When it comes to story and plot, Maken-Ki!'s is nearly nonexistent. Like every pointless fanservice show, it is in a school setting and we have a wide array of characters ranging in bust sizes, hair colors, and personalities. All of which seem to have come out of a cookie cutter and have little to no characterization. There are also attempts of describing something that is related to elements and fighting styles yet it is never really explained nor does it really matter throughout the show since the majority of the show is focused around putting the girls in situations where they are exposed and the audience sees a nice light beam covering what might be a pantyshot. However, I am not sure due to the fact that Tien's Solar Flares blinded me. While this show does lack in plot, it certainly makes up for it in PLOT. The entire show focuses on breasts and panty shots and makes sure to put them into every scene. I do know that this is also to be expected and it is a mainstay in these types of shows, but when some of them can come out half decent there's not really much of an excuse. Just earlier this year, Freezing was aired which featured at least some sort of main idea while being a low brow fanservice show and ended up being somewhat decent. I did not expect much from this show story wise, but I did not expect something this little out of it. We had various conflicts that made little to no sense and characters that were introduced randomly and pointlessly to move along some sort of plot regarding a school that has students with magic element powers that fight. The story to this show is absolutely atrocious and nearly nonexistent. It is even worse than what you would expect from this type of show.
The art and sound of Maken-Ki! is unremarkable. Takeda Hiromitsu's designs were altered quite a bit for the anime and due to the nature of the show and the TV stations it was airing on, more than half of it was censored. Other than the having half of the show being covered in either white light beams or fog, the rest of the art is relatively poor. The backgrounds are plain and simple and there are some various character models which are absolutely ridiculous as well. It also features many vibrant colors which don't necessarily help it along. The character designs are typical of a fanservice show since many of the female characters in it have breasts that are larger than their heads but none of them really stood out for me. It is also a shame since fanservice shows can feature relatively interesting art, Samurai Girls which aired last year had interesting character design which was further accented by creative censorship that featured ink blots on the screen. Maken-Ki! Takes a step back towards the generic side by having unremarkable character designs in the anime form and features the dreaded light ray censorship that nobody likes. Maybe I'll take a look at the Blu Rays when they come out but my overall opinion on the art is poor. As for the music, my opinion does not differ. It had a generic OP, generic ED, and the OST was also unremarkable and easily forgotten. The voice actors did a decent job on their roles but it was also nothing special which just makes the show seem even more subpar, even for this genre.
When it comes to characters, we have our usual ones for the most part. We have our busty childhood friend, a tsundere flat chested girl with twin tails, and a delicious brown girl. Where this show differs from many of these other shows is the main character. Most of these shows feature a generic and wimpy self insert main character. But our bespectacled and perverted orange haired main character in this show takes it a step further and somehow comes off as being even worse than usual. On top of being a pervert and a pathetic coward, he puts on a righteous facade where he claims that women shouldn't fight and then ends up getting himself beat up by the various opponents that occur in the show. He must have taken a lesson from everyone's favorite dense orange haired main character from Fate/Stay Night. Our main character also has some sort of special ability which of course makes him overpowered when the time comes as well which is just another typical character trait in this type of show. The cast of girls in the show are generic and not particularly notable in any way. They are just there to get into embarrassing situations where they are exposed for the audience to see their goods. The characters in this show are not particularly terrible, other than the main character of course so I can't really complain that much about it. It's just that the main character really drags down the rest of it in this aspect of the show.
I definitely did not enjoy Maken-Ki!. It had a few moments that were funny because of how over the top they were, but the majority of it was pretty terrible. Terrible even for a fanservice show. There's not really much to praise about this show and I could go on and on regarding its flaws. I know that these fanservice shows are relatively popular (especially since they are consistently made and purposely censored so that people buy the Blu Rays), but Maken-Ki! is not one of the better ones. I would not recommend watching this show even if you do enjoy watching pointless fanservice shows. This one is certainly not one of the worthwhile ones. Some might argue that it's the spiritual successor to Fate/Stay Night due to our dopey main character who wants to fight in place of trained women fighters. But, character and VA jokes aside, we have the true successor being translated and will be done sometime in the next 25 years which everyone can look forward to. I do not think Maken-Ki! was worthwhile and I must say that overall this show gets a 2/10 which correlates to “Horrible” on the scale that MAL uses. What makes this even more depressing is that it was licensed by Funimation for release in the United States. I'm guessing it will probably sell well due to the amount of PLOT and that's a shame since it doesn't deserve that, but that's just how these things work out. That being said, Maken-Ki! is definitely not a buy. I would not recommend watching this show or buying this show, there are many other superior options out there for your wacky fanservice and harem antics.
