Maken-Ki!

Maken-Ki! is a great example of 'Don't judged a book by its cover.'

Harem type animes are usually all the same and that pretty much drives people to stay away from any new ones that air. I personally feel the same way, though when a friend who does not like anime recommended Maken-Ki! to me I thought I should check it out.

Lets get down to the review starting with the basics.
Maken-Ki! has an amazing art style, and the voice actors were chosen to fit there rolls perfectly.
However thats all I can really appreciate about the anime. Big boobs, perverted teenage boys, 4+ girls fighting over ... a less than average male who has a jealous friend who does not get any action, your typical Harem anime. I'm afraid that when it comes down to originality Maken-Ki! falls a bit into the shallow end of the kiddy pool. Though not all is grim, they make up for being unoriginal by adding a cluster of strange and random events that help build the story.

Maken-Ki! Takes place in a high school that has just changed over to coed. Takeru Ohyama transfers to this school with nothing but the thought of boobs and panties in mind so he has no idea what he is about to walk into. The school Ohyama joins is a special school where unique students hold mysterious and unique powers known as 'Maken' and they use that power to duel other Maken users over pointless things like who will have to be on cleaning duty. Takeru Ohyama joins the school's enforcing club, 'Maken-Ki' after being recommended to it by his childhood friend. Its the duty of Maken-Ki's members to stop unofficial fights around campus, because Ohyama does not know how to use Maken he gets himself into some quite interesting situations.

Maken-Ki!, like other harm animes is about 70% fan service, 20% story, and 10% character development. The anime really falls short on wow factor other than boobs defying the laws of physics. Personally I did not walk into Maken-Ki! with high expectations but the anime really was not that bad, because its so short it felt like I was able to sit through it while still enjoying myself at the same time. If someone asked me if Its worth watching I would say "Yeah, give it a shot." With a decent story, outstanding art, good character development and a fair enjoyment level I give Maken-Ki! a 7 out of 10

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.

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.