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.

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Maken-Ki! is just another one of the ever occurring fanservice shows that pops up every season. They are a mainstay in anime and they range from being decent shows to being absolutely terrible shows. Sadly, Maken-Ki! is on the “terrible” side of the scale. That being said, I sometimes enjoy watching these shows since they can be fun and entertaining when they are done right. However, I did not have fun watching Maken-Ki!. It is also important to note, the director of this show is not known for his great shows. He directed such masterpieces as MD Geist and Genocyber to name a few. His previous works made me want to watch this show to see how terrible it was, and I was not disappointed in that aspect.

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.

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Story 3/10
This story takes place at a school once exclusively for girls —aka pussy high— tenbi. The main character, Mr.Ohyama Takeru, goes to this school primarily because he’s looking for sex and also because he’s too retarded to hire a hooker. Actually, I lied. He doesn’t try to screw any of these girls. He just plays pervert and stares at their censored panties. Here my friends, we have the first problem of an ecchi series. Ecchi series always tend to confuse me. I can’t tell if we’re supposed to masturbate furiously while watching them, or just stare at them with a huge boulder—rock solid geodude— in our pants. Unlike the casual anime that uses fanservice here and there, ecchi uses things like this everywhere. This show is even more sexually frustrating because they arbitrarily decide to flashlight the panties —as if looking at a girl’s panties is the biggest crime a man can commit—(If that’s the case I’m guilty as charged.) As a result, while they were using moves like maken lock, maken this, maken that, I kept waiting for maken sex—only to be sorely and sexually disappointed—. My balls were inert, eagerly waiting for the next move, literally en passant. Had they moved a little bit further, I might have even been able to ejaculate. But instead, I had to sexually satisfy myself with Hentai. And that’s probably what you’ll do when you watch this show. You’ll watch a bit of it, then you’ll go on to your favorite hentai and fap fap fap. There’s no beating around the bush, when one of the main aspects of a show is crotch shots, strip teasing and boob flashes you know what you’re supposed to do. Since we pretty much laid the framework for the entire show’s plot, we might as well talk about the bullshit last minute edits they put into this show so it could at least resemble a storyline. Don’t worry shit starts flying right from episode 1. Where they have sort of street fighter competition to see who can survive one on one in the ring with one extremely bodacious babe —le gasp—. Supposedly, the name of the show comes from these weapons they use, these maken. Some maken are real, and are part of the original maken created by kami-sama, others were replicated by Naruto Sensei. STOP! That’s all you need to know. The rest of this show makes absolutely no fucking sense. It won’t matter which episode you watch in this one, it’s all of bunch of randomly generated events. Bottom line, story = blue balls;

Characters 5/10

Ah the characters, the best part of this show. Or as I like to say, save the worst for last. But since this is only the first sentence in my extremely long paragraph that had to be split in two, we definitely have more horse manure to plow through. Let’s start off with our main character, ladies man and Mr. charisma, Ohyama Takeru. Literally this guy just oozes charm. He has almost all the main female characters in the palm of his grubby fingers right from the first episode. Let’s do a recap of the playboy’s debut performance. He starts off school with his hot childhood friend personally tending to him —she just can’t help but falling in love with his welcome to NHK habits—. Then at school he magnificently gropes and kisses this blonde haired tsundere. Finally, before we even get to lunch, he successfully has a girl say she’s his fiancée. I don’t about you, but did you guys count all of that? That’s three bitches, not one, not two but three of them!!! And what do they see in this 1940s cereal box —BlandOs—, megane motherfucker. I’ll never know. And what does our boy Casanova do? He befriends them. That’s right you all read that right. He not only knows all three of them but he also ends up roomating them. Do my eyes fucking deceive me? You expect me to believe this guy lives with 3 hot chicks and not once ever pulls out the Trojan? What is he sterile? This noble hentai crap is ridiculous, absurd and asinine (Three in fucking one).

All right, since we’re running out of time and space, let’s use the magic powers of fast forward to blaze through the bitches —if I might say myself—. First off we have blonde haired bitch named (brace for it) Himegami. Her name means beeping princess god. Can you beliiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeve this? She’s NOT (lies) your average tsundere; pretends to hate main character, blah, blah, blah. Read my previous reviews to get a good idea on how I shake these types of bitches down. What you need to know about her is that she pretty much changes from tsundere to servant in the course of one episode. Also she’s into incest —which is quite common in this show—. All right, next bitch, Kushihachi Imahoe. Our main characters so-called fiancée, she’ll do anything to bear our main character’s children. Other than that, she’s pretty damn negligible. Then we have our main character’s childhood friend, commonly referred to as Haru nee (Sister Haru). Why he calls this girl who is a non-relative, didn’t live together during childhood and is only one year older than him sister… I’ll never know. Well, you know she’s the basic childhood friend archetype. She loves the main character but is too awkward to say it, so instead decides to beat on him whenever he gets close to another girl. In other words, she’s a cockblocker. She constantly cockblocks the main character but at the same time never offers him her goods. There’s more characters like these chicks from this group named venus —that obviously need some penus—, bishounen teacher, naruto sensei (dattebayo!), kurigasa hardcore should’ve been in another show kai, his love interest faux action girl Azuki, our main characters best friend —who is essentially an unluckier and more realistic version of him but with a cooler sounding name— KENGO and finally the only ones that even partially resemble villains, our last incest couple. These two are obviously playing the game for the whole family, no doubt in my mind. All I can say is, if you’re into that stuff fap but do it silently. There are a bunch of random characters but yea I should have given you a good idea on this debacle of a character list.

Enjoyment 3/10

I couldn’t even properly enjoy this show. Every time I tried —and kami know’s I tried— this show got even worse. There were just so many garbage episodes. Hot springs, dates, bdsm torture—hot—, hostess cafe and a ton of other random crap, that whenever I tried to get into the mood, the show was just too out there for me to attach myself to it vaginally —there just wasn’t enough for me to stick my dick into—. It just doesn’t know what the fuck it’s doing; they couldn’t even get this show done right even if they had a proper anime budget of at least 26 episodes. Compared to this, similar shows like ikkitousen and tenjho tenge look like elaborate works of art and dare I effin say it even a show like Angel Beats looks great by comparison. Not only were the last two episodes anti climatic as shit, the whole affair felt contrived. Like they just had to show oh here’s our main character whom we neglected most of the series but watch him kick ass cause he has like super powers and shit. What made this even worse, the fansubbed version I watched, had translation errors. In I believe, the 2nd last episode we are given a scene in the café where they discuss with the transvestite manager what the words O.B. means. The main character says Okama Bakemono literally homosexual monster but the translators, translated it to something like strange something. Yea that vague shit. How the fuck could you tell me you don’t know what okama Bakemono means and you’re translating anime?

Overall 4/10

The time is nearing where I disappear inexplicably like the main character’s mom. But enough of this shit really. Watch this show if you like having blue balls, poor storylines and censored panties. All I can say is this; if this show is exciting, get me the pills.

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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.

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