Mahoraba: Heartful Days

I have to admit that I read many glowing reviews for Mahoraba: Heartful Days, and I can see why after watching it myself.
The story follows the usual format of "boy wants girl" while having to deal with a wodge of meddling, strange and very pecuiliar roomies. The girl, Aoba Kozue, has everything going for her except..... Yes, she suffers from MPD, and everybody around her knows about it, except for boy (Shiratori, Ryushi ).
What follows is a romp of enjoyment. The main characters are well developed (and all rather odd in their own way), and the story moves forward without loosing ... sight of the "boy wants girl" goal.
It is really funny at times, and tragic at the same time because Kozue is really a very likeable and amiable character, and everybody around her does their level best to protect her from falling into one of her alter egos.
I loved the ED ("Boku no SPEED de" by Chihiro Yonekura) and I loved the storybook like titles and the 4-koma strips in some of the episodes. In fact the only real failing as far as I was concerned was the ending, this one was just too good to stop at 26 episodes.
The MPD issue is a difficult one though, but it doesnt detract from the story on its own, and the alter egos are hilarious themselves, providing that extra bit of strangeness that works so well in the series.
Artwork is perfect, fitting into the mood of a particular episode. This is a 2005 series so the artwork does fit into the style from that period. Do not expect slick and shiney though, it would not work here. This is a playful series, at times you would think it is a storybook you are watching, but that just makes it that little bit more unique.
I would say that this was one of those unique finds that very few people every watch, but those who discover the series are very lucky, because this is probably one of the better anime of this genre around.

I have to admit that I stayed away from this show for quite a while because I saw the description and immediately thought "Love Hina." Not to say that I think Love Hina was terrible, but it was a struggle to get through. Most people that have watched it probably feel the same way. But this show is really much much better than Love Hina in every way.

Mahoraba, like many romance series', including Love Hina, centers around the main character coming to live in an apartment surrounded by a bunch of strange characters. Yes, many of them are girls, but this ... isn't a harem thing, since there's really only one romantic interest from the start and all the way through. The thing that separates this from most other romance stories is the characters and to some extent the story.

The main character, Shiratori Ryushi is starting art school to write children's books. He is shown almost right away to be a talented artist, as well as being very kind to everyone. He is a bit of a doormat sometimes, and is pushed around by people often. But most of the time, he offers his help anyway and is obviously trying to be kind. Unlike many characters like this often found in romance series', Shiratori does show some backbone, and doesn't always back down when it's something important.

The heroine here is Aoba Kazue. Even though the show is about Shiratori's days at the apartment, Kazue is the star of the show and the character that everyone is centered around. An exceedingly kind and thoughtful high school girl, Kazue is Shiratori's cousin and landlady of the apartments. But she has a secret. When certain things happen, she transforms into one of several different girls, each complete with unique and very fun personalities. Really the only thing they all have in common is their love for umeboshi. Everyone at the apartments loves Kazue and has fun together while sometimes covering up when she transforms, since she doesn't know about it.

The other characters are all fun and unique, like Tamami, the strange girl that is Kazue's best friend and a member of the Occult Club in school. She gets jealous of Shiratori often and blackmails him into doing things, and just generally tries to keep them from getting to close. Johnny and Haibara make quite a pair as a dog puppet and his "extra," the guy whose hand he's on. Asumi, a middle schooler, and her mother, a job-hopping lazy woman who sleeps all day long instead of doing her job, which she is quite terrible at provide fun as well. And of course Momono, the college student that drinks with Haibara and Johnny in Shiratori's room every night. She's very often the start of troubles that Shiratori has, and is always having fun doing it.

This show is a very character driven show, and it exceeds expectations on every front. The characters are all fun and unique and they all are well developed and great to watch. They all seem to be insane, save for the main character Shiratori, who gets tossed around like a chew toy at times. Kazue really brings everyone together, and every day at the apartments is full of warm memories. For most of the series there isn't a whole lot of story. It's really a string of episodes that just develop each of the characters, while slowly building the relationship between Kazue and Shiratori. Near the end there is a more clearly defined plot and you learn the tragic circumstances behind Kazue's problems. It does develop a little slowly, but the characters are so great, I really didn't mind at all.

The artwork is great as well. The drawing style is interesting, a bit different than most anime you see, and it does seem kind of childish in a way, but it really fits the series well. It was great the way they put in manga blocks to show/augment certain scenes. The ongoing children's story also fits very well. I also like the sound in the series. The voice actors all do a good job with their characters and the music is very nice. The opening an endings are all good and add to the cuteness of the show. The music and sound effects in the show are all well done and really help convey emotions well.

This was a very enjoyable show that is nearly perfect. The characters are all wonderfully developed and provide a lit of fun in each episode. The only problem I really had with the show was that there was a question or two at the end that I would've like answered, but I can also see why they's want to leave it up to imagination. For that I'll have to give Mahoraba a strong 9. It isn't quite worth a 10 though, but I think everyone should see this one.

Mahoraba is a gentle romantic dramedy about a group of people living in a dormitory owned by Kozue, a high school girl with multiple personalities that inherited the property from her deceased parents. The story is framed in some ways around the romance between Kozue and Ryushi, an art student that moves into the dormitory at the start of the story, but in truth it's more of a slice of life ensemble show about all the people that live there, sometimes to its detriment.

There's nothing that's really "bad" about this series, but it lacks impact for a few reasons. One is in the dated character ... designs, which are the kind of mid 00's moe where every character looks, talks and acts like a middle schooler even if they're an adult. That flattens what should be a refreshing, adult setting with mostly older characters into the same sort of high school romcom anime loaded with all the cliches that you would expect. It also doesn't help matters that the main heroine, Kozue, is the least interesting member of the cast, a sort of vacuous but angelic and pure character with little definition. Having multiple personalities is a kind of gimmick for her, which is unique I suppose, but I don't think it's treated especially realistically and it's not interesting or thematically relevant enough to be more than a quirk. That being said, it works as a platform for Arai Satomi to show off some impressive range as Kozue's VA, as she's called upon to voice 5 completely different characters with different voices and mannerisms, so it isn't really a negative as a whole. The series as a whole is also too gentle for its own good sometimes, the dramatic parts often lack bite because it feels like there's a hard limit on how dark it's willing to be.

The key reason why the series lacks impact though is that the central romance itself lacks impact. As mentioned above, this is really more of an ensemble series than a series about Kozue and Ryushi, and as a result, it sometimes feels like Kozue is relegated to being a side character in her own story, as they go deep into side stories about Megumi's overseas romance or Sayoko and Asami's mother-daughter relationship. There's little noticeable progress between the two leads until the 3 episode arc that concludes the series, and at that point I just wasn't invested in it because it felt like there hadn't been any prior romantic moments between the two that made me want to see them get together. Ryushi is the sort of vaguely cringey nice guy beta male that you often see in shows of this type and it feels uninspired and like a poor fit here. You can get away with this to an extent when the characters are 16 year olds, but when a college-aged adult is turning red and passing out from embarrassment over holding hands or calling someone by their given name, it becomes unspeakably lame. This is especially a problem with Ryushi, whose character design and female voice actor already make him look and sound like he hasn't even hit puberty yet even though he's supposedly old enough to drink, which only emphasizes the unfortunate sense of immaturity that seems imposed on every adult character in the series.

There are some positive aspects to the series worth mentioning as well. Framing it and occasionally animating it like a picture book, which Ryushi is writing for his college course throughout the series, is a nice touch and gives it a unique look as opposed to the normal look of the show, which is much less interesting. Some of the side characters (Sayoko and Asami in particular) are also very good and end up being funnier and more interesting than Ryushi and Kozue. Overall though, this is an inoffensive romantic dramedy that is not particularly memorable because of a weak central romance and a pervasive mildness that rounds the sharp edges off of storylines or characters that might stray a little too far from the comforting and gentle formula that this and many other shows before it have established.