Film: Mahoromatic - Something More Beautiful Volume 1
Release date: 7th June 2010
Certificate: 15
Running time: 125 mins
Director: Hiroyuki Yamaga
Starring: Ayako Kawasumi
Fujiko Takimoto, Asami Sanada, Ai Shimizu, Atsushi Kisaichi
Genre: Anime
Studio: MVM
Format: DVD
Country: Japan
Something More Beautiful is the title of the second series of action/comedy anime Mahoromatic. Mahoro is a beautiful warrior android, created by Vector to fight an alien invasion, who is now living as a maid to Suguru, the son of her former Commander whom she was forced to kill.
The story of Mahoro continues... The second series follows an inaccurate course over its arc, with plenty of episodes that simply mark time. Mahoro's internal clock is counting down, with only a few hundred days until she deactivates. One day Suguru is followed by Minawa, an android created by Management, a secret society that rule the world. Mahoro takes Minawa in and she poses as Mahoro’s younger sister.
Over the course of the next few episodes, the three bond alongside Slash, Mahoro's support mech in the form of a panther, Ryuuga, an alien that Mahoro formerly fought against and is now head teacher at Suguru's school; and also Shikijou, a teacher at the school who is a compulsive drinker and is forever trying to get into a relationship with Suguru. A lot of time is spent with Mahoro trying to confiscate Suguru's stash of porn, or increase the size of her breasts.
Towards the end of the series, the Management step up their attacks, and with Mahoro's power failing, she is killed while destroying them. Suguru, in love with Mahoro, spends the next few decades hunting down and destroying androids that were affiliated to the Management. Eventually Mahoro is reincarnated, and the two are reunited…
Mahoromatic is an incredibly strange anime that makes no sense whatsoever. Its ideals, ethos and morals are muddled, it kicks around going nowhere for episode after episode; it has an obsession with breasts; and it has no idea as to what it is trying to achieve, with the result that it doesn't achieve anything. To top it off, the animation is so cheap in places that, at times, there is no animation, just dialogue spoken over still images for minutes on end.
To add to this, we have some dubious sexual preferences thrown in for good measure. Of course, this should not be surprising; Japan is the capital of the world for dubious sexual preferences and practices. But even so, having a female teacher, Miss Shikijou, constantly trying to seduce a 14-year old-boy into bed, and treating it as a comedy, is simply off the mark. Equally, the numerous topless nude scenes of Miss Shikijou enjoying baths with her female students where they spend their hours comparing the sizes of their breasts is pure male fantasy, which puts the show on an artistic par with pornography. Once Minawa starts sharing these baths, an android with the body of a prepubescent girl, again comparing breast sizes and the need for large breasts in order to attract men, the show becomes downright disturbing - it's amazing these scenes made it past the BBFC. Mahoro's crusade against Suguru's pornography feels like just an excuse to squeeze in more softcore naked cartoons. Especially since one of Mahoro's primary goals is to increase the size of her own bust while decrying her catchphrase: “Thinking dirty thoughts is wrong.” The simple failure to create a logical lead character means Mahoro just isn't credible in the way that a similarly outrageous character in a similarly outrageous world such as Tank Girl is. The audience is lost at the start.
The whole series feels manipulative in this way. There is no overarching moral, no real message to tell, just an obsession with breasts (even extending to the end credits song), and an incomprehensible and uneven story. The style veers from flat-out slapstick comedy to severely bleak sci-fi in the final few episodes. Even the animation can't maintain a style, veering from high energy fight scenes to completely static scenes where the camera simply pans across a drawing.
The show does have saving graces, and it certainly needs them. The comedy, while being mostly low brow, unfunny and tending to revolve around breasts, does occasionally raise the game, especially with the sardonic Slash - the running visual gag with him and Suguru's extremely small dog being almost worth the price of admission. The final episode, being set twenty years after the events of the series, and taking itself far more seriously, is a much more enjoyable watch than the ridiculous self-indulgence of the early episodes, but these alone do not raise this anime above anything other than low rent.
Die hard anime fans will probably lap Mahoromatic up for the weirdness, but nothing can absolve the uneasiness of watching casual paedophilia played for laughs. PE
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