Review of Majikoi: Oh! Samurai Girls

This might be the lowest score I've given anything I've ever finished. Due to this, the review will be broken into two sections, a short version covering the scoring criteria, and a longer version focused on the couple "interesting" choices that were made during the creation of Majikoi, a list that mainly consists of critical flaws. Short Version: Story: 1, There's literally nothing going on here, Majikoi does a couple things different (will talk about that in the long version), but at the end of the day, there is no world-building for its supernatural elements, no plot, and really just no story to speak of. Majikoi isa regurgitated version of the countless generic harem anime we've already seen.

Art: 3, Harem/Ecchi series thrive on fan service for this hard to be so unappealing is just kind of sad really. It keeps an alright consistency in the quality, but that's not really a compliment when the quality is as poor as this is.

Sound: 3, None of the OSTs were memorable, the OP and ED were meh, skipped 'em almost every time. Most of the VA was pretty annoying (English Dub). Also, whoever decided that the MC should shout "nee-san" all the time, you literally made me cringe every time I heard it.

Character: 1, 100% reliant on troupes; you've seen all these characters before, now they just have different names, appearances and voices, well, sometimes. I just binged the whole thing and I can only remember two character's names and that's because I have specific issues with those two characters (will cover in longer version)

Enjoyment: 2, I found a whole two scenes entertaining in the entire series, so I generously gave 2 points.

Overall: 2, Look no one really expects the most from the harem genre, but I genuinely wasn't expecting it to be this bad. It's unfortunate that there are a couple formulas on how to write harems that get repeated over and over, but its worse when one just decides to crash and burn instead of doing anything.

Long Version:

Episode 1: Don't worry the long version isn't episode by episode, but I found episode 1 to be unlike anything I had ever seen before. However, that isn't a compliment; I hadn't seen it before, because it was an awful idea. Who in their right mind decides to give big introductions to the majority of the cast in the first episode? This episode was a pointless action reel to introduce characters; the only information we got was about some type of skirmish battle between classes at some combat-based school, and then a shit ton of troupes forced down our throats. I really don't understand the idea to bring the whole harem cast in immediately either, I prefer it to more so trickle in. It's not like I'm expecting only one or two characters in the first episode, but I'm not expecting much more than that. When you try to squeeze almost your entire cast into the first episode, giving all of them some lengthy introduction, uh yeah, that's what the episode is gonna be then, unfortunately the only thing that was introduced was girls = strong, boy = smart.
Also, I'm not saying if you wanted to put all your characters in the first episode/chapter of a story that you can't do that, but there's a smart way, and this isn't it. Tenchi Muyo: War on Geminar is a great example of how you can get away with doing that. In the first episode of it, the majority of the cast appears on screen in a very short amount of time because they are all present in order to honor the empress being coronated. While the majority of them don't have lines, I found it incredibly enjoyable upon a rewatch to notice the majority of the cast was present in the first episode. It's a little harder to do in a novel format, but with visual storytelling it's pretty easy. Dependent on the size of your cast, you could do something similar to Majikoi, but the big issue was the length of the introductions and the number of them. You would also really want to showcase character interactions, because this first episode of Majikoi was too filled with action to properly do that.

The "filler": Alright, let me start this off by saying I have not seen the source material this anime was adapted from, and because of that, I'm not sure that the scenes I'm talking about are genuine filler, but there are a handful of episodes that felt like complete filler. They were mainly earlier episodes, most of the scenes that filled these episodes we either purely fan service driven, or I think they were supposed to be scenes to showcase character interactions, but let's face it, once you figure out which troupe each girl is, you can figure out how those scenes will play out. Why did this happen? Probably because someone thought it was a great idea to throw every character in the anime into episode 1, instead of slowly trickling them in over time. There's nothing more to say here, these scenes accomplish nothing.

The "setting": I won't lie to you and say, "I gave Majikoi my full attention while watching it", because if I had been foolish enough to do so, I likely would've fatally wounded myself, and been unable to type this review. The point is, it's possible I've missed some grand piece of information, but personally I have no idea what the hell is going on for any of this anime's expository information. By that I mean, information regarding the setting which is typically kind of important. I think Highschool DXD is a great example of harem story with decently well formed lore and something that isn't overly complex in regards to a power system, but still manages to be decently memorable, Majikoi on the other hand is the exact opposite. Some people have what seemed to be abilities derived from some form of martial arts, however they are all very supernatural, very uncreative, and very unexplained. The students use weapons that don't injure each other, but what those weapons are, how they work, and why they exist are all a mystery to us.

"Japan is dying": Jesus, so this could've gone in the previous section on "setting", but it's a slightly lengthier topic to discuss. Majikoi likes to act like it has something big to say on the current state the nation of Japan is in, but plot-twist, it really doesn't. 90% of anything remotely serious that happens in this anime is because one person thinks the country is dying and another disagrees. The way characters discuss it make it come across like this is some kind of story that can serve as a metaphor for the current setting of Japan, but to describe how hard it tries to accomplish this, verses what actually happens ... Imagine a kid that goes to jump rope for the first time, but falls, gets tied up in the rope, stands up and just starts jumping again while tied up in the rope, with the most forced smile you've ever seen on his/her face ... After writing that, I realize that metaphor sums up most of this anime.

What Makes a Harem: The girls! Which is exactly what's wrong with Majikoi. I'm not saying Majikoi's girls are awful, but ... Let me put it this way, they have poor character designs that are drawn poorly, which you can overlook, oh, they were given annoying voices too, but you can get over that, but what matters most, is that they don't have personality. All of these girls are 100% flat and there is no time spent developing or growing any of them. This takes us back to episode 1 (yeah, yeah, sorry); the reason most harem anime trickle in the harem members 1 by 1 instead of just dumping them all in at once, is to slowly develop each one. Because of this blunder, the harem ends up being: doggy bitch, bitch that talks to her cell phone strap, foreign bitch, and thirsty bitch. Sorry for the excess of profanities, but the point is that they are all nameless bi.. sorry, I'm done. The actual point is that each of them can be described in a single word or phrase. This is one of the first times in my life where I can't pick a best girl in a harem anime, and it's only happening because I don't want any of them. Though if you had to make me pick my least favorite it would have to be...

Main Girl: We are going to talk about this dumb bitch Momoya, before I blow a gasket. First off, why did you make a main girl that is such a massive c... well, I'll keep this review clean of that word, but you can probably guess what I was about to call her, and goddammit, I have good reason. Look, because of the awful writing decisions, the best way to describe the current situation between main girl and MC is that we are in the failed ending of a harem game where you have already reached the end of the game, but for some reason even though you have already maxed out affection points and reached the end, the main girl still rejects you. The only reasonable explanation is the game's creator was for some reason driven to madness, and decided to make a harem game that goes on forever without an ending where you actually get the main girl, forcing you to play indefinitely. Well, pick another girl, you might suggest? That might work, but while the main girl won't accept you, she definitely wants you to want her and no one else, so if you were to attempt any ending that doesn't involving being with her, she'll probably kill you and has the means to do so. When you have characters as flat as these + the scenario that I just played out for you, you can probably guess that Momoya is stupid strong, manipulative b.... and unless you're a hardcore masochist, you're probably going to be annoyed by everything she does.

Main Character: Our MC, Yamato, has a name that I only remember because of a specific scene that I still find ridiculous. The old guy with the bandaged head asked him if he was Yamato's son? Which to me felt a lot like if somebody said, "Hey, you Smith's kid?". I dunno, personally I think Yamato is an incredibly popular name in Japan, or at least anime makes me think so. Regardless, it was a weird scene, and I just wanted to bring that up because it was bugging me. Yamato was almost kind of likable, unfortunately, just like everyone else in this anime, he ended up being exceptionally flat. When reviewing harem anime, I will commonly bring up my "3 Types of MCs that can Support Harems", and this one is no different...
The short of it is, that a harem can only function with one of these three types of main characters as the harem lead: Oblivious Idiot - too oblivious to realize feelings, Uninterested in Love - kinda self explanatory, and Harem King MC - actively wants a harem--if you want to see the full explanation you can look at my review on Bokutachi wa Benkyou ga Dekinai. Since we are in this awkward failed 'main-girl ending', we are stuck in an extended harem situation which forces Yamato into being an uninterested in love (with anyone other than main girl) MC. Although, he has no problem being a pervert, which is typically harem king personality, this is kind of interesting because it's basically exactly how Trinity Seven's MC was . Also, Yamato doesn't like to be perverted with the thirsty girl because apparently he doesn't like it if its too easy, Point is, he's a massive masochist.

I think that about covers everything I wanted to cover; there's a lot of small things, but I tried to cover everything in efficient of a manner as possible. I don't typically due this more freestyle format on a review, but I had a lot I wanted to say about why Majikoi just doesn't deserve even above a 5 overall score. I'm not expecting others to come in and change their score, but if you decide to watch it even after reading this review, and you look back at everything I said in this review after watching it, let me know if you think I'm wrong. Personally, I find this anime offensive to the art of storytelling.