Anime Thoughts: My-HiME
May. 3rd, 2012 05:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerWhen I put together my latest look back at the anime I'd seen in the three months before, I neglected to mention one particular series I'd already started into. As much it had been a long time getting around to, I was in a tentative and uncertain mood about just how I'd be summing it up when it was all over...
As in a number of other cases, the first time My-HiME really registered on me was its licensing announcement. The enthusiasm other people showed for it did get my attention... but for some reason, I kept thinking they weren't saying enough about what the show was actually about. Because of that, I wound up thinking I'd wait for the DVDs to be released... but the accusations of diffidence in authoring and packaging (I suppose it would only get worse from there in general for the unfortunate Bandai Entertainment) sort of killed my enthusiasm. Then, the opinion seemed to build the series had one of those legendarily bobbled endings... For a while, I had something of a wild guess on what must have gone wrong. Then, that thought happened to get inverted through a not quite specific "spoiler"...
I suppose I still had enough curiosity about the show, though (and there was still a sort of "well, at least it was a great ride while it lasted" sentiment) that when the budget re-release was announced I decided to get it. There was the pleasant surprise there of hearing the problematic early discs had been reauthored, but even so the series did sort of fall into my "backlog" for a long time. Little by little, though, the thought of picking it out did grow, and at last I got around to opening it...
One of my initial reactions was that the clean, flat look of the character artwork and the simple fact of the 4:3 picture amounted to something "no longer cutting edge." As well, perhaps, there being male love interests in the show also prompted a lazy thought or two of "nowadays maybe we'd just get 'girl's love' innuendo..." (Not that there wasn't some of that in My-HiME in the end, not that it just might have gone further than "fill in that last step yourself" at the very end, even if that might have been handled in a way I can see would annoy those most interested in it...) There might have been a bit of posturing defiance, of course, in my thinking "I'm all right with the love interest." By the end of the show, though, that might have been extended to some special appreciation for all the "non-super-powered characters" (as few of them as there might have been by that point...)
Getting from the most general impressions to the somewhat more specific, my attention was very much caught up by the action and mystery of the first episode. My old vague awareness of "high school girls fighting monsters" was very much enhanced by the thought "Hey, 'mecha-beasts!'" Even as the next few episodes didn't seem to have the exact same focus as the first, I kept watching. One of the amused impressions I had was how the loads of characters seemed calculated to offer potential favorites for everyone. As I pushed on, though (and realized the stakes the characters were playing for well before they did, as the series intended), I suppose there was always that awareness of the impending ending... I took some note of how there was a sort of "plot arc conclusion" midway through I could imagine viewing as "an elegiac yet final point."
From there, though (as the series set up a third and most troubling challenge for its characters), I started getting the odd sense the dissatisfying ending I had had an impression of to start with of as "a last-second pulling back from where the series had been going" was in fact being foreshadowed. That somehow didn't bother me as much, as much as I could imagine people being annoyed "it had gone there." At the end of the penultimate episode, though, I had the sudden impression things might go in a somewhat different direction... but maybe, when things wound up seeming to fall somewhere in between the two different cases I'd imagined, I was able to shake off dismay. Where I suppose I'd imagined "a fine-tuned engine completely jumping the tracks at the last instant," I wound up with a somewhat more familiar impression of "pieces started falling off in the last six episodes or so (that nagging feeling the other plot twists hadn't been developed beforehand), but the bulk of it made it over the finish line." Perhaps My-HiME did exceed my somewhat diminished expectations, and in that I enjoyed it. That does, though, leave me aware of how I'd kept telling myself "well, at least I've also got all of My-Otome" (a follow-up series that could at least be begun to be described as an "alternative universe version") and how opinions seem a bit more split between "it might be a bit better" and "I prefer not to believe it exists" (as much as I find the sentiments of that second opinion unappealing on general principle...)
As in a number of other cases, the first time My-HiME really registered on me was its licensing announcement. The enthusiasm other people showed for it did get my attention... but for some reason, I kept thinking they weren't saying enough about what the show was actually about. Because of that, I wound up thinking I'd wait for the DVDs to be released... but the accusations of diffidence in authoring and packaging (I suppose it would only get worse from there in general for the unfortunate Bandai Entertainment) sort of killed my enthusiasm. Then, the opinion seemed to build the series had one of those legendarily bobbled endings... For a while, I had something of a wild guess on what must have gone wrong. Then, that thought happened to get inverted through a not quite specific "spoiler"...
I suppose I still had enough curiosity about the show, though (and there was still a sort of "well, at least it was a great ride while it lasted" sentiment) that when the budget re-release was announced I decided to get it. There was the pleasant surprise there of hearing the problematic early discs had been reauthored, but even so the series did sort of fall into my "backlog" for a long time. Little by little, though, the thought of picking it out did grow, and at last I got around to opening it...
One of my initial reactions was that the clean, flat look of the character artwork and the simple fact of the 4:3 picture amounted to something "no longer cutting edge." As well, perhaps, there being male love interests in the show also prompted a lazy thought or two of "nowadays maybe we'd just get 'girl's love' innuendo..." (Not that there wasn't some of that in My-HiME in the end, not that it just might have gone further than "fill in that last step yourself" at the very end, even if that might have been handled in a way I can see would annoy those most interested in it...) There might have been a bit of posturing defiance, of course, in my thinking "I'm all right with the love interest." By the end of the show, though, that might have been extended to some special appreciation for all the "non-super-powered characters" (as few of them as there might have been by that point...)
Getting from the most general impressions to the somewhat more specific, my attention was very much caught up by the action and mystery of the first episode. My old vague awareness of "high school girls fighting monsters" was very much enhanced by the thought "Hey, 'mecha-beasts!'" Even as the next few episodes didn't seem to have the exact same focus as the first, I kept watching. One of the amused impressions I had was how the loads of characters seemed calculated to offer potential favorites for everyone. As I pushed on, though (and realized the stakes the characters were playing for well before they did, as the series intended), I suppose there was always that awareness of the impending ending... I took some note of how there was a sort of "plot arc conclusion" midway through I could imagine viewing as "an elegiac yet final point."
From there, though (as the series set up a third and most troubling challenge for its characters), I started getting the odd sense the dissatisfying ending I had had an impression of to start with of as "a last-second pulling back from where the series had been going" was in fact being foreshadowed. That somehow didn't bother me as much, as much as I could imagine people being annoyed "it had gone there." At the end of the penultimate episode, though, I had the sudden impression things might go in a somewhat different direction... but maybe, when things wound up seeming to fall somewhere in between the two different cases I'd imagined, I was able to shake off dismay. Where I suppose I'd imagined "a fine-tuned engine completely jumping the tracks at the last instant," I wound up with a somewhat more familiar impression of "pieces started falling off in the last six episodes or so (that nagging feeling the other plot twists hadn't been developed beforehand), but the bulk of it made it over the finish line." Perhaps My-HiME did exceed my somewhat diminished expectations, and in that I enjoyed it. That does, though, leave me aware of how I'd kept telling myself "well, at least I've also got all of My-Otome" (a follow-up series that could at least be begun to be described as an "alternative universe version") and how opinions seem a bit more split between "it might be a bit better" and "I prefer not to believe it exists" (as much as I find the sentiments of that second opinion unappealing on general principle...)