The Essentials

Name: Mahoromatic: Automatic Maiden (Season 1), Mahoromatic: Something More Beautiful (Season 2)
Genre: Sci-fi, Fantasy
Episodes: 27 (12 in Season 1, 14 in Season 2 + 1 special)
Released: October 5, 2001 – December 28, 2001 (Season 1); September 27, 2002 – January 16, 2003 (Season 2)
Based On: Mahoromatic manga by Bunjuro Nakayama
Director: Hiroyuki Yamaga
Produced By: GAINAX
US Distribution By: Geneon Entertainment

Major Japanese Cast

Mahoro: Ayako Kawasumi
Suguru Misato: Fujiko Takimoto
Minawa Ando: Ai Shimizu
To Ryuga: Takehito Koyasu
Slash: Keiichi Noda
Miyuki Sakura: Yumi Kikuchi
Rin Todoriki: Manabi Mizuno
Chizuko Oe: Asami Sanada
Saori Shikijo: Yumi Takada
Toshiya Hamaguchi: Hideki Ogihara
Kiyomi Kawahara: Atsushi Kisaichi
Feldlance: Misato Sakamoto

Major English Cast

Mahoro: Ellen Wilkinson
Suguru Misato: David Umansky
Minawa Ando: Willow Armstrong
To Ryuga: David Lucas
Slash: Lex Lang
Miyuki Sakura: Michelle Ruff
Rin Todoriki: Midge Mayes
Chizuko Oe: Melissa Fahn
Saori Shikijo: Wendee Lee
Toshiya Hamaguchi: Dave Lelyveld
Kiyomi Kawahara: Ron Allen
Feldlance: Mona Marshall

Scores

Animation: 7/10 (x 4 = 28 pts)
Story: 7/10 (x 4 = 28 pts)
Music: 8/10 (x 4 = 32 pts)
Coherence/Story Arc: 8/10 (x 2 = 16 pts)
English Dubs: 8/10 (x 1 = 8 pts)
Gut Score: 7/10 (x 5 = 35 pts)

Total: 147/200 (73.5%)

Review

Mahoromatic is about a battle android named Mahoro who is going into retirement and only has enough power to operate for about 400 more days. The operation she works for – Vesper – allows her to choose to do whatever she wants, and Mahoro chooses to be a maid for, and protect, a boy named Suguru Misato. The reason for this being that Mahoro was forced to kill Suguru’s father when he was, unknowing to Suguru, head of Vesper in a battle. At first, Mahoro wants to be Suguru’s maid just to protect him. However, over time, Mahoro and Suguru start to develop feelings for each other, but Mahoro is afraid to ever act on her feelings, knowing that the number of days she has left to operate is ever decreasing.

Despite being in retirement, Mahoro still has many problems to face. An old foe from Vesper’s enemy Saint, Ryuga, shows up to have a final confrontation, and later the “Management,” which secretly controls all world events from the shadows, tries to get their hands on Mahoro for their own purposes.  In the second series, Mahoro finds Minawa, who is a robot apparently running away from Management, who also becomes a maid at Suguru’s house.

Mahoromatic is an odd mix of romance, science fiction, fantasy, and slice of life, as Suguru’s classmates just think he’s a lucky guy who’s hired a cute maid to keep his rather sizable house clean, and who also often fights battles with Suguru over his collection of porn magazines, which Mahoro objects to. This is rather ironic as Mahoromatic itself has an ample amount of fan service with virtually every female character getting quite a bit of, shall we way, skin time. However, at other times, Mahoromatic goes into full sci-fi action mode with rather intense battles between Mahoro and whomever is currently going after her.

The primary negative for Mahoromatic is that it has the classic cursed GAINAX ending. That is to say that it’s ending really isn’t an ending. At the end of the second season, rather than finding some way to “save” Mahoro from shutting down, she ends up being destroyed trying to save Suguru. This leads Suguru to lead a life as a half-cyborg hunter who is after the last remnants of “The Management,” who hates all androids, and feels betrayed over Mahoro abandoning him. However, 20 years later Mahoro suddenly reappears with very little explanation as to why or how, and the story basically ends there, with no wrap-up for any of the other characters in the show. It’s not often that an anime’s final episode make or break a series, but in this case, the ending to Mahoromatic seriously broke the entire series that came before it.

Also, I’m not sure the relationship between Vesper and Saint was entirely clear.  To start of with, Vesper and Saint were shown to be mortal enemies, but then later it is seemingly shown that Vesper and Saint cooperated quite a bit.  It just seems the more complex the story got, the more it had a tendency to either conflict with what we learned in the past, or twisting itself into a pretzel trying not to.

As far as technical aspects, the animation for the first season isn’t all that great, but it does improves quite a bit in the second series. The music is pretty goodI thought, but the dub is only about average. I would recommend watching the first, but not the second, season, but the two are so closely tied that one basically has to consider it two halves of the same show and not a series and a sequel. That means that just watching the first season leaves one sort of hanging as to Mahoro’s fate.

I suppose one could watch up to the next-to-last episode, but that still leaves one hanging in some respects (though you’re largely left hanging anyway, so what do you lose?). Some may enjoy this series for it’s unique mixing of genres, but I just think Mahoromatic has too many flaws to totally enjoy.

First Watched: June – July 2007
Do I Own: No
Do I Recommend: No