Ranked #3839

Maken-Ki!

Alright so I'll try to keep from bashing this anime as much as some of the other reviews have done. It may be hard to do, but I'll give it a shot.

Maken-Ki is not quite the standard harem ecchi show. It kind of wavers between having great potential to trying to blow it's whole load on fanservice and saying "screw the plot." In the end it rather tends to lean toward the latter, which is a shame for the potential it had early on.

Story: Surprising to see ecchi anime with a good plot. Takeru is your usual perverted kid that wants to spend his days around beautiful girls. So he enters a high school that has been converted to coed from and all girls school. All well and good until he learns that this is a special school where the students control elements and use Maken, weapons that use their element, to fight battles. Add to that the usual harem surrounding Takeru almost immediately upon entering the school, and you have what seems to be the beginning of an interesting plot, even if it would likely be done in a cliche haremesque way as they all tend to be.

The whole idea behind the story is pretty interesting, but the directors/producers seemed too interested in providing awkward fanservice with horrible timing rather than developing what could have been a good story with occasional flashes of ecchiness. I'll be a bit generous and give the story a 5 for its potential. Maybe there will be a second season, but as bad as this one was I doubt it.

Art: The art was OK I guess. The girls had stupidly large breasts. This would make more of a turn off for me if I wasn't just plain used to it from this genre. I mean really if you watch enough ecchi anime you have to stop caring about breast size and just try to enjoy other parts of the show (unless of course you happen to like overly large boobs on skinny girls that just defies gravity). Otherwise, the character designs were alright, decent amount of detail for most of the characters, though strangely not as much detail for most of the main cast. However, the art style wasn't really my kind of style. The animation was poor at times. The fighting was kinda sketchy and used an annoying amount of unnecessary fanservice scenes. I may be generous giving this a 4.

Sound: Um...I think there was sound. Actually both the OP/ED seemed fairly well done. The main characters seemed to have decent voice actors, although Himigami and the Akaza kinda got on my nerves. Some of the side characters (and those who seemed to have big roles to play later on but never did) had mediocre to poor actors. So I'll give this a solid 7.

Characters: Well, stereotypical harem characters. Completely unoriginal and completely undeveloped. The characters came into the show and ended the show exactly the same. I'm giving it a 3.

Enjoyment: I enjoyed the first 3-4 episodes. Then I started to realize that the plot hadn't started to move, and that's a bit of a problem for a 12 episode show. I was expecting it to be packed into a few episodes a la Demon King Daimao (which I felt could've been 40 episodes with the plot it had, mostly squeezed into the last 4 of 12 episodes). But no such luck. In fact, the story starts to move in the last few minutes of episode 11, continues into 12, and then just kinda sputters out.

To be honest, watching this type of show before, I also expected the fanservice to be tuned down severely and the story to begin to flourish. But whoever wrote the checks here obviously thought that was unnecessary and instead opted to continue the ecchiness at the expense of the plot. Because of all of this, the show ended up being horrible and pointless fanservice with lost potential. And because the director chose this rout, he also probably ruined a chance at another season.

A final note, waaaaay too much censorship going on. Certain things that were censored must have been a lot more detailed than in most anime, since there were white splashes in strange areas that are usually shown in most anime that I've seen. It would probably be slightly more enjoyable without those censors, but I wont have the patience to re-watch it when that comes out, so whatever. In the end I give enjoyment a 4 for effort. And a poor one at that.

Overall I will be grading this as lost potential. The story was a nice one, and I've seen ecchi shows done the right way where at first there is a fanservice overload that slowly peters out as the "plot" thickens. This was more like watching a porno. And a censored one at that. And since porn has no and needs no plot, I have to think that this is almost more a tame hentai rather than an ecchi anime. Horrible direction/production took a promising ecchi anime and turned it into a poorly done hentai. My final score is a 5. And that is only because of the potential it showed. read more

Maken-ki is badly done. I am not saying that it is badly done because it is of the harem and/or ecchi genre, because I've seen stuff for either genre, some of which encompasses both.

Problem one: What could have been a great storyline even with the harem/ecchi moments is wasted by tedious and copious amounts of stuff that is not really related to the plot. While a person may make the argument that the stuff not needed for the plot line is there for fan service, Anime such as “Freezing” show that you can not only have plenty of fan service during the main plot line, but you can have filler fan service that runs smoothly with the main story line.

Problem two: The art is horrible. The character designs leave a lot to be desired. Minor characters seem to get more detail put into them, then the main three characters, which consist of the main lead, the child hood friend and the fiance. The other characters have much more realistic features, minus the unrealistic bust sizes, but that is to be expected from this genre.

Problem three: The action sequences are unrealistic. There are way to many forced panty scenes, rather then panty and ecchi scenes that came naturally to the action. The movements of the characters are stiff, again... because of the aforementioned reason. I've seen stuff in this genre that is far better executed, which I think says something if one really thinks about it.

Problem four: The characters are flat, cardboard cutouts. They have absolutely no personality beyond what they are initially given, and the only character development is the fact that the main character comes to have some sort of realization that he has some sort of feelings for his childhood friend and vice versa, and this is minimal. Anyone who knows the Twilight sage will know how that results in Mary Sues and Gary Stus.

Problem five: Which brings me to the fifth problem. The main character is a Gary Stu. First off, his klutziness is not a flaw, as it only crops up to conveniently get him into perverted situations. He actually proves quite a few times that he isn't actually klutzy. Second, his perverseness isn't a flaw either, because it only serves to get him fanserveced slapped, and then the girls forget about it, UNLIKE another pervert that he runs around with.

There are more problems, but these are five rather big ones. read more