|
I believe this person put it best...
Marayd Otome was a**. stressed
I can hardly believe Bandai's trying to license it.
For starters, Arika is a Mary Sue extraordinaire:
"Lalala, I just wandered out of the desert and got accepted into the most prestigious school in the world because ohbytheway my mommy was an Otome and I can seduce grown men and okwhat Gakuenchou's b***h since the only things I haven't got going for me are huge Mai-boobs the size of basketballs and a bearable personality."
Mashiro was no better. They should have left her in that wheelchair--Aoi could just let the brat crawl everywhere when she got too obnoxious.
Nina was actually fairly likeable at first. Then the daddy complex started wearing on me. Yeah, alright, she's in love with her foster father. That's cool with me. Love is love. Unfortunately, that is Nina's single driving trait, so we get beaten over the head with that fact just about every episode.
All the while, the old HiME cast and Erstin get screwed over. A lot of the promo art before Otome started featured our three heroines and then Shizuru&Natsuki off in the corner somewhere like the two might be important or something. Of course, our lovely duo gets lots of frivolous screen time and very little action of any sort. Erstin made a fine example of how Sunrise rewards their most popular characters, those bastards. Mai lends her name to the series, but shows up in how many episodes? The NatsukiNao fling development is about as generous as the show gets with the old cast.
See, HiME brought the drama and brought it well. Otome dealt with WTFtrue love and the power of friendship or whatever, while HiME dealt with a broader range of emotions people could feel for each other (id est: MaiTakumi, ShizuruNatsuki, HarukaShizuru, MikotoMai, HarukaYukino, ShihoTate, NunbunsIshigami, MaiTate, ShihoMai, NaoEveryone). HiME wove complexity; Otome just gave the sense that everyone was ******** up--and not in a particularly interesting way. Otome didn't make me care the way HiME did, which may be because Otome's plot partially hinged on the fate of the worldohno, whereas the HiME story felt far more private. HiME had more fights, too. God, Otome dragged on and on without action for too many episodes at a time.
All in all, Otome was a whole lot of eye candy and little else. a**, a**, a**.
|
