IMHO. Maoyuu ~ problems of modern education

It's sad when an anime turns out to be completely bad and not worth one's time, but it's also sad when it had potential but didn't live up to it.

This is what happens when you try to make a shounen-harem single-season anime series out of a history textbook, even if that history is a fantasy.

The start was almost good, not least because of the funny gap between the seriousness of the main characters' undertaking and their teenage clumsiness.

It also never hurts to have the creators self-conscious of what they do, and once in a century the silly puns and comments typical for ecchi anime sound fun not because they're fun as they are but because they are so intentionally made to be perceived as your typical ecchi comments.

The epic discussion on the fates of the world, philosophical contemplations on good and evil are easily tolerated when punctuated by out-of-the-blue anime-only developments.

The ending by Arai Akino with her ethereal voice, being a nice counterbalance for the generic shounen-anime energetic song with female vocals, also contributed to the fantasy atmosphere.

I even found myself fascinated by how the development of the world is viewed by our main character, Demon King.

However, the further into the story the more the pace of the series is disrupted. It starts when the creators decide to put a whole year of the characters' lives into one episode #3. Then, in the span of 12 episodes we follow, or at least are supposed to be following, several wars and conflicts, both real and economic, developments and deaths of several major poleis, forming of alliances and church dissents, era-changing inventions such as printing and arbalests, all taking place within only several years.

I don't know if the creators meant this anime as a way to attract students not interested in history otherwise, but Maoyuu looks like a perfect ad: hey do you know there's a new version of a history course, this time with boobs and first-rate voice actors.

Maoyuu constantly doubts whether it's a fantasy shounen or a textbook. Where previously shounen characters would be admiring opponents' new techniques, Maoyuu's characters are amazed at...

And when the swaying gets too strong, there's bound to be resonance, which, in its turn it bound to increase the swaying even more. By the last episode, hardly any character gets enough time to be fully presented, new characters and directions appearing even as the last episode is approaching its 20th minute, and the series end up in a peaceful harem interaction while the world's fate stays undecided.

There are cases when I wish a book was made into an anime, but this is the first time I thought I'd be happy if Maoyuu was a proper book rather than a single-season shounen harem.

p. s. Reviving my 'how to learn Japanese' column, I highly recommend to stay away from Maoyuu if you're still in the early stages of learning the language. At least for me, Maoyuu became a source of an infinite despair because of my sheer ignorance of all the Japanese lingo pertaining to economics, politics, warfare and such.

IMHO. 'Itazura na kiss' ~ forget what I said, the perfect textbook on shoujo romance is this!

I wonder when it started... Which anime can be named as a divide? Which can be considered as a trendsetter? I haven't watched enough to be able to judge about that, but this is a fact: long before shoujo anime and manga began to center on timid, fragile girls with no resolve to confess to someone they like or to tell someone they dislike to fuck off, helpless at the mercy of any guy who would want to use them, the usual type of heroine was just like Kotoko, and the typical shoujo romance was like 'Itazura'.
An ideal family of the 90s. He is a successful representative of a respected profession - a high-ranking manager, or a doctor, or a lawyer, or a king of a small country in a fantasy world, or something else requiring good brains, good education and good amount of time to spend at the workplace every day. She is a devoted wife, waiting for him to come home, tired. She can be a full-time housewife, or an 'office lady', or work part-time. It doesn't really matter since his income would be sufficient in any case. She is the first one to fall in love. He lets her love him. She is the one to confess, in some cases - multiple times. He mutters something like 'I will only say it once, so listen closely. I love you', or says it only in extreme circumstances, preferably out of the blue to enhance the impression.

She is the Huxley type, he is the Gabin type, or an ENFp and an ISTp, speaking in Myers-Briggs terms.
'She will be running around him, fluttering her eyelashes, smiling at him and giving him every possible sign of ethical attentions. Still, she will see no reaction. Which, in its turn, will make her even more excited'.
That's not my description, that's a part of a popular article (in Russian) on these two types.

'He doesn't know how to put into words what he feels, not that he doesn't want to, he just doesn't understand his own feelings very well. But Huxley (ENFp) doesn't need that. Her intuition helps her to understand everything, she can even understand his feelings before he does'.
Again, these are not my words.

Unfortunately, here comes the problem. While the mentioned traits are common for most Huxley-girl-Gabin-guy couples, it does make a difference how exactly these two live their life. The archetype itself is not bad, but a character can be. I am not an anime fan who can only like a character he/she can relate to. I can name several heroines of the same type who earned my respect, being brave, selfless, educated and professional, or striving to be so. Kotoko, unfortunately, doesn't belong to this list. I can name a few Gabin characters I found attractive, but I couldn't care less about Naoki. The attempts to show that she can be cool at times, too, were so rare and unimpressive that  they didn't influence the story much. The attempts to show that he can be tender and loving were so short that... Huh?

Such stories are called 'heart-warming' and earn high rates. Meanwhile, able women with good grades at school or university, firm goals for their futures and successful careers, are branded as one-dimensional tsundere and scored out.
While the beginning was tolerable and even funny, the more into the series, the more I got pissed off with the heroine and the story progress. Or maybe I should say - the absence of it.
The story starts and ends in nothing. As if we didn't suspect that she'd get married and have a baby.
She is clumsy in the beginning - well, okay, we saw it coming.

And after many years she is still the same.

And everybody around her kinda understands that.

Her only ability is to 'try hard', and that's what she does, motivated by only one thing.

Studying for the sake of being a reliable professional, improving oneself, achieving new horizons... Not really.

I wonder, does her practice change the fact that she wanted to become a nurse only because she wanted to be together with her husband, and not because she was interested in medicine or wanted to help people?
Well, I may admit there was one thing the Heroine was good at - finding possibilities and offering them to other people, such as prompting her boyfriend to become a doctor, but again, it wasn't very much stressed on, so it didn't pass as a big advantage.
Her main quality is that she is pretty confident that she will succeed.

According to this series, the main qualifications for becoming happy are:

The problem is that everything goes smoothly for her simply because she tries hard. But people don't see it as a problem.

And that's enough, right?
My god, she didn't only fail to learn English and understand what a Hawaiian policeman asked her, she didn't understand anything...

Have you ever heard of pregnancy tests? I checked Wikipedia, they had been available in the market  for almost 20 years when this manga was published! And more importantly, why do you ever pose it as a question?!
Of course she gathers a nice reverse harem around her. Moreover, the other guys are ready to give her their everything. One is always near her and ready to help, even if it means to dig up her father buried under the ruins of their collapsed house.

 And guess just what he will say to her. Surprise-surprise.

The other is so nice that even the Hero's mother admits he is good.

But she prefers her harsh-spoken first crush.

He insults her, ignores her, mocks her, no matter how much time passes, but she's okay.

So she starts doubting him, he says something that is supposed to be romantic, like 'don't cause me much trouble', and she is again head over heels in love with him. Many problems and worries of the characters were solved by an effective method known to the science from ancient times - a slap in the face.

By the end, the story was so full of sweet scenes of happy families that I was really longing for a salty marinated cucumber. But nobody actually changed or made any noticeable progress. That's exactly why the same actors can play in a live-action movie even though the story spans more than 10 years.

And try to guess what kind of relationship they have with their daughter...

You know, I thought it strange when Chibiusa came to the present Earth and stated that Mamoru would be hers and not Usagi's, but I guess this is a usual thing in Japan and a trend in shoujo...

In fact, much more than the Heroine, I was happy to see supporting characters happy in the end. At least they have been really funny throughout the series...

but still, I regret these 4 days spend with this story. After a serious, sometimes heartbreaking stories I always want something light and with a taste of happiness, but this I will say: such stories make me even more depressed than serious ones. They always have that side to them that makes me want to run away and pretend I didn't see anything. They promote the idea of the earthly, simple happiness of everyday life with your family and nothing special happening, just 'trying hard' at a work you don't particularly like, keeping the house, raising children... and if it's all the future holds for a human, I refuse.
I might as well add something about art, music and voice acting, but there isn't anything I could particularly praise. Hirakawa was trying so hard to make his character cool that I was afraid he would start reading one of his audio-doramas for adult girls the next moment.
Oh, maybe just one thing I made sure! It seems that one needs to be raised in Osaka to speak realistic Osaka-ben. Shuuhei Sakaguchi was a nice one.