The obvious favorite of fans is Mahoro herself, who is a juxtaposition of cute and destructive power that is highly amusing. The bipolar nature of this anime is readily demonstrated in the opening animation, which depicts Mahoro doing various house chores on one hand and blowing away mecha on the other with a gentle love song playing in the background. This dual nature thrives in the characters, who at one moment will be very funny and at the next extremely serious, especially as the series draws to a close.
—Jason Bustard
Mahoro V1046 is a “Hyper Soldier”: a combat android constructed to confront lethal alien invaders that threaten to annihilate the Earth unbeknownst to the vast majority of humans. Presented with this synoptic information, many prospective spectators might well respond with an exasperated “again?” Had the studio behind Mahoromatic been the kind of anime company (of which there are several in Japan) that aims for rapid returns without bothering inordinately about its work’s enduring appeal, such a reaction would be perfectly justifiable. However, given that the production studio in question is Gainax, “again?” must surely be followed by “and with what kind of quirky twist?” Indeed, Mahoromatic is no less a genre-bending project than the previous works discussed in this book, using its mecha backdrop as merely a narrative prop in what is otherwise a sophisticated and often pensive coming-of-age tale suffused with somber allusions to an indelible legacy of loneliness and loss.
After lengthy and unflinchingly loyal service under the aegis of the secret agency Vesper as their most powerful soldier, Mahoro is finally allowed to retire and to have her remaining operating time extended to just about one year by living as an ordinary human instead of continuing in her martial mode to the bitter end. Accepting this option, Mahoro chooses to work as a maid for the orphaned high school student Suguru Misato, channeling her energy into looking after him, cooking gourmet food for Suguru and his mates, and keeping his residence fabulously clean and neat. This seemingly tranquil arrangement is darkened by two factors. First, Suguru happens to be the son of Mahoro’s former commanding officer, whose demise she has been directly, albeit unwillingly, responsible for. Painful memories of the incident resurge to haunt the otherwise cheerful Mahoro with increasing frequency as the series progresses and its serious undertones intensify. Second, threats from the aliens little by little disrupt the maid’s human routine, requiring her to take action as a combat android and thus both consume the precious operating power she has left and allow her secret identity to surface.
Heir to Gunbuster in its gloomier moments (Mahoro’s inner turmoil often echoes Noriko’s), Mahoromatic simultaneously perpetuates Gainax’s tongue-in-cheek fascination with self-reflexivity. For example, when the heroine first describes herself as a “combat android,” Suguru finds it hard to believe her since the image of the lovely maid is totally incongruous with the stereotypical concept of such an entity he harbors—a notion which he would seem to have derived entirely from classic mecha anime shows, as humorously suggested by the shot of the cartoony, metallic and clunky robot standing in a smoldering battlefield used to encapsulate the mental image that the phrase “combat android” instantly evokes in the boy’s head (Episode 1, “In The Garden Where the Hydrangeas Bloom”). A further example of genre-specific self-reflexivity can be found in Episode 2, “Woman Teacher Saori, 25 Years Old,” in which Suguru remarks that Mahoro has a voice worthy of “an anime actress.”
The series’ self-reflexive dimension does not only pertain to its generic tropes, however. In fact, it also extends no less effectively to the formal domain, giving rise to an animational approach that foregrounds the constructedness and material underpinnings of its images. This is borne out by the use of black-and-white manga panels (as in FLCL) to present climactic situations in a condensed and viscerally impactful fashion. The show also deploys to great dramatic effect marginal frame-within-a-frame drawings, often zipping across the screen, that serve to highlight a character’s mien and emotions. In Episode 1, for instance, much of the comedy pervading Mahoro’s first inspection of Suguru’s abysmally untidy household revolves around icon-like snapshots of her face deteriorating gradually from a customarily composed expression, though mild aggravation, into farcical despair.
Like Neon Genesis Evangelion, His and Her Circumstances and FLCL, Mahoromatic concurrently brings typography into play, frequently to take the focus temporarily away from the action itself and draw attention instead to the thoughts and feelings affecting particular scenes. A paradigmatic example is provided by the sequence from the opening installment in which Suguru ponders the implications of hiring what appears to be a hypercute female teenager as a maid. The typographical techniques employed in the program deliver a wide variety of discordant effects, ranging from spectacular and even aggressive fonts traced in gaudy hues to monastically restrained brushstrokes executed in traditional black ink (sumi). An amusing instance of the show’s use of text is supplied by the scene from Episode 6, “Moon Flower Design,” in which the lustful schoolteacher Saori Shikijo fantasizes about Suguru, whom she fancies to obsessive extremes, and the action gives way to a bright pink screen bearing the cautionary caption “Sorry, this fantasy is too abnormal and dangerous to show.”
In assessing Mahoromatic’s stylistic handling of all of its characters’ more or less idiosyncratic fantasies (and not just Miss Shikijo’s), Yamaga’s employment of fan service can barely go unheeded. It is worth recalling that the phrase “fan service,” as the relevant entry in the Anime News Network encyclopaedia explains, typically connotes
the act of adding something with no direct relevance to the story or character development into an anime (or manga) for the purpose of pleasing fans. The most common form of fan service is the addition of scenes of scantily clothed, seductively posed, well-endowed women, or something similar (panty shots), also common in anime and especially manga aimed at female readers are similar situations involving male characters. However, fan service does not have to be sexual in nature. Other forms of fan service include gratuitous amounts of detailed mecha transformation scenes, mascot placings and so on (“Fan Service”).
Miss Shikijo’s freaky fantasies lead to fan-service gags so immoderate and extravagant that some viewers may unceremoniously dismiss them as low comedy. This is most pointedly the case with the scenes in Episode 4, “Shoot Me Straight through the Heart,” in which—in preparation for a trip to the seaside that constitutes habitual fare in romantic comedies of this kind—the teacher seeks to allure Suguru by donning a nearly invisible bathing costume. The overall effect is grotesque rather than enticing or merely farcical. Audiences inclined to deem fan service acceptable as long as it utilizes innuendo or implied nudity but to condemn it as a gratuitous concession to vulgarity when it revels in splashy oversexed antics may decry such moments as undilutedly obscene. Yet, it could be argued that Gainax’s overwrought use of fan service in Mahoromatic is part and parcel of the studio’s genre-bending proclivities. Just as the show’s solid sci-fi plot enables it to transcend the limitations of romantic yarns centered on a nerdy teenager’s erotic dreams, so its approach to fan service helps Mahoromatic go beyond the established parameters and, in so doing, urges the spectator to ponder critically what exactly, if anything, is supposed to make that visual strategy legitimately enjoyable. As Sarcasm-hime’s review of the series economically asserts, “This is a Gainax show, and as we’ve seen time and again they have a knack for making even the most bizarre or offensive premise fun and entertaining” (Sarcasm-hime).
On the whole, in Mahoromatic as in Gainax’s oeuvre at large, the animation draws verve and poignance from the studio’s juxtaposition of stylized character designs and cartoonish patterns of motion with exquisitely painterly backgrounds. Stylization reaches its comedic climax in the employment of chibi: infantilized caricatures of certain characters, intended to enhance a scene’s humor. (The word translates literally as “little” but also stands as a contraction of “child body.”) This strategy is deployed most effectively in Episode 3, “A Grave So Transient,” in which chibi versions of Mahoro and of Miss Shikijo bickering in an overheated sauna are ironically contrasted with images of Suguru as he morosely observes that he has never lived as a son to the full. The action briefly returns to the sauna’s zany antics, displaying a virtually sizzling Mahoro and a shriveled Miss Shikijo, and then switches once more to the serious mode, with a shot of the Misato family plot and a flashback in which Mahoro vividly recalls her part in Commander Misato’s death. Stylization also abets considerably the more dramatic moments in Episode 5, “8–634 Is Doing Fine,” in which Suguru and his mates engage in Summer School Activities requiring them to investigate “the nine mysteries of Hiryu School,’” including notorious rumors concerning vengeful ghosts. The characters’ normal faces morph into minimalistic sketches in the scene highlighting their terror at the sight of a presumed ghost, offering a deft combination of equal measures of comedy and pathos.
Installments such as this play a key part in foregrounding the intersubjective network of relations unfolding around the protagonists. It would, of course, be preposterous to deny that the relationship between Mahoro and Suguru constitutes the show’s affective fulcrum and that Mahoro, in particular, provides the catalyst through which Mahoromatic’s dynamic chemistry operates. Nonetheless, the supporting characters serve a vital function in enhancing the program’s dramatic scope. Especially notable are the kindly and unpretentious tomboy Sakura Miyuki, the exquisitely feminine Rin Todoriki and the doll-like Chizuku Oe, the ultimate gourmet. Last but not least, Suguru’s dog Guri-chan and the mecha support dispatched by Vesper named Slash, who is fashioned in the guise of a black panther, contribute both humor and drama to some of the show’s most intense moments.
As mentioned earlier, the ominous spectre of loss—both past and impending—is never far from Mahoromatic’s diegesis. No pleasure that the comedy and its alternately romantic and slapstick variations offer is ever posited as unproblematic. On the technical plane, some of the more touching moments are constellated around elegantly simple line drawings—as in the relatively early scene in which Suguru takes a bath with Mahoro and bittersweet recollections of his departed mother flood his senses. The minimalistic pencil sketch of the little boy and his mother recalls analogous depictions of Shinji and Yui Ikari in Evangelion.
A haunting mood of imminent and inevitable loss pervades later episodes, as Mahoro slowly but surely nears her end. Episode 6 is especially memorable, in this regard. At the end of the Summer Festival in which Mahoro has played the pivotal role of “Dance Maiden,” flawlessly and effortlessly performing a grueling routine, Suguru declares that they must revisit the celebration the following year at all costs. Understandably, the girl’s response is a sad silence, graphically enhanced by the concomitant eruption into the night sky of glorious fireworks: a potent symbol for the ephemerality of joy, pleasure and life itself. Analogous chords are struck in Episode 8, “One Who Has a Perfect Heart,” by the scene in which Mahoro reflects that Suguru will be forced to experience all over again the torment of separation when her functionality expires.
Even when Mahoromatic asserts most joyfully its lighthearted dimension, it remains capable of appealing to very human emotions with warming sincerity. A case in point is the opening part of Episode 4 in which Suguru and his friends embark on a trip to the beach and Mahoro supplies them with all manner of culinary treats, determined to stay behind in accordance with her subordinate role. (Mahoro has an extremely old-fashioned concept of “servitude.”) The sheer passion with which each and every member of the gang insists on her joining them and proclaims an honest desire to befriend her as an equal is genuinely moving. The sequence in which Suguru’s female friends engage in the selection and purchase of a bathing suit for the maid with a zeal one would expect of some momentous mission is also highly entertaining and prefigures similar sartorial exploits in the early installments of This Ugly Yet Beautiful World.
The show’s serious import is also confirmed—as in other Gainax works examined earlier—by its unsentimental stress on adults’ immaturity. In Mahoromatic, teachers are repeatedly portrayed as the principal target of this critique and although the bosom-centered jokes surrounding the character of the randy teacher Miss Shikijo occasionally become so insistent as to degenerate into shallow repetitiveness, the darker connotations of adults’ irresponsible behavior never quite dissolve into vapid farce for its own sake.
As Teji Sarkin has noted, the show’s darkness and its humor are inextricably intertwined and gain dramatic impact from their mutual support: “Mahoromatic is full of contrasts. From the first episode of Mahoromatic it is established that Mahoro will die, and soon. Her impending death is further accentuated by a little counter appearing at the end of each episode displaying her remaining time. This is put in direct conflict with the lightheartedness of the ordinary life of Misato and his friends” (Sarkin). John Huxley has analogously remarked upon Mahoromatic’s tonal variety in his review of the show’s first DVD volume: “One minute you’ll be tittering at Miss Saori’s over exuberant attempts to unsettle Suguru’s relationship with Mahoro (which mostly involves sticking her breasts into his face), the next you’ll be encouraged to contemplate the fragility of life as Suguru mourns the untimely death of his parents” (Huxley).
The action gains unprecedented momentum with the advent of the character of Ryuga in Episode 7, “The Maid Chased by Her Past.” Just as Mahoro is Vesper’s most capable warrior, so Ryuga is introduced as the most powerful combat machine employed by the rival power Saint. Mahoro and Ryuga are supposed to have confronted each other many times, with each duel resulting in a draw. When Mahoro discovers that the Saint emissary has infiltrated her world, disguised as an athletic and handsome supply teacher at Suguru’s school, she darkly ponders: “My past has finally caught up to me.” This utterance marks Mahoromatic’s decisive shift toward a noncomedic modality. Ryuga, for his part, is at first convinced that Vesper intends to use Suguru as his dad’s worthy successor and that Mahoro has been sent to protect him but rapidly realizes that the boy knows nothing about his father’s past and professional obligations.
Members of Saint, we are told, have been roaming the universe for time immemorial, by and by losing all recollection of the planet where their quest began. Ryuga is an android designed solely for combat (not unlike Mahoro herself) but still bears vestiges of submerged memories related to his culture’s origins and goals. The first generation of Saint travelers departed in search of cultures with which they could interact but found no civilizations or even signs of life until they reached Earth, the “blue planet.” A voiceover preceding Mahoro and Ryuga’s final duel recounts the outcome of the Saint culture’s encounter with humans as follows: “Ironically, first contact with their long-sought culture was accidental, though it was through the most primitive method. War. The thus far unique, simple culture of Saint does not like war. However, the receiving race is so underdeveloped they continue to reject all contact besides war.” Human civilization’s refusal of nonbelligerent interaction with their visitors is precisely the reason behind Saint’s construction of creatures like Ryuga.
The climactic fight presented in Episode 12, “To the Scenery I Once Dreamt Of,” is Mahoromatic’s most sophisticated and complex sequence in terms of both choreography and psychology. As the DVD Times review of the series’ third volume maintains, the sequence constitutes “an impressively directed bout, making full use of the setting at an abandoned high school to produce a tense stand-off.... When close-combat does kick in it’s handled beautifully by some fluid animation, while the art design manages to keep a good sense of proportion and detail throughout” (“Mahoromatic: Automatic Maiden Vol. 03: Review”).
Stylistically, the sequence echoes some of Evangelion’s most conspicuous battles in its ingenious fusion of the staple elements of both space opera and the western (Ryuga’s armor, incidentally, is vividly redolent of Shinji’s Eva-01). Among the numerous instances of intense drama communicated by the duel, one of the most epically resonant is the scene in which Ryuga emerges from the ruins despite having been hit by Mahoro with an antimatter cannon believed to be capable of annihilating him for good. No less memorable is the scene in which Ryuga hits Mahoro with preternatural vehemence and sends her flying backwards through space along a flight path that, through perspectival distortion and decelerated motion, appears to last for a truly interminable length of time.
This temporal suspension gives Yamaga’s camera the opportunity to indulge in an imaginary, dreamlike flash-forward in which Mahoro fantasizes about what it would be like if she were to defeat Ryuga and go back to her ordinary domestic routine the following morning as though nothing extraordinary had ever come to pass. The sequence is bathed in a distinctively idyllic atmosphere, as Mahoro, Suguru and their friends are seen to enjoy a rural picnic, crowned by the scene in which the girls sit in a tree musing over their aspirations for the future—a dimension that for Mahoro herself, regardless of the duel’s outcome, feels flimsier and flimsier by the instant.
Mahoro is forced back to reality by Ryuga’s savage beating in a scene of heightened dramatic vigor, made all the more disturbing by being initially presented in the form of storyboard-style rough pencil sketches. Among the most effective cinematographical strategies brought to bear on this part of the sequence are the “zip pan,” an effect based on backgrounds that consist entirely of lines instead of defined images to evoke a vibrant impression of movement, and the “image BG” technique, in which the backgrounds are flooded with vigorous palettes to convey extreme emotional states or to signal a shift to alternate reality levels. The zip pan is used effectively for the frames in which Mahoro takes the thrashing of her life, where the background is filled by starkly ominous black and white lines. The image BG technique, for its part, features in the shots where the heroine starts bleeding, and we are treated to a realistic portrait of her face in profile against a white background, with an explicitly spray-painted jet of scarlet dots issuing from the mouth.
Truly breathtaking is the shot of Ryuga as a hyper-stylized charcoal sketch with bright green eyes so passionately realistic as to appear endowed with an independent life of their own. (The Eva-01’s charismatic eyes readily spring to mind.) At the end of the fight, when Mahoro has sacrificed part of her scanty life-span to beat Ryuga (satisfying his own desire for an ultimate, all-out confrontation against her own interest), the screen delivers the moving shot of a nocturnal sky embroidered with a splotchy yellow moon and stars, depicted in a childlike style through the medium of crayon. Gainax’s undying dedication to the quintessentially artisanal qualities of anime has the last word.
It is worth noting, in this context, that the countdown toward Mahoro’s inexorable termination will gain additional momentum in the show’s second season, directed by Yamaga and aired in 2002–2003, namely, Mahoromatic—Automatic Maiden: Something More Beautiful. In this program, the drama surrounding the merciless ticking of the heroine’s biological clock is enriched through the consistent use of flashbacks, introspective moments and déjà-vus that invite the viewer’s own imagination to map out the actual passage of time. In Mahoromatic’s second season, the multiple relationships involving the android maid, Suguru and their friends are developed further and complicated by the appearance of another female android, Minawa, who becomes deeply attached to Mahoro. Any spectator with an interest in anime’s handling of relational dynamics is highly likely to find the show’s articulation of Mahoro and Minawa’s interaction a veritable jewel in the field. (This same motif will be revamped in This Ugly Yet Beautiful World, in which the introduction of the principal supernatural agent, Hikari, is soon followed by the appearance of her alter ego Akari.)
Given the explicitly belligerent purposes underlying Mahoro’s construction—not to mention her formidable martial assets—the android’s disarming prettiness and deferential meekness may come as a surprise, or even appear incompatible with the character’s intrinsic nature. However, it is precisely from this dialectical tension that Mahoro gains psychological and emotional depth, in both her gladiatorial exploits and in her gentle quotidian behavior. Thus, the show boldly challenges the stereotypical association of “cuteness” and “niceness” so proverbially endemic to fantasy fiction and cinema. Another intriguing instance of this trend is provided by the TV series MoonPhase (dir. Akiyuki Shinbo, 2004–2005), in which one of the cutest young females to have ever featured in anime, Hazuki/Luna, turns out to be an indomitable blood-drinker in the thrall of a baleful curse. (Alongside lacy doll-like accoutrements, the character occasionally vaunts a cat-eared headband—a staple of girlish daintiness in anime.) The idea that supercute girls can be lethal is also humorously conveyed by the TV show Coyote Ragtime Show (dir. Takuya Nonaka, 2006): The minions of the “Criminal Guild,” known as the “Twelve Daughters,” are absolutely adorable cuties decked out in frilly Loli-Goth apparel but also happen to be agents of death equipped with all manner of malefic weapons.1
Yamaga’s generic experimentation does not only impact on Mahoromatic’s take on mecha but also on a further anime formula invoked by the series, namely, moe. A controversial and multiaccentual term, “moe” takes the Japanese passion for all things “kawaii” (“cute”) to extremes by capitalizing on female characters that are so ardently cherished, yet respectfully worshipped from a discrete distance, as to acquire the status of fetishes. On the thematic plane, moe exhibits numerous affinities with the shoujo genre and accordingly tends to elaborate romantic yarns and melodramas pivoting on beautifully drawn young females. Like shoujo, however, moe does not unequivocally enthrone the sentimental dimension as its sole focus but actually provides plenty of scope for adventurous forays into the territories of historical drama and serious or semi-serious science fiction. Its axial personae, relatedly, are not automatically defined as huge-eyed teenagers exuding innocent charm amidst streams of flowers, hearts, stars and glowing lights. In fact, shoujo and moe heroines alike frequently reveal unexpected layers of psychological complexity that grow in accordance with their exposure to varyingly intense societal pressures. As argued in Chapter 1, nowhere is this trend more pithily and audaciously proclaimed than in Gainax’s productions, in which even the cutest of girls may disclose turbulent drives and dark intentions. A seemingly naive mien does not unproblematically preclude the lurking presence of unsavory personality traits, such as acquisitiveness or cynicism.
Several critics and commentators have reacted unsympathetically to moe on the assumption that its penchant for fetishization lowers it to the level of genres eager to satisfy voyeuristic scopophilia and even paedophiliac propensities. Within Japan’s entertainment industry, one such genre is the lolicon (an acronym forged from the fusion of “Lolita” and “complex”), in which the emphasis falls straight upon the satisfaction of an adult male’s erotic fantasies by means of starkly reified shoujoesque idols. Moe’s supporters counter these accusations by claiming that in this genre, the idealized character is not presented as a passive object for active consumption by an avid male gaze but rather as an eminently fictional construct meant to invite protective and sympathetic responses without any overt notion of sexual titillation coming into play. Gainax’s experiments with moe radically subvert the association of the genre with the masterful appropriation of nonthreatening, submissive or even downright vulnerable females by presenting their heroines as plucky, resourceful and capable of taking their fate into their stride, undesirable though this may be.
Architectural theorist Kaichiro Morikawa has succinctly summed up moe’s peculiar approach to the concept of attractiveness in his essay “Learning from Akihabara: The Birth of a Personaopolis,” in which he maintains that moe fundamentally refers to a person’s fascination with a certain character type or, more accurately, with “specific elements or characteristics” that single it out as desirable. A case in point is “‘glasses moe,’” namely, “a taste that is taken with a character who wears glasses; ... this taste fetishizes the feature itself of glasses-wearing” (Morikawa). The character of Miss Shikijo in Mahoromatic is an eligible candidate, in this respect. So is the supporting character of Mune-Mune in Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi. No less cogent instances are provided by the TV series Please Teacher! (dir. Yasunori Ide, 2002)—whose female lead, Mizuho Kazami, is an extremely sexy bespectacled alien—and the OVA series UFO Ultramaiden Valkyrie: Bride of Celestial Souls’ Day (dir. Shigeru Ueda, 2004). The latter, a vibrantly animated show laced throughout with attractive character designs, chronicles the amiable bathhouse manager Kazuko Tokino’s befuddling interactions with a gaggle of zany Valhalla goddesses from outer space, and it devotes the whole of its opening installment to the alien princess Pharm’s resolution to make every girl in sight wear glasses—and look cute in them.
In the case of Mahoro, Gainax’s aversion to sexualized fetishization as an end in itself is intradiegetically consolidated by the android’s unwaveringly censorious attitude toward porn, however “soft.” (This theme will be accorded categorical centrality in the one-episode spin-off Mahoromatic—Automatic Maiden: Summer Special, directed by Shouji Saeki and aired in 2003, in which Mahoro and her female allies embark on a crusade to purge Suguru’s house of any trace of dubious literature.) In the original show, Mahoro’s ethical integrity is refreshingly enhanced by her unsullied conviction that there is nothing indecorous about her sharing a bath with Suguru, which demonstrates that her dislike of commercial erotica is not just conducive to puritanically stuffy prurience.
Thus, much as it retains the unmistakable traits of a romantic plot featuring cute girls and adoring male youths, peppered with a fairly bounteous portion of fan service, Mahoromatic never employs the conventions of moe as more than an ancillary diegetic ploy. In fact, it goes as far as subverting moe’s classic “division of labor,” according to which the female cutie is the party requiring pampering and protection, by positing Mahoro as a capable, autonomous and generously supportive agent. (Moe will also be addressed in relation to This Ugly Yet Beautiful World.)
Mahoromatic’s most explicitly moe aspect resides with its heroine’s physical appearance and, specifically, with its interpretation of the visual conventions associated with the “maid” type. This, it is worth stressing, has become so popular in anime as to have affected pervasively both the world of cosplay and the ancillary-merchandise sector. Furthermore, the district of Akihabara in Tokyo, once renowned as the otaku paradise of electronic goods, has recently sprouted numerous “maid cafés” with a decidedly moe ambience. Amos Wong has commented on the venue “@home café” as an illustrative example: The place is run by “cute waitresses dressed in maid gear” and exudes a “warm, fuzzy atmosphere,” complemented by a menu that includes “dainty desserts like cakes decorated with rabbits, bears and little Yorkshire terriers.” The clientele, Wong adds, does not consist solely of “otaku types” but of “a varied bunch from both genders” (Wong 2006, p. 71).
On the “maid” front as on several others, Yamaga’s show departs from the standardized formula to engage in some inspired generic experimentation. As Mark Clark points out, the show initially posits itself as just one more entry “into the ‘boy meets cute robotic maid genre’” and does not, to this extent, constitute an especially challenging artistic intervention. Nevertheless when it transpires that “Mahoro actually has a good reason for being a maid and working for Suguru,” the story acquires a depth that sets it apart from more simplistic treatments of the established formula: “those expecting another Hand Maid May are in for something a little different this time” (Clark, p. 154). In the TV series (directed by Shinichiro Kimura and broadcast in 2000), which Clark cites as an apposite point of comparison, the “maid” in question is actually a palm-sized cyberdoll (eventually upgraded to a model with real-life dimensions and proportions). The notion of the moe maid as an enticingly delicate projection of male fantasies is communicated, in Kimura’s program, by the explicit equation of May to a quintessentially Barbie-like fetish.
An unusual take on the “Servant-Master” relationship, garnished with gentle hints at the maid type, is offered by the TV series Fate/stay Night (dir. Yuji Yamaguchi, 2006), in which powerful sorcerers known as “Masters” periodically engage in epic confrontations with the objective of gaining the “Holy Grail.” They are aided, in their mission, by reincarnations of legendary souls named “Servants,” who boast supernatural abilities and weapons. The protagonist, Shirou Emiya, is a would-be sorcerer hailed as “Master” by the “Servant” Saber—a loyal and powerful warrior garbed in a costume that blends elements of the mediaeval armor with motifs (such as the frilly hem) characteristically associated with traditional maids. Just as Suguru endeavors to hide Mahoro’s very existence from his friends and teachers and, when he eventually has no choice but to introduce her, conceals her real identity, so Shirou does his best to prevent his tutor (and self-appointed guardian) Taiga and his school friend Sakura from finding out about the Saber. However, there comes a point when he must introduce her to his earthly acquaintances willy-nilly since he cannot simply keep her locked up. Nor can she assume the spiritual form that would be more appropriate to the status of a “Servant” of her caliber: Shirou’s magical powers are not adequately developed and therefore do not provide the energy the Saber needs to absorb in order to achieve that aim.
A major point of contact between Mahoro and the Saber lies with their use of a deferential register whenever they address their employers. The combat android seems to find this code of conduct utterly natural, whereas Fate/stay Night’s heroine initially adopts it merely in accordance with tradition and an ingrained regard for hierarchy—and not without a marginal dose of resentment. This emotional conflict manifests itself in two ways. On the one hand, even though the Saber takes her duty toward her Master very seriously indeed, she gets irate when he treats her as though she were an ordinary, defenseless girl. On the other, while she is on the whole very respectful and obliging, she nonetheless objects persistently to what she perceives as Shirou’s recklessness and gullibility. Hence, although the Master and the Servant are supposed to be pursuing a common goal, they often find themselves butting heads. It is not until the series is well under way that the Saber begins to feel that she is abetting a “boss” she can be truly proud of and not a bumbling neophyte.
Mahoromatic partakes of several of the codes and conventions typically associated with that branch of anime known as “Magical Girl”—or, where relevant, “Magical Girlfriend.” This form tends to dramatize adolescent male wish-fulfillment fantasies and to feature an inept hero on whom fate suddenly smiles as a beautiful, sweet-tempered and utterly devoted female enters his existence. The girl in question is normally a supernatural or virtual entity endowed with special powers, whose abilities are inevitably conducive to dramatic irony: In helping the male lead discover true love, she also ends up giving him a bit of an inferiority complex. At the same time, paradoxically she feels clumsy, weak, unworthy of his affection and the cause of unpleasant complications (domestic or cosmic as the case may be).
The TV series unanimously hailed as the epitome of the “Magical Girl” typology is Sailor Moon (dirs. Junichi Sato et al., 1992–1997), the longest-running anime program of its kind (200 episodes). The heroine is Tsukino Usagi, a clumsy teenager prone to emotional outbursts who receives magical tools from a cat named Luna and gradually discovers that she possesses superpowers capable of affecting the entire cosmos. Sailor Moon’s admixture of humor and romance has become a defining trait of the genre that comes resplendently to the fore in Mahoromatic. Oh My Goddess! (OVA series; dir. Hiroaki Gouda, 1993) and subsequent productions in the same franchise up to Ah! My Goddess: Flights of Fancy (OVA series; dir. Hiroaki Gouda, 2006) also provide relevant points of historical reference.
This epoch-making saga chronicles the adventures of student Keiichi Morisato as his tedious routine is disrupted by the appearance on the scene of the goddess Belldandy—a stunningly beautiful and kindly creature who vows to live with Keiichi forever—and, as the plot unfolds, by the advent of Belldandy’s sisters Urd and Skuld as further unexpected additions to the protagonist’s unorthodox “family.” As Keiichi and Belldandy become increasingly attached to each other, in spite of Urd’s and Skuld’s respective attempts to either consolidate or disrupt the relationship with equally disastrous outcomes, the familiar cocktail of comedic and romantic ingredients dominates the narrative’s mood over the decades of its release history.
The web of relationships woven by Suguru’s interaction not only with Mahoro but also his school friends and teachers at times recalls the atmosphere of the “harem comedy” Love Hina (dir. Yoshiaki Iwasaki, 2000), a TV series (complemented by two feature-length productions and an OVA) focusing on the hapless Keitaro Urashima and the bevy of hugely attractive—and no less idiosyncratic—women he is surrounded by as fate unexpectedly puts him in charge of an all-girl dorm. What makes Love Hina truly memorable over and above the formulaic trappings of the “harem” genre is its refreshing knack of infusing farcically absurd elements into an otherwise well-tested scenario (including mecha and ghosts quite incongruous with the main plot). In this respect, the show supplies an apt parallel to Mahoromatic’s tendency to sprinkle the action with barmy incidents—especially when it indulges in the depiction of the perverted Miss Shikijo’s hot-blooded pranks.
Mahoromatic’s drama at times echoes the mood of the TV show Vampire Princess Miyu (dir. Toshihiro Hirano, 1997–1998). Indeed, in both programs, the heroine’s raison d’être is intertwined with the obligation to undertake an inescapable and unpalatable duty. In Miyu’s case, the mission consists of hounding down and destroying a breed of bloodthirsty demons known as “Shinma,” thus returning them to the “Darkness” whence they have unlawfully sprung. The vampiric princess has no more choice in the matter than Mahoro does on the issue of battling and vanquishing alien attackers. Like Mahoro, moreover, Miyu is painfully aware of the age-related gulf that separates her from humans. For example, when a classmate with an unhealthy appetite for the esoteric discovers the princess’s true identity and begs her to transform him into a creature of her kind, Miyu’s response unequivocally shows that she does not regard her fate as a blessing.
Additionally, when the schoolgirls who insist on befriending Miyu despite her reclusive attitude draw her into their innocent merry-go-round of blatantly girlish pursuits, she appears—and indeed wants to—play along but remains all the while aware of her irreducible alterity and of the prospective grief to which she makes herself vulnerable by participating in human activities. At the same time, although both Mahoromatic and Vampire Princess Miyu present angst-ridden situations and often intensely dynamic action, their pathos characteristically emanates from a subdued sense of melancholy—distinctively Japanese in flavor—and an unnervingly sustained, yet subtly modulated, evocation of the two heroines’ bond to their respective destinies.
Furthermore, in both shows, considerable dramatic impact derives from the central characters’ ageless status. In Mahoromatic, the protagonist is essentially designed as a construct unaffected by the passage of time as long as it is functional, and to simply cease to operate once its power has run out. Mahoro’s programmed inability to grow old is ineluctably coterminous with her lack of a long-term future. Gainax’s oeuvre exhibits an inveterate fascination with the dream of eternal youth (encapsulated by the “Peter Pan Syndrome” alluded to in Chapter 3 and to be revisited in Chapter 11). However, it concurrently intimates that exemption from ageing is not an unproblematic gift for it may also entail the prospect of premature termination. Vampire Princess Miyu provides a complementary perspective on the issue by overtly presenting endless adolescence as a burden. Insofar as she cannot either age or die, Miyu is plagued by what could—by oblique analogy—be described as the “Vampire Complex”: a condition wherein agelessness is not synonymous with the absence of a practicable future but a condemnation to a forever deferred tomorrow.
The age theme is also pivotal to another recent Gainax production, the TV series Petite Princess Yucie (dir. Masahiko Otsuka, 2002–2003). A seventeen-year-old girl who looks as though she were barely ten, the heroine of this classic shoujo anime labors under a curse that impedes her physical development. While Mahoromatic contains elliptical references to magical fantasy, yet remains grounded in a contemporary urban environment throughout the majority of the action, Petite Princess Yucie indulges wholeheartedly in fairy tale. Its recurring symbolism and iconography—a multiturreted castle, dragons, gems and passionately mediaeval townscapes—fully attest to this graphic preference. Charmingly scatterbrained and prone to outbreaks of zany romantic lunacy, Yucie is nonetheless a character not to be taken with total levity. Otsuka’s show indeed reverberates with Gunbuster’s ethical message in its emphasis on the protagonist’s intrepid efforts to become the “Platinum Princess” through exacting training at the “Princess Academy,” where ruthless competitors for the position abound, and reconstitute the “Eternal Tiara” whose fragments are scattered throughout the Human, Demon, Heaven, Spirit, and Fairy worlds. The jeweled headdress, according to legend, is capable of fulfilling any wish and would therefore enable Yucie to grow into a proper woman.
The character of Yucie brings to mind Gunbuster’s Noriko (while also adumbrating Gunbuster 2’s Nono) in her unflinching determination to succeed against seemingly impervious obstacles. This does not entail, of course, that she initially harbors the self-assuredness necessary to accomplish her quest any more than either Noriko or Nono does. This is borne out by the closing sequence of Episode 1, “A New Platinum Princess Candidate.” In this foundational portion of the story, Queen Ercell (principal of the Princess Academy as well as appointed keeper of the Eternal Tiara) states that the quality Yucie must foster in order to embark on her trial is “confidence,” and the girl concedes that she has not yet developed this strength. She adamantly adds, however, that she is determined to try to do her best. Petite Princess Yucie is also redolent of Gunbuster in the scenes dramatizing the heroine’s cruel bullying at the hands of coetaneous girls scornful of her diminutive size and doll-like countenance.
Petite Princess Yucie recalls FLCL in its suggestion that no blessings automatically accrue to the state of “being a kid”—or being regarded as one for that matter. Concurrently, Otsuka’s series anticipates This Ugly Yet Beautiful World in its deployment of supernatural imagery, particularly in the early sequence displaying the discovery of the baby Yucie in a forest amidst a halo of magical light. Petite Princess Yucie also foreshadows the later series in its dramatic treatment of psychological and emotional tensions that may seem incongruous with the story’s fairy-tale dimension, yet gain poignancy precisely from their unexpected emergence within an ostensibly uncomplicated context.
Replicating a stylistic tendency to be found in virtually all of Gainax’s animations, Petite Princess Yucie opens on a sunny and chirpy note, yet its tone progressively darkens to verge on tragic intensity in the climactic episodes. In these installments, it transpires that the heroine’s achievement of her goal comes with a steep price, namely, the erasure of all the other competitors in the tournament, who have become Yucie’s loyal friends in the course of her adventures. Should the candidate chosen by the Eternal Tiara to become the Platinum Princess reject the appointment, her world will be annihilated. The protagonist is initially protected from this sinister truth as the judge of the Magic World compassionately agrees to obliterate her memories of her erstwhile companions. However, these gradually begin to resurface in the form of a haunting sense of loss causing Yucie to feel that a very vital part of her is missing but utterly unable to pinpoint its significance. By and by, ghostly apparitions of the vanished girls also begin to punctuate the dusky streets. Eventually, Yucie pulls off the ultimate magical feat—though, it should be stressed, relying no more on magic per se than on sheer human guts—and brings the missing girls back. In spite of its fairy-tale ending, the sadness and daunting feeling of bereavement affecting the portion of the story in which Yucie is at her most miserable exactly when she ought to feel triumphant leaves lasting imprints in the viewer’s memory.
Mahoromatic’s sci-fi dimension and Petite Princess Yucie’s engagement with the domain of legend come together in The Melody of Oblivion, a 24-episode series directed by Hiroshi Nishikiori and originally broadcast in 2004, helmed by J. C. Staff with Gainax’s contribution in the areas of planning and production. (The series, incidentally, also bears affinities with Evangelion in the handling of mythological motifs, and with This Ugly Yet Beautiful World in the deployment of cosmic imagery.) The story, set in the twenty-first century, proceeds from the premise that in the previous century, humans were involved in a momentous conflict with entities known simply as “Monsters,” which resulted in their total subjugation to that breed. However, even though the Monsters dominate the Earth, they keep hidden from the public, thriving on a Matrix-like system that virtually effaces their existence.
The only people who are still aware of the rulers’ presence and endeavor to vanquish them so as to restore humanity to its pristine liberty are the “Warriors of Melos.” Allied to these valiant fighters’ ability to perceive and combat the Monsters is their capacity to see and hear a phantom girl known as the “Melody of Oblivion” (“Boukyaku no Senritsu”): the spiritual force whose release would conclusively free the world. The protagonist, an ordinary teenager named Bocca, unexpectedly discovers his potential as a Warrior when, in witnessing a duel between a Melos and a Monster, he unexpectedly senses the melody. He thereby resolves to seek out and release the occluded Boukyaku no Senritsu at all costs, which draws him into a whirl of adventures involving legion demons and their agents, as well as new friends and companions.
As noted, Mahoro reveals considerable psychological complexity in spite of her surface association with the proverbially unponderous shoujo, moe and maid typologies. Yucie, likewise, discloses levels of affective richness one would not habitually expect of a standard fairy-tale heroine. Bocca harks back to both of those characters insofar as his ostensibly uncomplicated personality actually belies somber involutions. Assessing Bocca’s attitude to life, producer Hiroki Sato has indeed stressed the importance of looking past appearances. Gainax’s strength, it is intimated, does not merely lie with a flexible approach to generic classifications (although, as insistently observed in the present chapter as in previous ones, this is undoubtedly one of the studio’s most distinctive attributes). In fact, it also resides with a no less supple take on the core elements of its characters’ makeup. For instance, neither determination nor self-doubt, neither maturity nor infantilism, are uniformly portrayed. The same basic proclivity may actually lead to radically divergent manifestations. “Bocca,” Sato states, “lives his life according to his own principles, which makes him less a child than Shinji. But that can be a sign of childishness, too!” (Interview in “Gainax turns 20!” p. 39). Furthermore, Melody copiously documents Gainax’s penchant for intertextuality in that it draws inspiration from an astounding range of repertoires, from Zen Archery to the samurai code of Bushido, from Greek mythology to the Bible (and especially the Book of Revelations), from Satanic worship to the Chinese Zodiac.
Even though Mahoromatic is not, by any stretch of the imagination, Gainax’s most acclaimed or most spectacular production, it does function effectively as something of a compendium of recurring generic and formal motifs characteristic of the studio’s entire output. On one level, it echoes early works such as Honneamise and Gunbuster in its elaboration of a sophisticated sci-fi yarn and the latter, specifically, in its emphasis on female bravery. On another, it harks back to Nadia in dramatizing the vicissitudes of a heroine torn between a murky past and a potentially baleful future. At the same time, Mahoromatic joins forces with Otaku no Video by offering a critical approach to some of the more overtly formulaic facets of anime, especially in the areas of mecha and Magical-Girl entertainment. Mahoromatic’s exploration of a twisted romance, often by recourse to bold pictorial and calligraphic gestures, concomitantly brings it close to the visual universe of His and Her Circumstances, while its choreographing of sensational action sequences out of quiet situations relates it to FLCL. Additionally, Yamaga’s series looks forward to This Ugly Yet Beautiful World in its deconstruction of moe, and to both the latter and Gunbuster 2 in its enthroning as pivotal agents of apparently cute and acquiescent but intrinsically indomitable female protagonists.
In the elaboration of these multifarious elements, Gainax’s iconographic preferences assiduously assert themselves. Particularly commendable, in this regard, are the characters’ soft and realistic facial expressions and the punctiliously depicted natural and urban backgrounds. As far as the background art is specifically concerned, one of its most striking aspects is the deft alternation of the blue-green and red-orange ends of the spectrum to evoke clear dramatic contrasts. By recourse to this chromatic strategy, the animation sets up a dialectical tension between two contrasting sorts of scenarios: present-day scenes, generally characterized by an uplifting sense of airiness and spaciousness, and combat-centered flashbacks l.blighted by a sepulchral atmosphere, smoke-saturated gloom and doomful flares. It is also notable that the crisp and neat artwork devoted to the representation of the characters and settings is complemented throughout by highly detailed and studiously scaled mechanical designs for the sci-fi props, including both weapons of relatively modest dimensions (by anime standards, that is) and mammoth spaceships and robotic aliens. Through a subtle use of shading, especially in the rendition of light reflections and refractions, the peculiar attributes of diverse textures and materials are enabled to proclaim themselves to a palpable degree, and hence rise to the status of animated characters no less memorable than the human agents themselves.