My-HiME
Looking over the list of anime Sunrise have produced, it's clear that sequels and continuations are their bread and butter. Before them however there must be a seed, a rare series that sparked the continuations and alternate universes and other tortured ways of wringing all possible money from an idea. My-HiME is one of those sparks, a precious mixture of innovative ideas and superlative execution that, as is so often the case, much better than the follow ups and subsequent adaptations.
Mai and her brother recently obtained scholarships to the prestigious Fuka academy but while travelling to the school, their boat is attacked and eventually scuttled. It transpires that Mai is a HiME - an obtuse acronym for Highly-advanced Materialising Equipment - a valkyrie able to summon a beast forged more of metal than flesh, a Child, and tasked with fighting wayward monsters known as Orphans. All is not as it seems though when the source of the Orphans is defeated: prior alliances begin to crumble and the school becomes a battleground. As the fighting intensifies, a distant star draws closer and threatens to bring a cataclysm to Earth.
Coming out of nowhere and with a mostly unknown production staff, it begins as a prototypical Sunrise series by pandering directly to the target audience: bath scenes, lesbians, bikers, girls, fighting. When bullet-pointed, there isn't much to recommend the series on; the first half teeters on devolving into turgid monster-of-the-week padding. The second half however is a different animal, dropping the whimsical but well-pitched comedy and plunging into dark, emotional turbulence. More than just strong writing though are the subtle touches which add innumerable layers and construct a setting rich in detail and striking the right balance between overwrought tragedy and fantasy combat.
Mai, the orange haired lead female, starts as a nauseatingly saintly character who looks out for her invalid brother and mothers the childlike Mikoto, but it doesn't take long for such a tepid exterior to unravel and expose the tremulous personality beneath. Likewise, the typically aloof beauty, Natsuki, starts obnoxiously enigmatic but gradually softens and develops - helped along by being the butt of the majority of comedy moments in the opening episodes, including one of the most gloriously over-the-top underwear focused episodes ever conceived. The reveals are expertly measured, never divulging too much but maintaining context; Mai's frequent bouts of catatonia in the latter episodes are foretold just as the decorous Shizuru's proclivities are heavily implied.
Even though the writing is unusually strong, there is no escaping the actuality that this is a Sunrise anime. Homosexuality goes hand-in-hand with glassy-eyed insanity, overly frequent nakedness, loitering shots of female curves and the knowledge that any genuine love interest is sure to suffer an inauspicious and likely fatal misfortune. Nevertheless, the reverse of that coin are the benefits: action is clean and uncluttered, animation is uniformly bright and pleasing and the visual quality rarely falters. More than anything though, the studio manages to grasp and exploit what makes a series enjoyable to watch: high quality characters and a solid narrative. Everything else - the likeness each character has for an animal, the naughty, giggle-inducing comedy, the wordplay with key terms - are just extras and do not mar the heart of the show. Yuki Kajiura takes up soundtrack duties after proving herself with the .Hack project, the result is an evolution from her standard nostalgic melodies to a wider range of upbeat and quicker tempo arrangements.
Like any excellent superhero story, the focus is always on the ramifications of the character's predicament rather than the predicament itself. My-HiME goes further by treating the abilities the thirteen HiME have as extensions of their own emotions, binding their usage to future adversity. The spotlight is always on the interactions between the characters, and while there is a cursory quandary by Mai as to the nature of them fighting, it is rapidly superseded by more pragmatic concerns. More concretely, each Child and associated elemental property match the summoner, with their size matching the magnitude of their emotions: Mai's fiery dragon, Natsuki's icy panther - the common thinking is that this would end up trite and juvenile, but so capable is the writing that they become reflections of the characters rather than sloppy indicators. This is only reinforced when the HiME turn against each other; not through any contrived duels but through a natural entropy given their situation.
Many background elements within the series are left unexplained: the true nature of the Childs and their predisposition for being embedded in rocks, what the HiME star is and why the HiME are forced to fight, the origins of the Obsidian lord - the self-styled antagonist - and the Crystal princess; all are left unexplained and exposition is mostly inference rather than elucidated. When a sequel was announced, the promise of answers to the above and another journey into the setting was so enticing - a dreadful shame then that My-Otome was unspeakably bad and for further insult it was followed up with two OVA series, neither of which approached meaningful answers to the burning questions. The manga adaptation of My-HiME suffered a similar fate by being needlessly racy and lacking the pathos that characterised the television series. As a standalone, My-HiME is sublime, a firestorm of tragedy and emotion that doesn't forget its comedy roots even in the rug-pulling final moments. One of the decade's best school dramas and a heady twist on the magical schoolgirl trope.
Trivia
The My-HiME Blu-Ray edition box set will contain an extra four minutes of animation titled Kuro no Mai/Saigo no Bansan (Black Dance/The Last Supper).
A second manga spin-off from the TV series called My-HiME EXA is planned for release in the new year in Japan.
The first My-Otome DVD came with an extra titled "The Great Battle of Fuka" and purported to be a trailer for a My-HiME movie. This turned out to be a ruse as many had expected given the cast and overall tone of the trailer.
Vitals
First aired: 01 October 2004
Finished airing: 01 April 2005
Episodes: 26
Availability: DVD — Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, United Publications (UK)
References: MyAnimeList, Wikipedia, AniDB, Anime News Network
Screenshots
