Mai HiME

[Michael Hopcroft]

I finally got my hands on the fansubs of this series, which got some fairly good press. It looks like it has some interesting hooks for a game -- and, on the other hand, a few serious moral problems with the premise.

 

It's the story of a girl named Mai. we meet her and her brother (who suffers from a serious heart condition) on a ferry to their new school, a boarding school called the Fuuka Academy. we see her looking up at a red star that nobody else appears to see, but her borther does not think she's hallucinating. However, he in turn sees something that everyone sees -- a girl floating face down in the ocean.

 

The girl is pulled out of nthe water, dressed in a cut-up middle school uniform and holding a huge black sword. Her rescuers try to pry it out of her hand, and find their lifeboat cut in two and plunging in the ocaen. The girl herself isn't breathing, and after some misunderstandings involving the guy who originally tried to rescue her Mai ends up performing CPR and saving her life.

 

In retrospect, this may have been a mistake.

 

Because a speedboat pulls up alongside the ferry, another girl leaps on board and hunts down the girl who had the sword 9which has somehow come back to her) They have a spectacular battle with Mai caught in the middle, and suddenly she finds herself exhibiting a strange power of her own. which leads the attacker to tell her "Don't go to Fuuka Academy! If you do, you'll die!"

 

next thing Mai knwos, she and the girl have plunged into the ocean as the ferry sinks (being cut in two tends to cause a seagoing vessel to have difficulty staying afloat). Instead of being dead, she wakes up on the Fuuka Academy campus with the sword-weilding girl in her arms and surrounded by smoke and general damage. The Student Council hauls Mai in front of them, and one girl in particular vows to see her expelled with all possible prejudice. After she meets her classmates, including the guy from the ferry (whom Mai has become throguhly convinced is an utter creep and pervert) she disocevers that the girl who had threatened her is actually a student at Fuuka, albeit one who almost never goes to class. Eventually, Mai discoevers the terrible secret. She is a HiME, capable of "making photons solid" and using some rather impressive powers, and she has been brought to Fuuka because the Director of the School wants her to fight monsters from outside of reality who are infesting the island where the schoiol sits. Both of the other powerful girls are also HiMEs: the sword-weilder is powerful but almost feral, and the other girl (who weilds pistols and commands a mechanical being with powerful guns) is convinced the whole setup is a trap and that they are all going to die horribly.

 

And here is the problem I have with the setuip. The girl who runs the school essentially tricked Mai into going there and forced her to reveal her powers. Worse, there are about 1200 students of Fuuka Academy who have no powers at all and no clue about what is going on -- and they have all been placed on an island full of murderous monsters. If Fukka Academy existed before the monsters were discoeverd, the ethical thing to do would have been to close down the school and completely evacuate the island. And if Fukka Academy was established because the monsters were there, then all of these kids have come to the school for the purpose of being bait. In other words, the whole student body has been marked for certain death.

 

It makes me wonder if there are any morally decent people in the whole thing -- even Mai, who should be smart enough to realize what is going on and doesn't get at least her brother off the island.

[Karmakaze]

Re: Mai HiME

 

But... you have to have victims... it's in-genre!

[Oruncrest]

Re: Mai HiME

 

I finally got my hands on the fansubs of this series, which got some fairly good press. It looks like it has some interesting hooks for a game -- and, on the other hand, a few serious moral problems with the premise.

 

It's the story of a girl named Mai. we meet her and her brother (who suffers from a serious heart condition) on a ferry to their new school, a boarding school called the Fuuka Academy. we see her looking up at a red star that nobody else appears to see, but her borther does not think she's hallucinating. However, he in turn sees something that everyone sees -- a girl floating face down in the ocean.

 

The girl is pulled out of the water, dressed in a cut-up middle school uniform and holding a huge black sword. Her rescuers try to pry it out of her hand, and find their lifeboat cut in two and plunging in the ocaen. The girl herself isn't breathing, and after some misunderstandings involving the guy who originally tried to rescue her Mai ends up performing CPR and saving her life.

 

In retrospect, this may have been a mistake.

 

Because a speedboat pulls up alongside the ferry, another girl leaps on board and hunts down the girl who had the sword 9which has somehow come back to her) They have a spectacular battle with Mai caught in the middle, and suddenly she finds herself exhibiting a strange power of her own. which leads the attacker to tell her "Don't go to Fuuka Academy! If you do, you'll die!"

 

next thing Mai knwos, she and the girl have plunged into the ocean as the ferry sinks (being cut in two tends to cause a seagoing vessel to have difficulty staying afloat). Instead of being dead, she wakes up on the Fuuka Academy campus with the sword-weilding girl in her arms and surrounded by smoke and general damage. The Student Council hauls Mai in front of them, and one girl in particular vows to see her expelled with all possible prejudice. After she meets her classmates, including the guy from the ferry (whom Mai has become throguhly convinced is an utter creep and pervert) she disocevers that the girl who had threatened her is actually a student at Fuuka, albeit one who almost never goes to class. Eventually, Mai discoevers the terrible secret. She is a HiME, capable of "making photons solid" and using some rather impressive powers, and she has been brought to Fuuka because the Director of the School wants her to fight monsters from outside of reality who are infesting the island where the schoiol sits. Both of the other powerful girls are also HiMEs: the sword-weilder is powerful but almost feral, and the other girl (who weilds pistols and commands a mechanical being with powerful guns) is convinced the whole setup is a trap and that they are all going to die horribly.

 

And here is the problem I have with the setuip. The girl who runs the school essentially tricked Mai into going there and forced her to reveal her powers. Worse, there are about 1200 students of Fuuka Academy who have no powers at all and no clue about what is going on -- and they have all been placed on an island full of murderous monsters. If Fukka Academy existed before the monsters were discoeverd, the ethical thing to do would have been to close down the school and completely evacuate the island. And if Fukka Academy was established because the monsters were there, then all of these kids have come to the school for the purpose of being bait. In other words, the whole student body has been marked for certain death.

 

Actually, the HiME are the bait, as you'll discover in ep. 4. The School is a means to get the HiME onto the island and keep them there. The Student Body, the Faculty, and almost everyone else on the island are merely disposable cover.

 

It makes me wonder if there are any morally decent people in the whole thing -- even Mai, who should be smart enough to realize what is going on and doesn't get at least her brother off the island.

 

To be fair to Mashiro, she doesn't have a choice in the matter. As you'll discover in later episodes, she's not in charge of the situation. Neither for that matter is the one who sics the monsters (they're called 'Orphans') on the HiME. And as for Mai and Takumi, they're stuck on the island. They don't have a home to go back to, the reason they don't will be mentioned in ep 19.

[Chimpira]

Re: Mai HiME

 

Yeah. Ditto for what Oruncrest said. And as you find out later the monsters no longer become the problem. I liked the series. I am currently watching the new series called Mai-Otome. It has a new lead character but they (supposedly) use all the other characters from the Mai-Hime series, although the universe is completely different.