(Writers note: If you read this review, RATE this review. Authors thrive on feedback, whether it be a simple happy face, or an in-depth critique.)
This is an older review, recently brought over to the AniDB, along with many others. Might not be as polished as some of my latest reviews, but should still get the point across.
Because of the difference in quality of the two seasons of Mahoromatic, I've decided to make two seperate reviews.
Summary/Outline: Saints are the aliens. Vespers are the Earth guys. For no particularly reason, they've always been at war. Saints send monster looking bots, we send Mahoro, a combat android with a limited lifespan who looks like a 14yr old girl. After 9 years of service to Vesper, Mahoro is allowed to retire. If she were to continue in combat mode, she would have a mere 40 or so days to live. However, if she lives as a human (aka doesn't use her powers), she has around 400 days to live. Mahoro decides to live her remaining days as a maid for Suguru, a 14yr old Junior High School student.
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.
First, the Good: The comedy in Mahoromatic - Season 1 is top notch, partly because of the unedited ecchi, which allows for quite a bit of shock humor. I found myself laughing out loud every time Suguru's perverted and huge breasted teacher visited his house to torment him, often by stripping or beating him up with her tits. If this sounds outlandish, it's because it is. Outlandish and hillarious. Unlike most TV series, the ecchi is left in all it's ecchi glory, with unedited tits and naked bodies in just about every episode, often times turning chuckles into belly laughs, and belly laughs into ROFLs. Rarely have I seen ecchi used so well to accentuate the humor in an anime. Not that all the humor is ecchi. Just that the ecchi humor is done so well, which is rare.
The supporting cast, while undergoing zero character development, are fun to watch as the caricatures they are. The blond girl who freaks out in ecstatic glee whenever she eats one of Mahoro's meals is particularly fun to watch whenever she's on screen. It would have been nice to have seen SOME character development of SOMEONE besides Suguru and Mahoro, but oh well. Character development isn't a strong suit of comedy anyway. However...
The Bad: Unfortunately, the genres in Mahoromatic include Action, and Drama, which is where the lack of character development AND story development cause the series to suffer. The action is passable, but it often felt unneccesary. I would rather have seen more comedy than the cliched "Battle bot that must fight one last battle for honor" which took place during the last 3rd of the series. I dream of a remake of this series, in which Mahoro actually retires, living out her last days having comedy/ecchi fun with Suguru and the gang. Which brings me to...
The Ugly: And boy is it ugly. We know from the start that Mahoro has barely a year left to live. Drama elements such as this are acceptable in a comedy... as long as you seperate the feelings that drama evokes from the comedy elements in a competent way. Mahoromatic does a downright terrible job of preventing the drama and comedy from interfering with each other. The biggest example of this is at the end of every episode, we are given a giant CLOCK TIMER that tells us how long Mahoro has to live. It's like a huge sign that says "Mahoro will turn into a pile of rubble and die, leaving everyone behind to feel sad for her and totally screw up the tone of the series in... 290 days". Many episodes end on a comedic note, making this one of the biggest blunders in anime history, as it turns every ending laugh into a sad frown. (ok, I'm exaggerating a little. But seriously! This pissed me off to no end!)
On a much harder to explain note, the drama and comedy in this series don't mesh well. I can't quite explain why, or how. It's just a general feeling you get when watching the series, as it switches from drama, to comedy, to action. Each switch between comedy and drama detracts from what came before. I was laughing, and then I was sad, and it annoyed me that I was sad. Then, just as I was getting into the drama aspects, the comedy kicked in, ruining the dramatic tone I had just gotten settled into to. Very frustrating, though it's not as bad until the last 3rd of the series.
The last 4 or 5 episodes almost completely gets rid of the comedy and instead goes for pure drama/action. The main problem being what I mentioned before: Not enough character and story development for me to care. If you're going to care about a fight, you need to know WHY they're fighting. Not just a vague outline of random ideas and ideologies from the two sides. I think the main problem is the writers of the series think we want to know about Mahoro's past, when all I really wanted to see was Mahoro's brief but enjoyable present and future.
The comedy and ecchi is good enough for me to recommend this series, just so long as you know that the drama/action elements are a major problem in the later episodes, in that they don't work all that well. The last 5 episodes are very hit or miss, with, in my opinion, the last 2 being complete misses. Recommended by a very slim margin.
I now realize I forgot to mention some of the basics, such as audio, music, and animation. A brief review: Music & Audio is fine, with a cute but easily skippable OP/ED. I never noticed the audio, which to me is a good thing, and nothing ever rang false. The animation is a different story. While very well done in the early episodes, towards the end it felt like the series was running into budget problems, with an extreme overuse of still frames, and unneccesary backstory (aka repeat frames with a different voice over) in the final 2 episodes. Very distracting, taking much away from an already poor ending.
Some thoughts in retrospect: Thinking back a bit, and after reading a few reviews by other people, I do remember enjoying the first 8 episodes immensely. In case I didn't make that clear, I want you, the reader, to know that. First 8 = Great, last 4 = Not So Great. The last 4 have kind of clouded my judgement on the greatness of the comedy that came before.