~{Story}~
Well, Mayoiga has a pretty good premise. The story starts off with a large cast of characters all in a bus that are on a journey to find a lost village that they’ve heard about. The group finds the village, but can’t find a way out. It’s a pretty cool premise for what seemed to be a horror series. Little did I know that there was no horror… or suspense… or thrills… or anything that is remotely enjoyable. Mayoiga turns into a mess fairly early, as it’s really hard to know what’s going on. I mean, the story is fairly straightforward, but it’s just so absurd that you can’t comprehend its stupidity. Characters have the logic of a two-year old and supernatural aspect of the series becomes so abysmal that it’s hard not to be irritated by this series. That being said, the series did have potential. The premise was interesting enough, and maybe if they lore of the village was done well, and maybe if the backstories were alright, it wouldn’t have been so bad. And talking about the backstories, there are some in the series, and they are so bad and so atrocious that it’s hard not to laugh when something really “tragic” is happening. I never thought that I would laugh at traumatized characters, but some of them are traumatized by the most stupid things. By the end of the series, I just wanted to see a massacre and see all the characters dead. At least the series would become more interesting. But the ending is so anticlimactic and so disappointing, that it only made the series look worse.
Story: 1.5/10
~{Presentation}~
Probably the worst thing about Mayoiga is that it doesn’t do what you would’ve wanted it to do. One would expect the series to be suspenseful and frightening, or at least try to do so. Instead the only entertainment found in the series is its unintentional comedy. The storyline and the characters are so washed out and ridiculous that it’s really hard to take things seriously. The tone is never really stable, with the reason being that nothing gets completely accomplished. The atmosphere feels lacking, the characters don’t react properly to certain situations, and there’s not much to the plot. Therefore, the ominous tone they were trying to create was never created at all. And the pacing of the series didn’t help either. The plot doesn’t really go anywhere till the very end, and by the time it actually moves, you couldn’t care less about it. But that’s not the worst part of Mayoiga.
Presentation: 1/10
~{Character}~
The worst part of this series is its characters. My god, they’re so, so stupid and dumbed-down. They can make the most stupid choices for the most stupid reasons. In the unintentional comedy is what makes this series enjoyable, it’s the characters that take the enjoyment away from this series. Mayoiga features a large cast of characters, a really large cast. It was compared to Baccano and Durarara before it started, due to a large number of people on its key visual. Some worried that not all characters will be properly developed or will be fully explored. The problem is that none of the characters get any development at all. Instead they all get negative development (is that even a term) as they only become more and more unlikable and they were better off the way they were at the beginning of this series. Our protagonist, Mitsumune is such a by-the-book protagonist. He’s that nice and kind main character who wants the best of everyone. He lacks the intelligence of choosing sides and he lacks the courage to stop other people from picking on him. Though his backstory isn’t too bad, especially when compared to the other characters. Since it’ll be inefficient of me of listing all of the characters in the series and explaining what’s wrong with them, I’ll summarize them all by one phrase: they’re stupid, irritating, lack common logic and makes choices that are cringe-worthy. Also, screw Love-pon…
Character: 0.5/10
~{Art}~,
The art in Mayoiga is fairly neat and clean, but nothing too special. The backgrounds are strictly okay and the detailing is good enough. The use of lighting in the series is fairly good as the night scenes look quite good. Most of the series does take place in the dark. Though the character designs in the series is mediocre to say the least. They look clean and neat, but they lack key features in their designs that can make them memorable. The characters look simplistic in design. Although that may not necessarily be a bad thing, but it’s just that the characters a so zero-dimensional (not even one) that at least the character designs could have done something.to make the characters feel something more. And also, some of the characters look similar to one another. But luckily the characters never change their clothes so it’s not too bad in differentiating them.
Art: 6/10
~{Animation}~
Mayoiga’s animation quality is fairly good for the most part. It’s quite fluid and clean and there’s not many moments when the studio cut corners. The production values are quite high for this series and the studio did a good job in making the series look good. That being said, the CGI used in some moments of the series is quite awful. CGI is normally used more “monster-looking” things and it doesn’t look good. They’re supposed to look hideous by its design, not by its CGI. The CGI looked messy and didn’t properly merge with the hand drawn work in the series. Other than that, the animations in the series stays fairly consistent.
Animation: 5/10
~{Voice Acting}~
The voice acting in Mayoiga is quite average as nothing really stands out from this series. Most of the seiyuu feel like they’re doing what they’re told to do and none of them go beyond the script. Though I can’t really blame them for not doing more than what the script tells them to do, because it’s hard to be enthusiastic while working on Mayoiga. But hey, at least they managed to make follow the script… by making the characters as irritating as possible. The cast of seiyuu is pretty unknown as I haven’t heard about many of them until I watched this series. But it’s not like Mayoiga will boost their career. Although, Love-pon’s seiyuu did a fairly decent job in making her character irritating as hell (I’ll give her props for that).
Voice Acting: 4/10
~{Music}~
The music of Mayoiga is a mixed bag, as the OP and ED manages to be fairly good, but the background music is lacking in every way. The OP, “Gensou Drive” is pretty good and catchy too. The vocals are really well done, though the music is average. The ED, “Ketsuro” is probably better than the OP as the vocals and the music managed to grab my attention. At least I had something to look forward to whenever I watched an episode of Mayoiga. The backgrounf music on the other hand isn’t very good. For a horror/mystery, the music plays a key factor in creating thrills and frills. When to add music and when to keep it silent is a key factor for these genres. Unfortunately, Mayoiga lacks these skill, but then again, was the anime a horror-mystery to begin with?
Music: 5/10
~{Enjoyment}~
Well, I can’t say that I completely hated Mayoiga. There is some entertainment to be found in this mess. The unintentional comedy, at times, can really make you laugh. The situations the characters go through are so absurd and so abysmal that you can’t help but laugh at their tragedy. However, there moments where the series just feels plain irritating, particularly because of its characters. Watching them making stupid decisions for stupid reasons gets irritating fast, and it makes the series hard to watch at times. And the fact that the series lacked real suspense and horror made this anime a grind to watch. Maybe it would’ve been more enjoyable if the entire cast died in a massacre. That would’ve been great actually!
Enjoyment: 2/10
In the end, Mayoiga is recommended to the strongest masochists who can stand the stupidity of this anime. The characters are so irritating and so dumb, that it’s painful to see them interact with one another. And their backstories feel like big jokes. It’s hard to sympathize with any of the characters, and that ruins the purpose of this series. Don’t go into this thinking that you’ll get a horror or a suspense anime, because you will no. You won’t get anything that is remotely close to that. The anime was disappointing enough for me to put this studio in my “beware-of-their-work” list (and I’m scared to see how Handa-kun turns out to be). Maybe Mayoiga can turn into a meme so at least it would have a reason for its existence.
+ Production values are good enough.
- Some of the most poorly written and irritating characters you’ll ever see.
- Never feels like a mystery or a horror, but rather creates unintentional comedy.
- Premise is wasted by an uninteresting plot and poor execution.
- Haphazard pacing and slow plot progression only makes it worse.
- Ending feels anticlimactic and underwhelming.
Overall: 3.1/10
