Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.5
Overall		2.5

Majikoi Oh! Samurai Girls: Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie Review

Fan service and politics mix about as well as oil and water.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman October 23, 2012

Some extremely wise man once stated that a rose by any other name would still smell as sweet, but what happens when the aroma you’re referencing seems to be emanating from a veritable pile of manure? That may be at least a little hyperbolic, but Majikoi – Oh! Samurai Girls perhaps tries to distract prescient anime fans by changing its name from the original Maji de Watashi ni Koi Shinasai!, possibly to draw attention away from its very popular and well received source light novel, while never addressing the central stench emanating from the series itself. The funny thing is, Majikoi – Oh! Samurai Girls starts out winningly enough, albeit with a too tired kind of combo shōnen-harem plotline that has been seen way too many times before. And the series very wisely has a winking attitude toward its very fan service, something that at least invests the proceedings with a little meta arch humor that certainly makes things winningly funny a lot of the time. But then the series devolves into a number of rather unusual and even melodramatic twists that may leave some who came for the scantily clad girls wondering what exactly they’ve gotten themselves into.

As is typical in most harem outings, we have a likable if improbable young male hero who finds himself surrounded by a gaggle of equally improbably gorgeous women. In this case the guy is Yamato, a kid with a pretty serious stash of porn that evidently doesn’t keep him from at least occasionally thinking with his larger head (if you get my drift). Yamato’s female co-stars are the usual bunch of sex crazed, incredibly buxom women (girls, actually), some of whom have samurai ancestry, but all of whom have joined the same high school clique as Yamato. Majiko – Oh! Samurai Girls starts off in a traditionally manic manner, almost like an old Keystone Cops comedy, with characters literally falling over each other and the ensuing mayhem leading to some enjoyable, if awfully old feeling, comedy.

The series is set largely at Kawakami High, a place that seems to have been forged out of every high school geek’s nightmares: not only is there a very definite pecking order (something that plays into the samurai aspect of the series), there’s also a tacit understanding that when conflict breaks out, the only “reasonable” way to solve it is through physical altercations. That in turn highlights one of the female characters, Momoyo, a kind of mentor to Yamato who is also supposedly one of the strongest people on earth, and certainly one of the strongest at Kawakami High. Momoyo has a sort of stepsister (I frankly never completely understood the relationship) named Kazuko who idolizes Mayomo and spends every day attempting to make herself as strong as her quasi-sibling. This includes wearing a huge tire on her back in which Yamato frequently hitches a ride.

There are some undeniably enjoyable aspects to this series, although they tend to come in little bursts and are rarely sustained even throughout any given episode. One of the funniest and most effective episodes is about a missing dog, a dog that seems to be a good deal smarter than Yamato or any of the girls (which in at least a couple of cases isn’t saying all that much). But the episode then just retreats into a standard battle scenario with a bunch of bad guys. That tends to happen repeatedly with the series, even after it takes a weird little turn part way through the already pretty brief episode arc.

What almost seems to be the case with Majikoi – Oh! Samurai Girls is that a whole new creative team was brought in about halfway through the series (this isn’t the case—it just seems like it). The show starts out as a frankly trite but passably enjoyable exercise in fan service with harem and action aspects, and even manages to exploit some decent humor quite a bit of the time. But the series takes a really odd left turn about halfway through where things get not only bizarrely dramatic, a political element is added, certainly one of the oddest choices ever for a series that hadn’t up to that point had much on its mind other than who might end up bedding Yamato. Is it fair to fault a series for a sudden and maybe even daring tonal shift? Probably not, but with a series like Majikoi – Oh! Samurai Girls, you simply can’t have it both ways. A show built around a harem premise with ubiquitous fan service is not the place that lovers of this kind of entertainment are going to flock for “thought provoking” issue oriented enterprises.

Majikoi – Oh! Samurai Girls delivers exactly what it promises, up to a point at least. The series is rife with fan service, including “naughty bits” that aren’t typically seen even in series that feature this traditional anime element. But that’s exactly what is going to exasperate some viewers who may come to this show expecting fan service and nothing but: the series makes an attempt, fitful though it is, to be something other than a “mere” harem show. My hunch is those wanting the fan service are going to be seriously upset when Majikoi – Oh! Samurai Girls deviates from that kind of offering, while those who may in fact have been interested in some of the action or even political intrigue elements will never make it past the fan service to begin with.

Majikoi Oh! Samurai Girls: Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Majikoi – Oh! Samurai Girls is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Sentai Filmworks with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. Whatever failings the series may have in and of itself, they aren't visited on the often sterling look of the show. Line detail here is exceptionally sharp and the series exploits a very colorful palette which is robustly offered in this high definition presentation. There are occasional kind of unusual elements—like a "Robbie the Robot" character—that also are very sharply designed and help elevate the basic visual look of the series. There are a couple of bathing sequences where mist passes over naked females, and that is rendered with very appealing realism. Character designs aren't especially innovative in and of themselves, but they're distinctive and differentiated enough to provide some variety and interest, even if a lot of anime fans are going to feel like they've seen these characters before in other series.

Majikoi Oh! Samurai Girls: Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Majikoi – Oh! Samurai Girls features lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mixes in Japanese and English. The mixes here are virtually identical other than the voice work. The English dub here tends to favor a bit more of the squeaky high quasi-Valley Girl type of characterization, which some fans may find annoying after a while. The Japanese cast by comparison is relatively subdued. The tracks actually improve somewhat in the second half of the series when action elements start exploding with more vigor. Dialogue is cleanly presented and the series' cute pop soundtrack also sounds fine.

Majikoi Oh! Samurai Girls: Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Shorts are twelve brief comic pieces which are almost like radio plays: they feature a static screen with a little horse moving along a time line to indicate the length of the piece while the soundtrack offers voices. The shorts are simply numbered I, 2, 3, etc. and are all in HD and vary in time by a few seconds, with all coming in around the 4:00 mark, more or less.


• Clean Opening Animation (HD; 4:36)


• Clean Closing Animation (HD; 17:40)

Majikoi Oh! Samurai Girls: Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Majikoi – Oh! Samurai Girls starts out appealingly enough, albeit in a rut many anime fans have been stuck in previously (many times). The show makes no bones about offering a harem storyline and lots (and lots and lots) of fan service, but when it suddenly tries investing the series with something other than what was initially advertised it goes seriously off the rails. This is a series that is undeniably old hat and reminiscent of many, many other anime, but which would have done better in the long run to have simply stayed stuck in its comfortable rut. When it veers outside of that rut, things simply are too tonally out of whack with the rest of the show for it to hang together very well. Still, lovers of fan service may find enough here to get them through the other elements of this show, though my hunch is they may end up turning off the sound and just watching the buxom ladies bounce by.