Mahoromatic Review
Mahoromatic: Automatic Maiden
まほろまてぃっく

Since the Community Anime Reviews site has periodic down periods, I’m republishing some of my OG reviews from there. I have corrected obvious spelling errors though. I will add new notes in parenthesis, labeled “ANB  note.”  😅 I won’t count these as part of the “Back to the Vaults” series as I have not rewatched them.

–> Buy Mahoromatic DVD Collection on Amazon.com!

Community Anime Review of Mahoromatic

(ANB note: This series was originally reviewed on 23-Aug-2024. )

Were it not for the excessive ecchi content, I would have surely given this a Buy rating. On the surface, this series could be chalked up to another series about some hot android babe (or other non-typical human babe) coming to Earth, hooking up with a nice guy, becoming the perfect wife-figure for him while fending off others who suddenly become interested. However, Gainax doesn’t fall into that trap with Mahoromatic and that is the factor that sets this show apart.

The Bad

First the bad. Some folks will be put off by the ecchi content. The guys at Gainax took many opportunities to show girls naked, and drawn with great detail. To avoid the notorious censor masks, they keep the genital areas from being directly seen by the viewers. But they make up for that with tight shots that has a girls privates covered, but her legs spread, or from her rear to get that classic shot.

If that weren’t enough, how about the fact that Shikijo-sensei, Sugura’s middle school teacher, has the hots for her young student and has repeated fantasies of having sex with him. This may offend folks, so you’ve been warned. Remember, the guys at Gainax are very much otaku’s at heart, thus they are always one-upping themselves in the fanservice department (they are believed to have made the term fanservice mainstream).

A lot of the humor comes from the repeated conflict between Shikijo-sensei and Mahoro-san. Sadly, too much of it seems to involve breasts. Shikijo-sensei is well “above average” and Mahoro-san is “below average”. I admit I laughed at a lot of this and I laughed at the traditional “good girl moves in and immediately destroys the boy’s porno collection.”

The Good

If this was all there was to Mahoromatic, it would be a nothing series. However, I immediately like Mahoro. I wanted to know why she wanted to spend her final runtime as Suguru’s maid. Fortunately, Gainax gives us those answers in the final three episodes of the series. We get to see her creation, what she did, and why she chose Suguru-san when she was allowed to retire.

When her past catches up with her, it is a cliche moment, but I could help but like it just the same. And while her desire to be a maid may seem old fashioned and cliched as well, I liked this as well. She was the best at what she did as a battle android, and now she wants to live her final days as a caregiver. No problems here with that.

The war aspect is a bit more of a mystery to me. You have what appears to be three factions fighting a war. Apparently the people of Japan are ignorant of such things. But not so the people of the US, where some places are shown in utter devastation (where Mahoro had to do some battles). That came off as very odd to me. Still, as I mentioned before, seeing Mahoro in action made her choice to be a domestic maid for a young middle school boy that much more heart-warming to me.

Bottom line:

Too ecchi for my tastes, yet there is a lot of good stuff in this title. I look forward to watching the sequel series.