Grandma always told me, be as annoying as possible

Monday, September 10, 2007

I think the letter Z, in Japan, is our letter X. You know how companies will unnecessarily attach an "x" to a product to market it as "extreme"? They don't realize that once you do that there's no more wiggle room in the English language. What's better than extreme something? Ultimate something? Extreme something 360?

Lacking the extremeness of the letter X, let's turn to Z. Or rather My Z HiME, a spin-off of one of my favorite shows in recent memory, My HiME. This is clearly "My HiME Extreme." Instead of having a tattoo that marks you as a magical girl, these ladies are given fashionable earrings and pendants to wear. You can also fly, and, while you don't get a Child to summon, you do get to materialize a spiffy combat suit to do battle. There's also none of those "lose a battle and the most important person in your life will die" shenanigans. Unfortunately you can't have sex with boys (your superpowers will disappear), but that just means the implied lesbian relationships in the previous show become explicit.

Hmm, wrong word choice there (but a delightful mental image regardless). Let's try "expressed." Yes, much better.

Our heroine is Arika Yumemiya, whose character bio reads as "a poor Mai Tokiha clone." She's nicknamed "Anty" because of her antenna-like hair, but I'm still having trouble accepting her birth name. While Re-l is a straightforward strange name, I always transpose the consonants in Arika to Akira, one of the more tragic figures from My HiME and someone with an extremely conflicting personality to Arika. So every time her name is called I have to exert some mental energy to remember who they're talking about. Unpleasant.

Another bothersome aspect of My Otome (My Z HiME's preferred title, apparently) is the endless political posturing throughout the first disc. For evidence witness My Otome's character list. These people are grouped by country, which is of course how you think of characters in anime shows not revolving around, say, the Olympics. The only place to be an Otome is at Garderobe Academy, and the only way you're getting in is if you're rich. Or if you might be the long lost heir to the throne and carrying a very suspicious pendant last seen among the royal family, but how often does that happen?

So, rich countries around the world sponsor young women to join Garderobe in the hope that she graduates, as it seems like only the top two get to be full, "Meister" Otomes. We spend an inordinate amount of time with the dour Nina Wong and her father from some opposing nation who grinds his teeth at everything and everyone. There's also the unbelievable coronation ceremony of Princess Mashiro and the dance battle of amateur Arika and #1 in her class Nina... the sort of thing you could never imagine taking place on a planet with personal injury lawyers (thus confirming My Otome is fantasy, as I could accept the magical earrings and battle suits bit).

If I had to give My Otome an official anime rating right now (and hell, I guess I will) I'd put it in the two star camp. The Otome powers are cool, the voice acting is good and it's thrilling as hell to see Natsuki and Shizuru again, but my goodness I can't stand Arika Yumemiya anymore. You ready for another one of Jordan's drinking games? This one will put you out quick: take a shot every time Arika imparts a bit of wisdom from her grandmother. Or even when Arika does something incredibly bone-headed, like steal a drink from an important Otome or escape from the medical wing of the Garderobe academy (a double shot, as her grandmother always told her to make sincere requests in person) or go around flashing her heirloom pendant that's worth her entrance to the academy in the first place.

I can hardly stand Arika, but I'll be continuing My Otome. Nagi's back, and since he could lay waste to half the academy without me caring I'll be rooting for him. The character designs that they kept from My HiME are good, but the rest are quite pitiful. Arika's roommate has yellow hair. Not golden hair, not blond hair: yellow. I'm looking at the swatches window of Photoshop and seeing a lot of design inspirations for Sunrise.