[Anime Review] Maria Holic Season 1 - A Juicy Nothing Burger

I barely remember watching both this and Alive (the second season) when they were still airing. That second season also made me angry for some reason. I'll bring that back up at the end because I have a theory about it after finishing this season. Welcome to my review of the first 12 episodes of Maria Holic.

Source - HiDIVE Official Promotional Art

The premise for this series was pretty simple: Kanoko Miyamae, a second year high school student, wants to fall in love with a beautiful maiden at Ame no Kisaki, the all-girls Catholic academy where her parents fell in love. Instead, she met Mariya Shido, a graceful and elegant young "lady," and his mostly quiet, frequently rude and drop dead sassy maid, Matsurika Shinōji. Kanoko’s school and love life were never the same again.

I’m pretty surprised at how often this series was classified as a romantic comedy on a variety of different websites and in different Anime circles. I mean, it is “technically” true but if you were to believe the official English-translated lyrics and visuals of the opening, “Hanaji” - Yū Kobayashi, you’d think this was some kind of mad sex comedy about an abusive guy making a lesbian straight. That’s not “technically” wrong either. I’d classify this more as a slice of life with some light supernatural elements and very adult sensibilities instead. If you come at this for a major plot or deep characters, you will probably leave dissatisfied. Most of what there was of both elements was shown through flashes of background gags, primarily revolving around barely copyright safe parodies (in the case of God’s video game collection), random Japanese references that would be lost on most Western viewers, and cute girls doing cute things that end up going terribly wrong in some extreme form. The ending, “Kimi ni, Mune Kyun” - sung by the three lead Japanese voice actresses, was in on the joke and one of my favorite parts. There were different elements shown throughout related to the events of that episode that often were just as creative and chaotic with several running gags shared across each iteration too.

There was this one particular season long joke that I thought was very clever. Kanoko was so horny and driven by her impulse to ogle her friends and teachers (like your typical male harem protagonist) that she would frequently forget to do her homework or study for exams. Instead of outright saying she was a generally bad student (until they did as a throwaway comment), Mariya found an Eldritch tentacle monster in the forest on the school grounds, trapped it inside of Kanoko's schoolbag (with a very loose reference to the film The Exorcist), and the rest of the season, it would consume anything that went into said bag with a slimy yet ecstatic gurgle sound effect. After failing to be rid of it, there was this one scene where it was just hanging out in her school locker and spoke to her directly for the first time. The Japanese text on screen to show what it was saying wasn't translated to English in the dub unless you turned on the Japanese language subtitles (which didn't match the English dialogue otherwise). When it called her “Master” and began caressing her face leaving a trail of slime, it made my skin crawl and was such a horrifying moment. Give me more of that please.

Source

I think that's where this season partially failed for me. It took almost a full month to complete it while watching other Anime. When I say it failed, I'm not saying it was a horrible watch. It just wasn't as compelling as I expected from the premise given in the first two episodes. I could watch it in small chunks to get some laughs here and there but it wasn't a meal or completely filling. With how insane many of the jokes were and the frequency of them, they essentially neutralized themselves into becoming almost meaningless (hence why it's a nothing burger for me).

Speaking of that dub: I hate that I'm saying this because I enjoy these voice actresses in many other dubs, but Monica Rial and Jessica Calvello were miscast as Mariya and Kanoko when compared to their Japanese counterparts. Mariya in the original had both a male and female voice actor with different tones and purpose. Monica was the only one to voice him.

I felt the split voice acting duties was in service to developing his character and the unique nature of his situation in the main plot. The male voice was often used for the outright threatening and bullying of Kanoko. The female one was used instead to sexually arouse and gaslight her.

Jessica performed Kanoko's voice work with a southern United States, country bumpkin presentation. It immediately took me out of the experience with how much it didn't fit the kind of character she was in the story. Her Japanese counterpart handled the different levels of extreme her personality portrayed in a more believable way. She was an outsider to the school and didn't fully fit with the rest of the cast, but as someone from that region of the United States, I find using that as a way to make the character feel out of their element in dubs is overused and somewhat offensive at times. This one really bothered me more than most. Note: I only sampled the dub a few times throughout this watch and completed the first episode in both languages, so these may not be issues for your experience.

There was a major highlight to this series that I would be doing a disservice by withholding it: the studio, much of the animation staff and the director were the same ones that did Puella Magi Madoka Magicka. Many of the styles used for the Witch's realms and to show the mental and emotional states of the main characters in that series possibly got their start in this one. I haven't seen too many works from the Studio so fans of them, correct me if I'm wrong. My favorite parts of these revolved around the religious elements shown throughout the season. This was not outright denouncing religion but was making fun of and embracing Christianity, several Pagan religions and Buddhism. As a Buddhist, I appreciated how they handled those elements when they came up and got a few chuckles out of the one or two post credits scenes related to that particular belief system.

Source - Official Shaft Portfolio

My Closing Thoughts

If the second season ends up anything like this first one, I won't hate it, just be disappointed because in some sick way, I kind of wanted an abuse comedy from this series. The worst thing to happen was an early threatening of sexual assault that never went anywhere. I might be going to hell now for that. I do plan to continue into season 2 but have a hunch that I may be doing a B-Side on the entire series.

What were your thoughts on this first season? This review was smaller than most of mine and not as detailed as I'd like but if you enjoyed it, feel free to reblog, vote and reply down below. Thank you for reading and have a wonderful night.

Important Information

• Based on a manga series by Minari Endō
• Studio: SHAFT
• Seasons/Episodes: Winter 2009 (12 episodes)
• Genres: Seinen, Romantic Comedy, Sketch Comedy, Adult Humor, High School Drama
• Recommended Similar Content: Love, Election and Chocolate (similar type of comedic presentation on a smaller scale with a richer plot); Princess Jellyfish (similar type of romantic comedy with more focused adult elements and plot)
• Streaming on: HiDIVE