Oh, excuse me – I mean ‘Maji – Oh! Samurai Girls’.
The title that Sentai has gone with for their own release of MajiKoi amuses me. It seems pretty clear that they’re trying to confuse people into thinking it has some connection to Hyakka Ryouran Samurai Girls, which they have released as ‘Samurai Girls’. However, anyone hoping for more of that is going to be fairly disappointed, as the first episode was shockingly free of bare boobs and panty shots, a few large bust sizes notwithstanding.
MajiKoi surprised me. It was actually decently entertaining. I watched it on a whim; on the one hand, it looked pretty generic. On the other hand, there were multiple males in the group of friends, and there’s just enough in the notion of a city wherein everyone is still classed by their families’ feudal-era standing that it could be of mild interest.
As it turns out, MajiKoi is BakaTest, but with actual physical combat instead of academically-based sprites. It is also much less annoying, at least in the first episode. And it has the most amazing physics ever… which is to say, even as short-skirted lasses leap, tumble, stab, kick, and punch, there is nary a panty in sight. Color me floored.
The first episode is actually engaging enough, if not amazing. It propels itself through pace and energy; the lulls are few and far between, and probably with good reason, as the characters thus far have little to distinguish them from legion others like them. The only one I’ll probably remember six month from the end of the show will be the big-breated, big-bruiser Momoyo Kawakami, the object of the amusingly-named Yamato Naoe’s crush. She’s loud, she’s strong, she loves fighting, and she rejects Yamato in a mature fashion rare for female characters in shows of this stripe.
Unfortunately, with said rejection, we’re treated to a shot of the other four young women in the main cast suddenly seeing an opening for themselves. Guess the wheels couldn’t stay on this bus very long, after all, although I was sort of hoping for a Kimikiss meets Ikkitousen as opposed to BakaTest with ground combat and twice the female competitors. Ah well, next week could prove me wrong, but, in a crowded field, a fast-paced first episode is hardly enough to keep the crowd engaged.
GAR GAR Stegosaurus 
I watched this episode too and found it extremely hard to recall anyone’s names (except for Naoe and Momoyo), because they were too damn many. Funny how I learned that a lot of the girls are voiced by eroge seiyuu.
Apparently there’s a connection to They Are My Noble Masters, where one of the girls got imported from.
Naoe’s name was ridiculous. Also, there’s a character with that name in Mirage of Blaze, which helped me recall it.
I was actually under the impression that the robot was the import, not one of the girls.
Majikoi is a cross between Ikkitousen and Baka to Test. I have to say that it was surprisingly entertaining but if they can’t keep up with the same greatness of episode 1, then this show is only going down hill from here on.
It looks like it’ll be harem silliness starting next week, so my money is on it going downhill from here on out.
If it keeps the fights up like this, I have no doubts that it’ll keep being entertaining. If it doesn’t, there’ll likely be very little of worth to salvage.
I’m not sure that twelve episodes of this would really be hyper-entertaining, although it would be preferable to stupid harem junk… which seems to be where the whole thing is headed. Ah well – one decent episode still puts it ahead of a lot of other shows.
I was surprised by how little clothing damage & pantyshots there were, as well as how entertaining the first ep was. Of course it’s more or less guaranteed to nosedive from here on out as the harem antics are brought to the fore……but still, I had fun with this episode.
Yeah, it was actually surprisingly entertaining in the first go-round.
They must have amazing clothes made from teflon, or something.