Sea Slugs! Anime Blog

A nice peaceful boat ride to Fuuka Academy goes haywire when frail Tokiha Takumi spots a body floating in the water. They drag the mysterious schoolgirl onto the deck and find she is holding a large sword. The thing seems to have a life of its own though, and plunges back into the water before anyone can pry it from the schoolgirl’s hand. Meanwhile Takumi’s sister Mai administers some CPR and revives the girl. While the girl recovers in the ward, Mai meets fellow students Tate Yuuichi and Munakata Shiho. Yuuichi says they’re just childhood friends, but the uber-genki Shiho claims that they are like brother and sister. Just as it seems that the plot will devolve into stereotypical shoujo fare, a biker girl with a mechanical ice gun wolf storms the boat and picks a fight with the schoolgirl. It seems that biker girl and her wolf Duran want to prevent the schoolgirl (who they call a “hime”….) from getting to Fuuka Academy. They both go at it, but eventually Duran gets the upper hand in a hard-fought battle. At the last moment, Mai busts out some flame shield powers and drives off the biker chick, and then Mai and the schoolgirl wash up in front of the school (on a land glacier surrounded by dying flames).

The first thing I picked up on in this series was the engrish punnage. Is this supposed to be a Mai Highly-Materializing-Equipment / My Princess joke? Regardless it seems that this will be a blend of school comedy, large summons, and hot fight scenes. In fact, the choreography of the fights is filled with a smoothness and unorthodox styling that is on par with Samurai Champloo. When the characters are not fighting, however, they are engaged in somewhat unoriginal displays of comedy and/or fanservice (e.g. the location of Mai’s special mark). The OP also seems to suggest that the cast will be large and probably largely forgettable. Although the episode as a whole was pretty good, and the action was fantastic, I have two worries about this series from the get-go: 1) the possibility that this will devolve into Ikkitousen (maybe not, but the danger is definitely there), and 2) the possibility that Mai Hime will abuse stock footage (blaaargh). The only real complaint that I had is that Takumi’s voice seems totally out of place. Isn’t he supposed to be a frail young boy?

The OP was kinda mediocre, and the ED was better, but I definitely liked the pretty stills that were shown during the ED. I was happy that nobody shouted out the name of their attack, although I was upset at the appearance of the white-haired DBZ reject towards the end of the episode. It really was a case of the good, the bad, and the ugly. I guess I’ll have to keep an open mind about Mai Hime, although it’s very likely that no matter what, I’ll watch this whole series just for the action. As a final note, how funny was it that everyone was taking pictures (probably on cell phones!) as the ship was sinking like the Titanic?!

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