MM! Review

I don’t know what made me watch this anime in the first place. The tsundere-harem-ecchi genre really isn’t my thing (well, with the exception of Bakemonogatari) Today I will be reviewing MM! by studio Xebec so lets get to it.  Taro Sado is a masochist who is in high school.  Taro falls in love with a beautiful girl but can’t confess his love due to his masochism.  He decided to go to the Second Voluntary Club to get help.  He meets a girl named Mio Isurugi who is a self-proclaimed God and Arashino Yuno the girl who turned him into a masochist in the first place.  Arashino Yuno is in fact suffers from androphobia and punches men whenever they get to close. Along with some other characters that include a cross dresser, Taro’s mother and sister who are in love with him and a lolicon they set out on a mission to cure Taro from his masochism in anyway possible.

MM!’s animation isn’t going to blow you way but it is still well done.  The characters are all clear and very well drawn.  It is obvious that a lot of time was spent animating the characters and making sure that they are easy on the eyes.  I’m not sure how to explain it but the characters are animated with a specific glow or shine that make them look alive and full of energy.  The backgrounds serve their purpose, they aren’t extremely detailed but they are full of color and pleasing to look at.  Also the action scenes as I guess I can call them are very well animated.  There are many scenes of the protagonist Taro getting abused (feeding into his masochism) and when they are mixed in with some strange out of place shonen actions (yay for the dragon ball z references) it looks great.

8/10

 The characters are a mixed bag of funny and stupid characters.  Taro is an above average protagonist, it is funny how one second he is a normal average high school boy and the next second he is a writhing mess, thriving off his sexual pleasures based off of abuse.  He is actually a caring person when he isn’t getting off from girls abusing him.  Mio is a lot of fun, and a huge sadist.  She is very self-centered and she thinks of herself very highly.  Most of her screen time is spent abusing or coming up with ways to abuse Taro.  She pawns abusing Taro off as a way to cure him, instead her actually admitting that she enjoys it.  Despite what I just said, the end of the series really focuses on her as a character and some great character development occurs.  Arashiko is scared of men, and she punches them when they get to close, (kind of like Inami from Working!!) the only difference is Taro enjoys getting punched  (unlike Takanashi from Working !!)  The best part of Arashiko is that there is a real reason behind her androphobia unlike Working!!’s dumb reason.  Well enough about the good characters because there are some poor undeveloped ones.  Taro’s mother and sister are used as comic relief and they suck.  The joke that centers on their sexual attraction to him comes off as creepy and incest like.  Noa is another awful character; she is a senior of Taro but look like a little kid and comes off as extremely annoying.  I hate the show whenever she came on screen.  The rest of the cast is generally underdeveloped but they add their own unique comedy to the series.

8/10

The opening and closing themes were terrible; I fast-forwarded them almost every time.  Its not a big deal and doesn’t take away from the anime but I enjoy themes and this one let me down.  MM! was very well cast, Jun Fukuyama plays Taro which is funny because he also plays Takanashi from Working!!. (poor guy is getting the shit beaten out of him)  He does a great job overall and is at his best when he scream due to his masochism-delight.

7.5/10

There is very little structure to MM!’s plot.  With the exception of a few key episodes the show is pretty much an episodic comedy. There is no real over-riding plot but I never expected much plot wise.  MM! is a pretty ridiculous comedy series so there is much more comedy that there is structure.  The comedy is pretty hit or miss but I found myself laughing a lot.  You find many different references to other anime, especially Dragon Ball Z references.  There is a lot of reuse of comic relief.  I don’t even want to try to count the times Taro gets thrown out a window or Taro’s mother hits on him.  It really starts to get old after awhile.  For a fan-service oriented show there is barely any fan-service.  Tell me if I was wrong but I believe there is only 1 panty shot in the whole 12 episodes.  This was a nice surprise, I was completely expecting a show ruled by fan-service and it wasn’t.

8/10

Overall MM! is a very ridiculous comedy that made me laugh a lot.  It made me feel like I was 14 again. (If this had come out when I was that old it would have probably been my favorite anime back then)  This show is not for everyone though, and it will pretty much be hit or miss.  I recommend watching a few episodes before you give up on it.

8/10

Thanks for reading, please tell me what you thought about the review and the anime if you have seen it!

-Xana