Another multi-review this time around!! Mai-HiME, sometimes called My-HiME, is an anime series that has comedy, drama, fantasy, and... sentai. I kid you not: this is a sentai-type anime, that deals with girls with powers, called HiMEs, which is a backronym meaning Highly-advanced Material Equip. There's a spinoff to this as well, featuring the same characters and similar story concept called My-Otome.
Mai Tokiha is the central character of the anime My-HiME, and perhaps titular as well. A student, she and her younger brother Takumi take a boat ride to Fuka Gakuen, financially supported to take schooling there. However, things take a turn for the strange when they find a girl drowned in the water. She is saved, yet this girl, Mikoto Minagi, and Mai are attacked by another classmate Natsuki Kuga. Arriving, she gains knowledge that she is a HiME, summoned here by the Mashino Kazahana, the young chairwoman of Fuka Gakuen. She informs Mai that she, rather her and other HiMEs are needed to fight beings called Orphans, and each HiME, as she soon finds out, has a Child to fight alongside with, which is a beast they summon. Should they lose their Child, they lose their powers... as well as something else dear to them. Mai must fight Orphans and another organization after them, while dealing with her own troubles.
In My-Otome, Arika Yumemiya searches for her mother, who is somewhere on planet Earl, filled with immigrants from Earth. Old Technology survived in the form of Nanomachines, and with this, virgin females can become Meister Otomes, who serves the royalty of various kingdoms. However, intercourse with men can render these nanomachines weak, causing one to become powerless and immune to any further injection. Arika becomes a student of Garderobe Academy, and the series goes through not only her progress, but also follows machinations for those desiring the said technology for themselves, and the battles that takes place due to this reason.
The animation, My-HiME, is 26 episodes long. The spinoff series My-Otome also had 26 episodes, and it also had has yuri in it. In addition, a 4 episode OVA series My-Otome Zwei succeeded this, and a 3 episode anime OVA titled My-Otome 0-S.ifr was also created as the prequel. For the most part, they're all licensed for US under Bandai Entertainment, and save for the OVA prequel, has English voices as well as Japanese voices. Supporting the spinoff quality is that characters from My-HiME are seen as characters of My-Otome. In the vice-versa scenario, Arika is seen as a character cameo, a short one, in one of My-HiME's episodes, in addition to a joke trailer.
Once more, the differences between the anime and manga are heavy. In My-Hime, one major difference is the fate in which their child is defeated. In the anime, should that occur, they lose their powers as well as something precious to them, which is essentially their reason to fight. This isn't the case in the manga, as they only lose what is the Key to that Child. Their powers as a HiME are retained, and even a new Key can be found to summon their Child. Even more that their powers remain should the HiME star vanish, another trait that isn't true in the anime. In My-Otome's case, one of the characters, Mashiro Blan de Windbloom, is actually male, as opposed to a female in the anime, and the storyline for the manga is an alternate telling of it overall.
I didn't expect this particular series to cross paths with me, but still, 8.1 of 10 should do it for both, since I found them appealing enough to interest me.
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