Mahoromatic

NOW what’s sprung from the brain of Hideaki Anno?

You know, considering the recent titles Gainax has released: Evangelion, FLCL, Karekano and Ebichu the Hamster, Mahoromatic is surprisingly

Normal.

Sometime in the 1980’s when big hair rock and faux white tiger prints were cool (Hey, that’s MY decade. Man I’m old), an alien force invades earth. Somehow this intergalactic struggle fails to make the evening news so dare mo nai knows about it (Talk about spin control). A secret (Obviously) global organization called Vesper is in charge of fighting back the ravening alien hordes, and they do so by means of robotic androids. It just so happens that the Vesper engineers took Common Anime Plot Devices 400 and made the androids look like cute girls.

Hhhmmm...Hand Maid May, Amazing Nurse Nanako, Kotetsu no Tenshi Kurumi, Maid in Hannukyo, various hentai titles and now this. Someone see a trend developing?

And that leads us to Mahoro, Vesper’s greatest operator who just happens to have large eyes and hair horns that stick out at 90° angles from her head. Oh yes, she also has smaller breasts than every other female character in the story too. You see, she CONSTANTLY complains about this throughout the series and develops quite a complex over it.

But we’ll get to that. Anyways, to reward her decade-plus of service, near the end of her operational life-span Vesper offers Mahoro a choice: Stay in front-line combat and run out of energy in about a month, or retire to civilian life and extend her life-span a little over a year. She chooses to resign (Good call) and low and behold, chooses to become...

A maid! Huh? If I had a year to live, you could bet your bottom dollar I’d be doing something other than serving as someone’s butler, but that’s me.

So Mahoro goes to Japan to interview with Suguru Misato, a junior-high student who’s living by himself since both his parents died, so he needs someone to look after his house. They first time they meet however it’s not at an interview, but on a bus. Seems like 2 bank robbers are trying to use the bus as a means of escape and are trailing a ton of police cruisers behind them. And for no apparent reason, one of the perps tells the female passengers to take off their clothes. Except the oba-sans and onna-no-kos, of course. He’s got a sense of honor after all. Mahoro takes exception to this, the crooks don’t like it, and so Suguru jumps in to defend her. His macho act is unnecessary of course, as Mahoro winds up stopping the criminals by herself and running away before the cops have a chance to question her. Yeah, having The Man ask you why you have superhuman strength while trying a hide a planetary conflict is a touch inconvenient.

Eventually Suguru takes on Mahoro as his maid, and thus the story gets underway. For me one the funniest scenes from the first episode are when the two of them get buried in the mountain of Suguru’s dirty underwear (Waits for the readers to go "Eeeeewwwww"). The series starts by showing Suguru’s daily life and his interactions with Mahoro, but then you quickly get the twist: She shows up at school one day to bring him his lunch, and when everyone sees the PYT (Pretty young thing) that is Mahoro they all want the scoop her: Suguru’s classmates out of curiosity and Suguru’s teacher out of green-eyed envy. Yeah, you read that right. Shikijo-sensei’s got a thang for young Suguru, and sees Mahoro as her rival.

See where this is going?

The bulk of the episodes are devoted to Suguru and Mahoro’s growing relationship and Mahoro learning what it means to be human. As she spent her entire life in combat, she has little or no conception of what people are like, so the entire world is a new experience to her. It’s very akin to watching a little kid grow up. An underlying theme to all of this is the war between the earth and the aliens, and just why Mahoro decided to become Suguru’s housekeeper. You see, there’s a very personal reason Mahoro chose the career path she did, as she attempts to atone for something...

As I mentioned before, Gainax churned this one out about a year ago, so you can expect clean pictures, a color palette similar to Eva’s and fanservice. Scads and scads of fanservice.
As for the characters, Suguru is your typical run-of-the-mill, nothing-really-to-him guy while Mahoro’s pretty low-key in her dialogue, but since she’s an android it’s probably okay. Suguru’s classmates are pretty stock characters, they’re just there to move the story along and provide some comic relief. You also get some brief scenes from the Vesper top brass and Saint, the alien invaders, but nothing particularly stunning about those performances either.

The one stand out though has GOT to be Shikijo-sensei. She’s SO over the top it’s a riot. Voiced by Yumi Takada (Aeka from Tenchi Muyo), she’s a vain (She’s in her late 20’s, and so is sensitive about her age and looks), beer-swilling exhibitionist and totally, totally taken with Suguru. Some of the funniest parts of the series are when she has romantic fantasies of her and Suguru and starts acting out these dreams in public. It’s great to watch as she viciously fights to "rescue" Suguru from Mahoro’s evil clutches, but what sells it is that Mahoro can’t grasp WHY Shikijo-sensei’s acting the way she is. Since Mahoro doesn’t really understand romance and love, Mahoro just views what she does at taking care of Suguru while Shikijo-sensei’s thinks the two of them are getting their freak on. Trust me, if Ms. Shikijo’s involved you’re gonna laugh.

But what about the fanservice?!? The guys are asking. Well, believe me this series has that in spades. Heck, there’s so much you can have seconds. I mean, it seems Mahoro goes topless in just about every episode for some reason or another. And even Suguru’s female classmates get into the act when they all go to the beach and lose their bikinis (Thankfully his male classmates don’t lose their trunks). As for Shikijo-sensei...I think they plucked her out of Agent Aika. She’s got incredible curves and a sashay in a short skirt that makes all the boys drool. Plus, she’s SO got the Gainax bounce that she should be popping Vicodin to kill her back pain every few minutes. And she uses them as weapons! I’m serious! Remember how I said Mahoro has a complex about her breast size? Guess why. Shikijo-sensei flaunts her...ah...endowment in Mahoro’s face at every opportunity and even BEATS Mahoro over the head with them once or twice.

But even Shikijo-sensei isn’t enough to save this show. Though it’s endearing with the just the right touch of bittersweetness, the writing is uninspired and follows a fairly predictable path. They also left the door wide open for a second series as well. And what’s with Gainax and religious/spiritual terms? We won’t even touch Eva here, but Mahoromatic has some connotations of that as well: Vesper, Saint, the apostle Matthew. I heard that the anime industry is using Christian themes these days as something new, so maybe that’s what it is.

The side orders on this series are nice though. The opening theme is sufficiently melancholy, and that matches Mahoro’s dilemma as she faces her ever-impending shutdown date. They even have a counter at the end of every episode that shows how many days she has left. The ending theme, "Mahoro Mambo", is just funny. The animation has Suguru’s female classmates singing a song extolling Mahoro’s virtues while dancing. And last but not least is the "Satellite Poemer". This bit has various characters from the show, including Suguru’s dog, reciting an original poem somewhat related to the show. But no matter how good the side orders, if your entrée’s no good you really can’t enjoy the meal.

So to sum it all up: Plot okay. Characters okay. Fan service aplenty. Shikijo-sensei friggin’ hilarious. This one gets a Bronze. Now, if only a cute girl would want to be MY maid...