Can the show recover after a few episodes worth of stumbles?
What They Say:
Yamato gets assaulted by Miyako, as usual, but this time Yamato also runs into someone unexpected in the bath. Yamato engages in fast talking to try to escape safely. Later, he has a heart-to-heart with Doggy.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
While Majikoi Oh! started off with a big, great action sequence that was light on characters since it just wanted to introduce us to them, it faltered with the second episode by doing absolutely nothing related to the first and going to standard harem mode with so many girls after one guy in different forms. It also turned into a big fanservice oriented show, which I admittedly enjoy, but it uses a whole lot of cute and colorful things in order to cover up the fanservice. Which is better than whiting things out entirely or using copious amounts of fog. And it adds a level of comedy to the fanservice that wouldn’t exist without it. Yet I will admit that I want to see the show without the cute censoring it applies since I’m curious as to how it would feel without it.
And it really does run with the fanservice here, starting off with a confrontation of sorts between Yamato and Miyako in the bath as she torments him a bit as he tries to not get into a worse situation with her there. But where it really decides it wants to deal with fanservice is that it dedicates nearly the first half to an encounter between him and Christiane in the same bath, where she was changing out of everything and he walked in wearing very little himself. Catching her naked, and wanting to see more, he goes into this huge spiel about how Western morals have infected their lives too much when it comes to nudity and is a very big play to try and get her naked. Well, not naked because she already is, but rather to get her to show him everything. She doesn’t do it intentionally but ends up showing him a lot with the beat down she gives him but it’s the deal that she tries to make in extricating herself from the situation, understanding that no matter what she does he’ll end up seeing something.
The second half largely has the cast with their clothes on as they go through their training and other school related activities, which lets us get to know the characters a bit more. Yamato is rather amusing with his bluntness, as he compares one girls chest to another by saying one is cantaloupes while the other is basically strawberries. Considering his morality play before, it’s amusing to see him going down the comparative route since it’s unfriendly from a different direction. There are some cute moments with it as it helps to expand the cast a little bit with who they are, but more so when it comes to Yamato as it makes it clear that he’s a pretty blunt guy who says what he thinks, cruel or not, though he may have an ulterior motive with it.
In Summary:
The series continues to seem to not have a point beyond lots of fanservice and sexuality being expressed, which is perfectly fine. But it feels like an odd direction to go after the first episode as it seems like it has little real relation to what came before, as that was hugely action oriented even if it was filled with lots of cute girls acting serious as they fought. Against my better judgment though, I rather enjoyed the first half with the way it dealt with Yamato’s plan to get Christiane to reveal herself more, naked though she may already have been, since it was an interesting angle to play. It also left me curious to see how it would play out without the censoring, whether it would make it less humorous and more serious or not. I’m still very unsure about what this show wants to be, but unlike the previous one this one actually made me laugh and enjoy it, even though I have to admit it feels like an utterly trashy piece of work.
Readers Rating: [ratings]
Grade: C+
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Dell 10.1 Netbook via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
