Getting some good titles, this is way better than my really terrible anime reviews. Now for Mahoromatic.
Mahoro is a combat android who served in the war against SAINT, an alien race bent on destroying humanity.
With the war over she is given options to how she would spend her remaining operational life. In a surprise decision and perhaps to rid the guilt of killing her commander, she becomes a maid for Suguru, her late commander's son.
What happens next is a funny comedy as Suguru deals with the fantastic scenario of having a combat android as a maid, friends who are too curious for their own good, another combat android and a sexually frustrated teacher; but the clock ticks down the remaining days of Mahoro's life along with the uneasy thought of SAINT returning.
That last bit is crucial, it's easy to write this off as a laugh worthy comedy filled with enough sex jokes to sink a battle ship, least we not forget the boob vacuum scene from season 2. But you see the clock tick down every episode and you get the sense that you'll be heading for quite a sad finale, and while it does happen and you expect it to happen you'll never be prepared for it, and that's quite a feat for an anime.
There isn't alot to dislike about Mahoromatic, although Shikijo is a bit much and the dub is somewhere between Love Hina bad and Haruhi Suzumiya bad (one dub actor is clearly carrying the anime)
Otherwise it's a solid comedy with some heartbreaking drama.
Final Verdict: A brilliant comedy with enough emotional investment to care for the characters and what ultimately happens to them. Worth the watch.
For those new to my worlds, I hold the title of 'Master of Lists' so let's start with a list. Requests are always welcome.
Honorable Mentions
Honey Kisaragi from Cutey Honey
Not consistently an Android through her various canons
Android 18 from Dragonballz
Never started as an Android
Elara from Twin Signal
The show doesn't get enough love
Kurumi from Steel Angel Kurumi
Old school robot girl anime at it's best but just a little too annoying
10. Naomi Armitage from Armitage III and Motoko Kusanagi from Ghost in the Shell
Not really much to choose between them, both are considered the most human like androids in their respective cyberpunk shows
9. Nuku Nuku from All Purpose Cultural Catgirl Nuku Nuku
This is how you make a catgirl, take an Android body and mix it with the brain of a cat and somehow this works.
8. Any Service Doll or Toy from Angelic Layer, Busou Shinki, Chobits and Hand Maid May
Grouping these together for convenience but any small sized robot used for service or as toys does count, including Chii from Chobits who is built by the same inventor of both the persecoms and the Angels.
7. Alita from Battle Angel Alita
Probably the most badass android on this list, a capable combat robot in pint sized form.
6. Marionettes from Saber Marionette J
In a world without women, men built their replacements in robot form but some had a special circuit that gave them emotions, the genki Lime, the cute geek Cherry and the full bodied powerhouse Bloodberry are certainly lost favourites of Oldtaku.
5. Nano from Nichijou
A school girl created by a child scientist that operates on a clockwork key, watching her interactions with the world are a joy as well as various parts of her body being used for storage.
4. Mahoro Andou from Mahoromatic
A combat android who served in a bloody war for many years, becomes a maid for the son of a military official who lost his life. With a time limit counting down, Mahoro lives out the life of a maid.
3. Ruru Amour from Hugtto Precure
Starts as a replacement daughter for Dr Traum, acts as an evil henchwoman, becomes a Precure after meeting Emiru and becoming her musical partner. The only non organic Precure in the franchise. She's also my favourite Precure
2. Chachamaru Karakuri from Negima
The android doll assistant of Evangeline and one of my favourite Negima characters, easily the most capable among the other robot girls
1. Dorothy R Wainwright from Big O
The top four were fighting for this spot but it goes to Dorothy. A robot girl with such a deadpan sense of humour that it plays well with Roger Smith's Batman playboy type and gave Big O a unique identity.
I'm going to be throwing up a few top tens on popular characters from certain countries, this covers Anime, videogames and for this list non United Kingdom produced cartoons.
This rank is based on how Scottish they are.
Honorable Mentions: Any character who is obviously Scottish such as the Scotsman from Samurai Jack, The entire cast of Brave, Scottish Pokemon Trainer and Scrooge McDuck. I do want a challenge.
10. Alexander Anderson from Hellsing
This is more the dub representing him as Scottish as his nationality is never spoken of, but his name would suggest that he is Scottish.
9. Lilly Satou from Kitawa Shoujo
I don't know much about this character but she is listed as half Scottish on her official bio.
8. Jonathan Joestar from Jojo's Bizarre Adventure
Yep the first Jojo is descended from Highlanders, speak volumes about his abilities.
7. Edward Fokker from Power Stone
First glance you'd assume English but this ace fighting pilot in the anime adaption is actually Scottish as his uniform flag is the St Andrews Flag.
6. Mike Haggar from Final Fight
Scottish heritage and proud of it, his wrestling style even originates from Scottish back hold wrestling.
5. The Demoman from Team Fortress 2
We are now in the region of people actually from Scotland and Team Fortress 2 has one in the Demolitions Expert, not nearly as talked about as the Heavy or the Scout, he is nonetheless important to any team.
4. Johnny McGregor from Beyblade
Of the Beyblade representatives of Europe they overlooked England in favour of Scotland, Johnny himself doesn't seem much of a character but is one of only a handful of characters to defeat Kai on merit.
3. Moira MacTaggert from X-Men
A brilliant genetic scientist with a Nobel peace prize to boot, Moira was one of few human allies to the X-Men and was even engaged to Professor Charles Xavier.
2. Lydia Carlton from Earl and Fairy
Lydia is a Fairy Doctor, a voice that connects the mortal realm with the Fairy Realm and love interest of the Earl who is meant to be ruler of the fairy realm. One of only two full Scottish anime characters known in existence and considering it's a period anime set in Victorian Britain, she's an outright rebel.
1. Morrigan Aensland from Darkstalkers
It can't be anyone else, she's argubly the most famous female fighting game character since Chun Li and is probably the most likely guest character in a lot of Capcom's RPGs, shooters and smaller fighting games. She's a Succubus who just enjoys a good fight.
I think I've reached the holy grail of terrible anime. This is Maze.
In a fantasy world full of war and conflict, the Jaina Holy Group have nearly taken over the world with only Princess Mill left to capture, but a mysterious girl named Maze appears out of nowhere, possessing powers known as Phantom Light power, she reluctantly becomes the world's last hope for victory against Jaina using Dulga, a giant organic mecha to stop them, but there is more to Maze than you might think as Maze suddenly changes gender at night to a more aggressive, wild male persona.
Where to start? I don't exaggerate when I say this is the holy grail of terrible anime, in fact I say this is the worst 90s anime period.
It's the type of bad where every decision that was made caused you severe whiplash in terms of "Wait WHAT?!"
The story is horribly paced and constantly backs itself into a corner with it's own narrative only to pull a reset button just to escape.
The few characters that are good are under used and suffer for it.
Female Maze is an insufferable protagonist who some how acts and dresses like Shinji Ikari.
The few times male Maze gets screen time he wastes it either being a pervert or repeating his lines over and over.
Mill is a clingy little bitch whose only mode is cheerfully annoying.
The need to make sex jokes every chance they got was distracting and don't get me started on Episode 26.
The Japanese had so little faith in it, the west only got the edited version of the tv series and the OVA with the unedited version on vhs and laserdisc only, so no movie or episode 26 as that was laserdisc only and episode 26 was also banned from broadcast a full two years before Excel Saga did it.
Then there's the dub which is incompetent in every way; no emotion in dramatic scenes, female Maze under sells her performance, dub mistakes are frequent, the fairy switches between high voiced to helium voiced every other scene, another voice actor was changed halfway which only made the character sound worse, Mill is painful to listen to, male Maze is trying way to hard and to top it all off they forget to add dialogue in some scenes HOW DO YOU DO THAT?
After all that, is there anything I like? The opening music and the other main party members Rapier, Aster, Woll, Solude and Randy despite the fact that they are horribly underused and Randy sounds like she snorted helium. I've also seen worst villains, Chic and Gorgeous have their good moments.
Final Verdict: if you can get over some of the creepier in context moments I'd watch the OVA, that is passable. The tv series on the other hand is an epic train wreck that manages every scene to have something wrong with it. It's every single bad 90s anime trope wrapped into one anime, sure there are anime that are way worst than Maze, but the badness in this is so bad that it's almost artistic in it's delivery.
This one is long overdue, time to finally tackle Captain Planet.
The planet is being ravished by pollution and mass destruction, Gaia no longer able to tolerate such atrocities calls upon five teenagers to summon the champion of Earth, Captain Planet to rid the world of looting and polluting.
Yes it's the king of environmental cartoons Captain Planet, and it's really, really cheesy, to a degree that you wonder what on Earth the program makers were taking.
I enjoyed it when I was a kid but I don't look back on it fondly mainly because there was a period where cartoons would stop their antics to deliver PSA messages, a side effect to the rules set out by Ronald Reagan for kids TV deregulation was you can screen a 20 minute cartoon to sell toys but it was to come with a good healthy message, don't do drugs, recycle and don't be an ass hole, all wholesome preachy stuff that parents demanded were on every show.
There's nothing wrong with these messages, they are good messages but there are some issues with it.
1. They are being dictated by cartoon characters, not real people, this is the kinda stuff you should be taught in school.
2. The high cheese value later killed off the genre in the late 90s during the Golden eras of cartoon channels and the advent of anime in America
3. It's failure means that crazy people are now preaching these messages, the same people who super glue themselves to trains and buildings thinking the government will stop and listen to them.
I remember Captain Planet's guest appearance in Ok Ko Let's Be Heroes, where Kwame is now the only Planeteer remaining where he says "the planteers quit and got real jobs" whether that's a dig at the actors not coming back or a sadder in context statement that no one believes in Captain Planet anymore.
I find 2019 exhausting, every week there's a protest or a report that's either about racism, sexism, environmental concerns, political correctness, LGBT rights or another pathetic argument spoken by a pathetic human; worst thing about it is, both sides are as bad as each other.
The right wing are being portrayed as pathetic whiney bigots.
The left wing are being portrayed as whiny intolerant snowflakes.
So where am I going with this?
As cheesy as Captain Planet was, we need him back just to teach us how to be decent human beings again, only then can we solve the problems of this world.
