KaminaKai

First off, please don't flame me as this is my first review. As a guy familiar with Mai HiME, I expected myself to have no trouble adapting to Mai Otome. However, the first impression I got for Mai Otome was total confusion. This is largely due to all sorts of new names (both terminologies and characters). In fact, it was the characters at first that made me put the show ON HOLD! (That was after watching the first 3 episodes). I had some very hard time liking the main protagonist Arika at first. Maybe I was trying too hard to compare her with Mai (from HiME),but eventually I grew to liked Arika mainly for her "stupidity" ^.^ Mai Otome introduces some debatable relationships among the main characters. Such as Sergay X Arika or Sergay X Nina (both of which are considered to be father X daughter relations). I believe it is such relationhips that make the anime distinctly different from others (HiME also made good use of Natsuki X Shizuru to capture fans attention). Since the anime is mainly about school girls saving the world, the creator thought that might be a bit dull, so they cleverly decided that adding some yuri content should keep the audience glued to the TV. I find them pretty good at it throughout most of the series (a great example would be episode 6). The animation improved slightly from HiME and the overall character designs are much, MUCH more artistic (Otome materializing the robes are always a pleasure to watch). Superb custome design, excellent choice of sound track, great character development, tag along with intense battles all make up for the lacking "emo" content that was evident in the latter part of HiME. A great "sequel" for a great series that still got more to come. Definitely a must watch for all otaku!

Master10K

For those of you who've seen Mai-HiME would notice the obvious similarities between the shows. Even with all the similarities Mai-Otome still has a lot of great original material to be different from Mai-HiME. Allow me to apologize in advance because I will be referring to Mai-HiME a lot. ^_^ This time around the show follows the story of another redhead, Arika and her dreams to become one of the greatest Otome. Against all the odds she luckily manages to enroll at Garderobe (the academy for Otome) bringing her one step loser to her dream. The story follows the same trend as in Mai-HiME; starting ofas a fully-fledged comedy with hilarious moments. This light-hearted anime is later turned into something much more serious as the story goes on a major plot-twist. This adds a good sense of drama, plenty of action and character development. Speaking of the characters, the main protagonist was just like Mai from Mai-HiME. Arika is an optimistic redhead, which dreams of becoming an Otome but is later confused by the whole thing. They both have the same little annoying tendencies but if you liked one of them you'll surely like the other. There are a lot of characters that were taken from Mai-HiME plus their personalities and relationships didn't really change during the transition, so expect to see some of the same yuri partnerships. ^_^ The animation was superb with great characters designs except for the over-the-top custom designs. At least one thing that wasn't over the top was the character's facial expressions, whereas in Mai-HiME they were overly emotional which made it seem disturbing at times. The animation as a whole was actually slightly improved from Mai-HiME however one thing that really improved was the action sequences, with a lot more fluid hand-hand and weapons combat. What went well with the action was the captivating orchestra music, making everything seem more dramatic. The really good music was only used during certain situations, making it more noticeably special when played. Overall this was an amazing anime which had both its fun and sad moments. The story was decent and very easy to follow for those who've seen Mai-HiME first, which I recommend you do so. Even though the story pretty much followed the same trend as Mai-HiME there were a lot of differences in the way it did things. There was less (if any) tear jerking moments on the other hand more emphasis was put into the romance in the story and it even had a better ending. Personally I felt the series could have been better if more focus was put on a girl losing her right to be an Otome and the death of an Otome and her Master, unfortunately that didn't really come up, much. Other than that this was a great anime series which I recommend for anyone who's open-minded but it did fail to the same amount of substance as Mai-HiME, in my opinion. ^_^