Mai-HiME 11

[cerusee]

Notes:

--Takumi and Akira are really, really adorable.

--The presumptive plot of the episode is a B-movie slasher-flick concept perfectly made to serve the story. It makes me think there must be something subversive about this show, if I could only figure out what.

--Somehow, I completely forgot that Nagi and Mashiro were in cahoots. So far, everything that they're talking about matches up to what the grand story arc turned out to be. Yay for coherent writing.

--Okay, so one of Mai-HiME's themes is "doing what you want" versus "doing what you have to do." Most people in Mai-HiME (Mikoto, Nao, Shizuru, Natsuki, and Midori, for example) don't seem to have any trouble following their desires, as Nagi repeatedly encourages the HiMEs to do. Mai, on the other hand, is unable to do what she wants (sing karaoke, bum around, date Tate) because she's obsessed with responsibility and doing what she thinks needs to be done (protect Takumi, take care of Mikoto, make sure everybody else in the world is safe and happy). Thus, she still can't figure out that she should be doing with her superpowers. It's very necessary for her to be so conflicted, I think, because she's insanely powerful. If she used her Element and her Child freely and without regard for damage, that'd be the end of the show, right there. (Or maybe it's that Mai can be so powerful, because she's Hamlet-like in her inability to find a path to follow.)

The only other person as obsessed with responsibility and propriety is Haruka. Which sort of endears Haruka to me, even if she is a puritanical tightass.

--Actually, Tate's hung up on propriety, too. In his case, it just sabotages his ability to have the kind of relationships he'd like to have with Mai and Shiho, though. 'Cause this show is about Mai, and Tate's just her love interest. ^____^ Is that still subversive?

--There is genuine love between Miyu and Alyssa. We don't get any easy villains. Uh, except maybe the priest. He's just creepy.

--They love the cheesy screaming. This show would be pure camp if it wasn't perfect in every way.

~EDIT~

This post now contains giant spoilers for all of Mai-HiME in the comments. Reading the comments on this post without having watched all 26 episodes will probably ruin the show for you. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, DON'T DO IT. This means you, mikkeneko.

Comments

[akai-laputa.livejournal.com]

If she used her Element and her Child freely and without regard for damage, that'd be the end of the show, right there.

My first thought on reading this was "But since Mai's power is directly proportional to the strength of Mai's love, surely that couldn't happen..." but that only refers to the love of a single person, doesn't it? Shizuru's about as dangerous as a HiME can be, with her obsessive love for one person that lends her such power but that enables quite such a disregard for the safety of others, and it's only due to her extreme self-discipline, in part because of her upbringing and in part because she doesn't dare show her feelings to Natsuki, that she isn't a danger for the vast majority of the show.

I know I've missed something at some point, but what the hell is Nagi? I (kind of) understood the deal with Mashiro and Kanzaki's parasite Lord person whose name I've forgotten (Kokyuugou? Means obsidian, anyway) but exactly who and what Nagi is are things that have escaped me entirely. I think that's the danger of watching something in marathon - I've forgotten whole names, plot points and character arcs since I finished watching it. All the more reason to rewatch though, as started yesterday. Check out m00nface for observations (as yet unwritten, but give me a few hours).

whoa, essay

[cerusee.livejournal.com]

Hmm, you might have a point, and that would make it another sort of safety mechanism--Mai loves intensely, and with a degree of self-sacrifice that can be unhealthy, although it doesn't have to be (I was very irked by someone who characterized her love for Takumi as dysfunctional. Having separation issues when the brother you've raised starts to grow up does not make your love for him dysfunctional, it just makes it complicated), thus, she possesses enormous power. But she loves widely, and if she ran rampant with her power, she would hurt or alienate the people she loves.

(Perhaps that's another constraint on Shizuru? She not only hides her love from Natsuki, who she knows cannot or will not accept it, but she always wants Natsuki to think well of her. It's only when Natsuki is in direct physical danger that she's willing to use brutal violence where Natsuki can see--and it freaks Natsuki out, just as Shizuru probably anticipated.)

I don't think Mai displays the same degree of obsession with either Takumi or Tate that Shizuru does with Natsuki (and I think Takumi had to have been her original MIP; she simply didn't know Tate that well when she accepted Katsuguchi, and she explicitly accepted him to save Takumi from the Orphan). Though she responds to Takumi's death with unholy rage, and violently attacks another person she loves, she (emotionally) withdraws the attack at the last minute (oopsie), and then absolutely breaks down when Mikoto "dies," even though she thinks Mikoto was responsible for Takumi's death. Did Mai withdraw because she loved Takumi less than Shizuru loved Natsuki, or because she's invested in more than one person, and thus better equipped to deal with loss?

While the setup is clear--intensity of love of her Most Important Person determines a HiME's power level* (Natsuki's loss of the curiously underpowered Duran when her memory of her mother is shattered is pretty much cinches it for me), it seems like in the end, the show says that it's not just the MIP, HiMEs get power from all the people they love, hence her summoning Katsuguchi even after Tate is dead. I wondered when Takumi died if he hadn't been Mai's MIP at the time, and then her MIP switched over to Tate, whom she had intense feelings for (I also speculated that when Tate died, she would still be able to summon Katsuguchi because she still loved Mikoto. I don't think I ever got any positive evidence for that, but I don't recall if it was explicitly denied, either). Mai appears to love three different characters with equal fervor--Tate, romantically, and Takumi and Mikoto, in a motherly, sororital way; none of the other HiMEs do that. Akira only loves Takumi, Shizuru only loves Natsuki, Shiho only loves Tate.

Foo. Now that I'm really thinking about it, I wonder if the power-only-from-a-MIP thing (MIP is fan terminology anyway) isn't a cipher. Maybe it's just love-is-power.

*Initial fan speculation suggested that the degree of dysfunction in a HiME's love for her MIP determined her power level, which I don't quite buy. Though I may look askance at the 24-year-old's love for her older college professor, the show doesn't imply that it's unhealthy or dysfunctional, and Midori's pretty strong--and if twisted love equals strength, Nao's love for her mother, which is mixed in with aimless hatred and drive for revenge, should make her much stronger than she is. It also just doesn't fit with the show as a whole, particularly the light-hearted ending.

Re: whoa, essay

[m00nface.livejournal.com]

I was very irked by someone who characterized her love for Takumi as dysfunctional.

Bloody hell. That's reading between the lines and using the space to write your own if ever I saw it. Did a fourteen-year-old make that suggestion, by any chance? Not that I'm generalising younger people here, no...

Did Mai withdraw because she loved Takumi less than Shizuru loved Natsuki, or because she's invested in more than one person, and thus better equipped to deal with loss?

I'd go with the latter. When Natsuki's important person - or the memory of her - is destroyed, her powers are nullified completely until she is prepared to acknowledge her love of another. Without such tunnel vision, Mai doesn't lose everything even when she thinks she does. Apart from anything, I'm coming to think that what changes is not how strong each form of love is, but whether or not a person acknowledges it, disregards the wellbeing of others in favour of it, is able to have it accepted, and so on. That is, it's not the love that affects Mai's performance, but how fit she is to cope with it in her life. I don't know how accurate that is, but it's the way I'm leaning at 2am.

Totally agree on the Takumi as first MIP though. I'm not in on the fandom (as of yet) - was it ever in question? (Also, any idea of where I should start, regarding fandom? I confess: I'm hooked.)

As far as Shizuru goes, I'd say the brutal violence is less what she was unwilling to show to Natsuki but the power she has to cause it. Her Child is strong, and Natsuki knows that this means she has someone very important to her. I think Shizuru's just reluctant to put Natsuki in the position of being able to put two and two together, particularly since she clearly doesn't give a damn about anyone else.

Question: what is a cipher? ^^;;;

I'd be firmly against the level-of-dysfunction theory, if only because the nature of dysfunction is so completely tied up in cultural expectations. Too flimsy for me. Going with the idea that it's not love but the way in which the HiME approaches it, however, and Akira, who was brought up a boy and completely unprepared to fall in love with her male roommate - or at all yet, given her age - will naturally be less powerful than, say, Shizuru, who has been brought up with a great deal of control and who fully embraces her love of Natsuki even as she conceals it from her. Both of them are no match for Mai, whose feelings for Takumi are as unashamed as Takumi's feelings for her, who is used to being a functional part of society and who loves so many people that caring for their wellbeing is second nature to her and is the sole reason she accepted Kagutsuchi in the first place (she even apologises to him for forgetting that and refusing to bring him out in case she hurt someone). By the time she switches to Tate, things have changed, but I reckon this is why she starts out so strong, a "monster" as Nao puts it.

I'm going to pay more attention to Nagi and Mashiro this time around. Mashiro's one of my least favourite characters, but now I know where she's headed I'll try to be a little more tolerant and observant of her.

Re: whoa, essay

[cerusee.livejournal.com]

Re: 14 yrs old. Not to my knowledge. I don't think the commenter could accept self-sacrificing, maternal love from an older sister for a younger brother--they could only understand it as a guilt-ridden obsession (not that incestuous obsession is so rare in anime; but this show is pretty good at depicting Mai's maternal love for Takumi and Mikoto as maternal, and not sexual, despite throwing out a couple of sis-con jokes early on).

Mmm. Yes, Natsuki doesn't spontaneously fall in love with Shizuru--she examines her feelings and realizes that she loves Shizuru. You have a good point about acknowledging love as well as having it; I'll keep that in mind from now on.

I wonder if, in that bleak moment before things really blew up, when Mai was pitying herself for having "nothing," if she could have summoned Katsuguchi.

(Alas, there isn't really a fandom. Mai-HiME slipped under the radar of most of the female fandom--my only guess as to why is that there aren't many male characters, and some girls might be turned off by the slapstick boobs in the first episode--and was seen mostly by the male-dominated anime bloggers who watch and comment on shows of the moment, but don't write fanfiction or dwell on older work. There's a couple of nearly inactive LJ communities I'm in, but that's about it. I would really love for Mai-HiME--henceforth known as MH because I'm tired of typing that out--to get shown on Adult Swim, yes, even as a dub, because it might actually develop an English fandom that way. Probably won't happen, though.)

A cipher is a mystery or a zero. I was using it in the zero sense--that the obsessive talk about MIPs among the bloggers was a worthless oversimplification of the love=HiME power equation. Particularly since the MIP discussions operated on some assumed, absolute rules that I'm not sure the show supported--that a HiME could only have one MIP, that a HiME couldn't switch MIPs (thus the assumption that Takumi couldn't have ever been Mai's precious person because she still summoned Katsuguchi after he died, which is nonsensical to me), etc.

Mmm, good argument on dysfunction. I'm very antsy about assuming or interpreting social commentary, since my knowledge of Japanese society is superficial and secondhand at best. But this feels sound to me.

I found Mashiro quite dull, and didn't pay attention to her, which might be why I'm still not sure what her deal is. It's much easier to follow her conversations with Nagi now, though, because I have a framework for them.

[cerusee.livejournal.com]

I don't think I ever figured out what Nagi was. I'm not entirely sure what Mashiro was. I'm sure they're related, and they're both connected to the whatchacallit, Tournament? Nagi seems to be some kind of Master of Ceremonies for the big HiME-offing contest; I have no idea whether he's even human, or ever was human.

I'm hoping to retain and make sense of more of that this time around. I have faith that there's a coherant backstory there, if I can just figure out what it is. (Or maybe not. Maybe he's just there, the way the Star was just there--an element of the story you're required to take for granted.)