Mai-Otome Zwei

Title:Mai-Otome Zwei
My-Zhime Zwei
Overall:Rent
Keywords: , , , , , ,
Notables: Animation - SUNRISE
Music - KAJIURA Yuki
R1 License - Bandai (Defunct)
It has been half a year since the threat of the Harmonium was defeated and each Otome has gone to chase her respective dream. The Pearl Otome Irina has, with help from Yohko, recovered a technology that could resurrect Erstin, which she intends to use in order to salvage the lost time with her deceased friend. Unfortunately for her, the use of such technology is forbidden. Meanwhile, the Otome and the Aswad have joined forces for an attack on the headquarters of Schwarz.
(summary from AnimeNewsNetwork)

OVA, 4 episodes; Animation by Sunrise, licensed by Bandai Entertainment
[edit] The ↗Mai Hime franchise:

Mai Hime (original story): Mai Otome (spinoff/sequel, different setting):
Episode Details 
1
OverallArtAnimationCharacter Design MusicSeries StoryEpisode StoryReviewer
Rent 8 8 9 7 8 8 Dreamer [series:1402#2279]
Having thoroughly enjoyed Mai-Otome, I wanted to see this OVA set in hopes to get the same amount of goodness. I didn't exactly get all the goodness as I was hoping, but it did satisfy me.

Art, Animation and Character Design
Art was about the same as Mai-Otome..... that is, it was good and rich in color. Character designs were great as usual. I pretty much love all the characters and their physical various traits. Animation was pretty good too.

Music
The opening scene had a good soundtrack and quite a dramatic piece at that. Then it rolled into the opening credits... which I thought they did an excellent job of doing. As for the rest of the music, it wasn't too bad.

Series and Episode Story
It started off with a bang! All your favorite characters are back... if not for brief moments. However, even the brief moments made it fun. Although the plot and storyboard wasn't as complex and entertaining as Mai-Otome, it was still entertaining nevertheless.

Overall, it's a good watch if you enjoyed past series.

Last updated Tuesday, February 24 2009. Created Tuesday, February 24 2009.
Unevaluated Forbin [series:1402#1573]
Ummm Stretch, Mai and Mikoto were in Mai-Otome. They appeared later in the series.

The only one from Mai-Hime is Miyu. She is the original Miyu from Hime and it is hinted that many thousand of years have passed and Arika is the sole 'heir' to Alyssa.

Last updated Tuesday, December 12 2006. Created Tuesday, December 12 2006.
Unevaluated Stretch [series:1402#628]
I am confused... It seems that the casts of Mai-Otome and Mai-HiME have been merged for this show. Not just the characters who appeared in both series, that is--Mai, now a "Meistar", and Mikoto are both present. I was under the impression that My-HiME was taking place here on present-day earth, whereas Mai-Otome was on some other planet/parallel dimension/whatever. Maybe the beloved characters of HiME were judged too valuable to be lost for such a silly reason. The technology of this show is baffling; I was never able to make much sense of it during Otome, either. Nagi (my favorite character) is rotting in prison, but will clearly play a part in this new story. All-in-all, this OVA seems more serious than I remember Mai-Otome being, but less dramatic and angsty than I remember Mai-HiME--what's the deal?

Last updated Tuesday, December 12 2006. Created Tuesday, December 12 2006.
Rent 9 8 8 7 7 7 AstroNerdBoy [series:1402#436]

I enjoyed Mai-Otome enough that when a 4-episode OVA was announced, I knew I'd be watching it. While not bad, there's really nothing that good in this new adventure.

One of the nice things to see was that as this story took place a year after the TV series, Akira was aleady a powerful Otome serving Mashiro. When the Otome have to defend the world from being struck by a giant comet and something emerges from that destroyed comet, things seemed good. You have a mysterious force attacking the Otome and who's able to petrify them. So the mystery becomes, "What is this and how do we defeat it." However, the writers use the new being's petrification attacks as a way of removing Otome (after allowing them some screen time of course) to reduce the number of characters they have to worry about. Of course, there are still too many Otome, so most just get cameos.

Because there were so many characters, none get any real development. Nina gets a tiny bit of development as the writers put her through the paces so she can be reborn as it were. The other characters are the same as ever. Not only that, but we really don't get much in the way of understanding what has happened and why. That's because the writers appeared to just slap something together. They tried to make greater links with Mai-HiME with the appearance of "Childs" units and references to a weapon from the past, but that's it. There's no thought behind it other than, "Here's something to fight, now go fight."

Also, the series wasted a lot of time in episode 3, which was mostly a fanservice affair with a fair amount of nudity on top of many of the Otome in swimsuits. Nice to know that in a crisis, we got time to lounge around in swimsuits and get drunk.

Still, I was somewhat entertained by this. I'm guessing that it would have been a bit more enjoyable for me as a viewer if there hadn't been those 3-month periods between episode releases.

Bottom line: OK for a rent I guess. If you were a fan of the TV series, you'll want to at least get a look at things now. However, just don't expect a great deal in development or story.



Last updated Sunday, September 30 2007. Created Tuesday, December 05 2006.

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