the season), and instead focuses on the daily antics of Mahoro and Suguru’s day-to-day life together along with the addition of combat android Minawa. She’s cute and klutzy but she’s also a weapon planted by The Management. Who is The Management? We don’t know either. Some group both Saint and Vesper say are mean and the enemy and that’s pretty much all the background they give. The show stays funny and frivolous up until the final volume of Something More Beautiful when drama comes a knockin’ as Minawa tries to fulfill her evil purpose despite her little heart and - angst of all angst – Mahoro finally confesses to dorky Suguru how his dad actually died. The battle boasts some cool animation. Just when I thought we’d be left hanging, the anime finally has Mahoro’s big bad secret come out. Next, they even deal with her time limit. After all, that time limit of hers is running out fast. I’d have been bitter if they never addressed that! But they do so I thank them (Thank you!).
There’s a little problem with it though. This is an anime that goes for laughs, some romantic cute pink fluff moments and a bit of angsty complications thrown in. But the end of Something More Beautiful veers suddenly in this harsh and completely different direction, almost to the point of it seeming like a different anime. The secret comes out, her time limit comes up and there’s some callous stuff with Minawa’s reality too. For a show that has booby attacks (there are official booby attacks – honest!), this dramatic stuff all came out of left field to me and doesn’t sit right in the overall happy fluff tone the anime had up until those last 4 eps. The very last episode of the season 2 plays like a totally different anime. Take my advice, stay with the fluff and just skip it.
The Summer Special is one episode only. It’s set in the middle of season 2. Consider it the ‘lost episode’ and it’s called “Dirty Thoughts are Bad” which is a sentence Mahoro likes to say a lot. And she has ample opportunity when she finds Suguru’s nudy mags throughout the series. This episode though, he declares war and with the help of his buddies tries to save his dirty magazines from the girls. Mahoro enlists the girls to aid here in her search warrant to claim every man’s sacred treasure (his nudy mags). It’s a great episode and this is what you should end your viewing pleasure with. It’s a riot.
The final disc is a music CD. It comes with a full color booklet. The booklet has the thoughts of the musical composer Toshio Masuda. It has a total of 32 tracks, some of them vocal tunes. The book has both the English translated lyrics and the phonetics so that you can sing along in Japanese if you want. It has fun bonus additions like Mahoro’s answering machine message and her good morning and wake up calls.
EASTER EGG ALERT:
I found one Easter egg in this series. Go to disc 3, go to “EXTRAS” go up with your up arrow key until you see the Vesper symbol light up. Press enter/ok on your remote and you’ll see a series of singing scenes from the series that are dubbed by the English voice actress who plays Mahoro.
EXTRAS:
Extras include reverse cover at in the disc case covers, clean opening and ending animation from the various seasons and special, original trailers and TV spots, Geneon previews, line art gallery, season 1, 2 and summer special promos, and full color art galleries.
IN SUMMARY:
Mahoromatic is all over the map. The comedy stuff is great and a little bit naughty. Naughty rules. The rest of it take with a grain of salt and let the fluffy fun carry you through the rest. |
