Ask John: Was My HiME a Revolutionary Magical Girl Show?

Question:
I just recently finished Mai HiME/My HiME and was looking back to its first few episodes to compare just far the series actually came. When compared to other mahou shoujo titles, do you think Mai HiME was able to inject new life into an aging genre? Was the series successful enough to call it “ground breaking,” taking a worn-out formula and creating something fresh? Furthermore, were any of the characters able to break the hackneyed molds of the ditz, the hothead, the nerd, etc?

Answer:
Before going into any depth, I must first clarify that I don’t think of My Hime as a “mahou shoujo” anime. Technically, in the sense that “mahou shoujo” literally means “magic girl” or “girl who uses magic,” I’ll concede that My Hime may be a mahou shoujo anime. However, in common practice the term “mahou shoujo” is reserved specifically for transforming magical girls. In my opinion, typical mahou shoujo anime are titles including Sailor Moon, Nurse Angel Ririka SOS, Creamy Mami, and Sugar Sugar Rune. While typical mahou shoujo anime are targeted at young girls, transforming heroine shows like Akihabara Cyber Team seem to attract just as many, if not more, male viewers than females, and magical girl series including Magical Canan and Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha are specifically made for male viewers.

I think of My Hime as a shonen action adventure show because it has much more in common with boys’ action anime like Sakura Wars, Sol Bianca, Slayers, and Tenjho Tenge than typical magical girl shows like Hime-chan’s Ribbon, Tokyo Mew Mew, and Minky Momo. My Hime did contain some of the introspection and romantic tension usually found in shoujo anime, but there was never any doubt that the principle focus of the show was tense, dramatic action- not empowering wish fulfillment for pre-adolescent girls. If My Hime managed to inject life into any aging genre, it did so by bringing gripping tension, fluid animation, and intense action into the contemporary shonen action genre.

I think that critics who want to find clichés in My Hime can easily do so. Natsuki is the loner. Mikoto is the child. Shizuru is the older, more experienced matriarch. Yukino is the brain. Mashiro is the mysterious one. Haruka is the impulsive hothead. While the show has some surprises along the way, its ultimate resolution is predictable and conventional. Mai Tokiha has an interesting martyr complex, but the romantic triangle the conflicts her loyalty between the childhood friend type nice guy and the dashing, smooth talker doesn’t feel particularly original or surprising. On reflection, I can’t identify any singular elements of the My Hime anime that I consider genuinely revolutionary or influential.

But that doesn’t mean that I have no respect for the show. I think that My Hime was a well constructed action/adventure show from a studio best known for animating boys’ action/adventure shows. After all, My Hime was produced by Sunrise Studios, the animators behind Cowboy Bebop, Gundam, Dirty Pair, Inuyasha, Escaflowne, Outlaw Star, and hundreds of other similar fan favorite programs. The fact that My Hime was structured with a lot of literary references isn’t particularly ground breaking. Earlier Sunrise productions like Five Star Stories, Crest of the Stars, Argent Soma, and Ryvius have also been smart shows. I think that My Hime was a very good show. It left too many unexplained plot points and unfulfilled subplots, didn’t manage to sustain a consistent momentum throughout, and didn’t push the envelope of expectation or its potential quite as far as it could have, which are reasons why I think it falls just short of pure excellence, but, never the less, My Hime was a very good show. I don’t think it was a ground breaking anime, but it doesn’t need to be revolutionary to be entertaining, satisfying, and worthy of respect.