How and when did you first discover Mai HiME/Otome?

For the longest time after Sailor Moon, I've been desperately looking for the next big all-female super heroine team. Around when magical girls were given their 2nd chance on mainstream U.S./Canada TV, I had a chance to experiment with a few different series'. Mew Mew Power (which I've seen long before it arrived, as Tokyo Mew Mew), The Winx Club (an Italian magical girl series) and W.I.T.C.H. (yet another Italian magical girl series, but unlike Winx it was dark).

While each of these shows were good in their own way, they didn't match up to Sailor Moon. Memorable villains? Nope. Memorable music? Nope. Likable main heroine? Nope. None of these shows could dazzle me like Sailor Moon did, that is until I discovered the first Mai HiME (known as My-HiME on my shores) episode on Anime Suki in the mid 2000s.

I was hooked from the first episode. It started out subtle, getting a little introduction from everyone including our main heroine Mai Tokiha. Then it quickly escalated to an all out brawl between a beautiful blue haired maiden (we'll get to that VERY shortly) and a sword wielding girl that was found nearly drowned at the beginning.Immediately, my brain goes into a frenzy as I'm amazed by the beauty of the blue haired girl and the skills of the sword wielding girl. We then discover Mai has powers of her own and once they land at the world renowned Fuka Academy, everything skyrockets.

The series had girls with fierce powers, the classic Monster-of-the-day formula (which evolves into something much more) , and an interesting plot going on.Most of all, it had character development! VERY important in my book. [:wink:]

Discuss your first experience with Mai HiME and why it kicks so much arse. Sea barse.

]Spanks you for mailing all my replies! -salutes-]

overall, it's a really good story. the kind you can relate to on a personal level.

You sir, are correct about everything. Character development is key. id say my spider vixen was full of character -yessss-

Nao is awesome, but I don't like her as much as the other HiME. I had the guts to say that to your face, remember? You threw a nasty left hook, just make sure you hit target next time. ^_- LOL

I can see where Nao is coming from, but she took it way too far. Shizuru taught her a good lesson. j/k, that's where I drew the line as well. Shizuru went psycho Regina George even worse, but her reasonings were forgiven in the end.

I love watching vids on youtube, and i found a clip completely about nao. It was one awesome vid, and i decided to look that anime up. Mai Hime, they said it was called. I saw a lot of vids, but couldn't find the anime yet.
Untill i landed on a site with all kind of animes and i saw 'Mai Hime'. then, i decided to go watch it and loved it :D

XD A lot of HiME and Otome fans I run into got introduced through AMVs. It's more common than I thought. I always thought the majority of anime fans stay away from AMVs since they're a "dime a dozen". Eh, I'm thinking way too much.

Cool little discovery story, Mai HiME is a great series. It only got better over the years. ^_^

Yeah, I have no problem with AMVs. Did you know that, like the fanfics, most ShizNat fans were introduced via AMVs. A lot of the ones I've met on YT don't seem to care about the Mai HiME series *sob* Just ShizNat. I guess that's a taste of my own medicine, as I don't really like Inuyasha as a whole. Just my beloved Kagura and perhaps two other characters. xD

Welp, as I said in the other thread, I've been a fan of this series for about a month now. I had heard of it a few years ago, and I had watched the first couple eps but I didn't really get into it. I don't entirely know why XD I think I got distracted by some other form of shinyness.

But then Luu suggested I should watch it, and I totally trust his judgement on anime so I thought I'd give it a shot! And now I am a total fan.

There are many reasons I love this show. The characters are amazing. Even the characters with not much character development kick the asses of a bunch of characters in other anime without much character development. Did that make sense? I'm going to pretend it made sense XDD The plot arcs were also so interesting. Even when depressing it totally kept my attention. I don't think I was ever bored watching this series.

Midori Sugiura wrote:Welp, as I said in the other thread, I've been a fan of this series for about a month now. I had heard of it a few years ago, and I had watched the first couple eps but I didn't really get into it. I don't entirely know why XD I think I got distracted by some other form of shinyness.

But then Luu suggested I should watch it, and I totally trust his judgement on anime so I thought I'd give it a shot! And now I am a total fan.

There are many reasons I love this show. The characters are amazing. Even the characters with not much character development kick the asses of a bunch of characters in other anime without much character development. Did that make sense? I'm going to pretend it made sense XDD The plot arcs were also so interesting. Even when depressing it totally kept my attention. I don't think I was ever bored watching this series.

Haha, how did I miss this one. XD Whatever "shinyness" distracted you must of been Zuka related. ;P I'm so glad you got into the series. Mai HiME has a strong and devoted fanbase, albeit a small one compared to other series like Naruto. It's one of there best out there, mainly because of the characters you can easily relate to. The relationships are my favorite part of the series. ^_^

Mmm... shiny Zuka craaaaacck. *drools* I mean... yes. The relationships are definitely another favorite part of the series for me too. Well especially since the whole plot depends on relationships and they didn't Fuka it up :D

Midori Sugiura wrote:Mmm... shiny Zuka craaaaacck. *drools* I mean... yes. The relationships are definitely another favorite part of the series for me too. Well especially since the whole plot depends on relationships and they didn't Fuka it up :D

I agree there. Everything was kept on a nice balance throughout the series. The only problem is not giving certain relationship more time to blossom on screen. i.e. Akane and Kazuya.

Ehehe... I'm another one of those people introduced to the series through YouTube. ^^; I had heard of it before on ANN, but, for some reason, I thought it was just another fan-service series so I disregarded it for a few years. The AMVs made me realize that it had more substance than that and when I found it on Buy.com for only $27 and free shipping, I decided to take a chance and buy the series on a whim. x3 Just like Luu, I was addicted from ep 1. ^^

I found Mai-HiME through it's manga counterpart on OneManga. My sister showed it to me and said it was good and I asked her, "Did you read it?"

"Nope." Was her answer, and then she explained that she had seen the first few episodes and skipped to the end. She really makes no sense, but I read it anyway and decided to take her word for it. And then I was hooked.

So I decided to move onto the anime, which I thought would've been close to the same but was more or less completely different and it was there that I finally realized Shizuru was a lesbian and thus ShizNat became my favorite couple.

I like it because...well...I don't know. It's one of those animes where you watch and you see a bunch of stuff you saw in other animes and then you feel nerdy because you got that. But I really think HiME took all that stuff an made it more original. You know what I mean?

Kara wrote:I like it because...well...I don't know. It's one of those animes where you watch and you see a bunch of stuff you saw in other animes and then you feel nerdy because you got that. But I really think HiME took all that stuff an made it more original. You know what I mean?

The dark second half of Mai-HIME can be blamed for that. The first half felt like your typical monster-of-the-day set up. However, it did advance plot and characters which many anime have trouble doing. To accomplish all that within a 26 episode span is quite a feat. ^_~

Luu Sky Sapphire wrote:

Kara wrote:I like it because...well...I don't know. It's one of those animes where you watch and you see a bunch of stuff you saw in other animes and then you feel nerdy because you got that. But I really think HiME took all that stuff an made it more original. You know what I mean?

The dark second half of Mai-HIME can be blamed for that. The first half felt like your typical monster-of-the-day set up. However, it did advance plot and characters which many anime have trouble doing. To accomplish all that within a 26 episode span is quite a feat. ^_~

*gasp* YES! Exactly! Omigosh, you sir, are ingenious.

Kara wrote:*gasp* YES! Exactly! Omigosh, you sir, are ingenious.

*bows* Thank you, thank you. Why am I so damn good at deciphering explanations. 8)

So. Finally a repost~

I can't remember what my first "touch" with Mai HiME was, but I remember that I watched some vid on youtube from epi 1 and 2 (I think), when Natsuki and Mikoto fighting with each other. Well, I knew Natsuki, because I saw fanarts about her and Shizuru (first experience with them ) and thought, that Mikoto was "on the dark side" XDDDD Next thing I remember was this AMV... I got spoiled like hell XDD Then... no idea, lol. Whatever, I really enjoyed watching it for the first time (and for the other times, too ^_^)

what amv did you see? do you remember? ^^
i watched one of nao, not much spoilers in there.
(altough i tought that Nao was the abosolute bad guy who was going to be defeated by the main characters ^^)

Kino karutta-chan wrote:So. Finally a repost~

I can't remember what my first "touch" with Mai HiME was, but I remember that I watched some vid on youtube from epi 1 and 2 (I think), when Natsuki and Mikoto fighting with each other. Well, I knew Natsuki, because I saw fanarts about her and Shizuru (first experience with them Razz) and thought, that Mikoto was "on the dark side" XDDDD Next thing I remember was this AMV... I got spoiled like hell XDD Then... no idea, lol. Whatever, I really enjoyed watching it for the first time (and for the other times, too ^_^)

lol Aside from AMV introductions, the fanarts really captured people's attention in the mid-2000s. I honestly never ran into the fanarts until after watching episode one. I would see Natsuki with this other girl and my mind would start pondering...turns out there was something between them. ^_~ As we already know.

Mikoto on the dark side? Haha, talk about foreshadowing the festival arc...

denerop wrote:what amv did you see? do you remember? ^^
i watched one of nao, not much spoilers in there.
(altough i tought that Nao was the abosolute bad guy who was going to be defeated by the main characters ^^)

What's what I thought of Miyu and Alyssa. ^_~ At first, I was expecting the Searrs Foundation to have a pretty long career. And they would of, if Mai HiME remained a monster-of-the-day anime. The Festival arc changed everything. Nao, I thought of her the anti-heroine once she joined up with the HiME Rangers. xD

I was introduced to Mai-HiME by an AMV.
a guy in my class in college bluetoothed it to my mate who then sent it to me
(I wonder if I still have it, doubt it). It started out with Natsuki doing her little twirl with her guns before she calls Duran. The music for it was Nickelback's "Hero" which suited it perfectly. I just fell in love with it, though the vid file wasn't named Mai-HiME so I didn't know what the anime was for ages. Happy as he'll that I found the name cause Mai-HiME was the first anime series I've ever watched and is still the one I love the most

:D Thanks for sharing your background story, Acid! Many fans discover their favorite anime/manga series through AMVs it seems, especially Mai-HiME/Otome. We can blame the heaps of ShizNat music videos. ;p

A friend of mine introduced me to this awesome series. She told me about the whole Hime Carnival, and these girls fighting with giant robots with the life of their most precious ones at a stake. I was immediately hooked by the idea and downloaded the series that very day. I think that friend later regretted her suggestion because I forced her to read all of my fanfics! XD

AtlantisLux wrote:A friend of mine introduced me to this awesome series. She told me about the whole Hime Carnival, and these girls fighting with giant robots with the life of their most precious ones at a stake. I was immediately hooked by the idea and downloaded the series that very day. I think that friend later regretted her suggestion because I forced her to read all of my fanfics! XD

xD Not that reading your fanfiction is a painful experience or anything. :3 *tease*

Have you posted your stories in our Fan Works section yet? Or do I have to log onto ff.net and spam reviews? -_-

Aww, nope, I've yet to post my despicable works here. Soon, I promise ^^

(teaser!!!!!!! 8) )