Mai Otome 25-26 – Mobile Robe Mai-Gundam Otome Rozen Destiny

Well, what can I say? These two episodes were a worthy end of this trainwreck. Even I couldn't believe (I could it was just the normal continuation of the trend they had set) how pathetic they were and I have postponed writing this entry for a week trying to cope with the mental trauma of watching this. Watching the raw of episode 01 of Simoun helped. If you want air battles, I would suggest either that or Last Exile, not Mai Otome which didn't even have nice battles to compensate for the non-sensical plot. I got the impression that the writers were trying much harder to find time to show everyone's Robe and Element than to think of hard-fought battles with great animation and choreography.

 

Mai Otome 24 – Thank God the end is just a week away! And I am an atheist, mind you

I don't even have the energy to bash this series much any more so I guess this post won't be too long. I need to gather energy for thefinal two episodes. You just know something is wrong, when I, the uncrowned ruler of all the Arika haters, loathe an episode which has about twenty seconds of her on screen.

 

Mai Otome 23 – Too little, too late and not that good

Well, what do you know? Mai got back and this series is still lacking in quality. Nothing surprising. I think this was an episode where the question that most often came to my mind was “Why?”. Why am I watching this? Why this episode was not number 12, rather than 23? Why the writers try so hard to connect Mai HiME and Mai Otome’s storylines? Why does this resemble Gundam Seed Destiny so much?

Beware, there are some major Gundam SEED/Destiny SPOILERS ahead!

 

Mai Otome 22 – Hey, the plot moved forward! And it wasn’t that bad!

Finally an episode in which there was action, important events and not too many moments in which to wonder why the hell I am watching this trainwreck. The animation quality seemed to be somewhat improved, Mai is coming back… probably. In other words, it was probably the best we can expect from Mai Otome. As usual my rather incoherent ramblings follow.

 

Mai Otome 21: Run, the coincidences are coming!

It turns out that I like the setup episodes of Mai Otome more than the action episodes (if we can talk of action in a series with such a slow plot development). The last two setup episodes (19 and 21) were not thrilling but any stretch of the imagination but were a lot less annoying than the average Otome episode. It seems that the less important events there are, the less opportunities for Sunrise to screw up again.

 

Mai Otome 20 – My Dashed Hopes

Today was a bad day for me – Finland lost the final of Olympic ice hockey tournament, Lazio lost the Roman derby against Roma and to top it all off I watched the subbed version of Mai Otome 20 in which my hopes, somewhat rekindled after the previous episode, quickly died. You are probably asking yourself why do I continue watching it. The answer is simple – I enjoy bashing it a bit too much. I know it’s a guilty pleasure and a rather silly one but I can’t help it. Plus, I still love a few of these characters, damn it, and I want to see how events will unfold for them.

 

Mai Otome 19 – the only way is up? Indeed!

Don’t get me wrong, this episode was far from great. But compared to the previous episodes it stands out simply because it didn’t make me exclaim “That’s so stupid!”, “Yeah, right!” or “Die, bitch!” (except when seeing Arika but that’s totally natural, right?) every few minutes or so. I think the main reason for that is that finally we see more of the plans of Aswald, Nagi and John Smith. Things seemed to move in the right direction setting up a conflict that, *shocked gasps from the audience*, might actually be interesting for a change. Not that this would do more than just salvage a bit of Sunrise pride.

 

Mai Otome 18 – One step closer to the bottom

One thing is certain – Mai Otome can be really, really annoying even without Arika on screen for almost an entire episode. In other words it was business as usual in episode 18 – a few plotholes, a bunch of characters who keep getting dumber and dumber and basically nothing impressive, not counting the music in the end.