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REVIEW: Maoyu Sub.Blu-Ray


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LaughingElbow



Joined: 19 Apr 2014
Posts: 237
PostPosted: Thu Jun 19, 2014 2:16 pm Reply with quote
Yeah, I didn't care for all the economics and cleavage.
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Hellwarden



Joined: 10 Aug 2013
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 19, 2014 3:07 pm Reply with quote
Good solid review I think.

The series, much like the aforementioned Spice and Wolf, is in dire need of another season. It sets everything up for a massive chess game between the heroes and the true master of the world....

...and it doesn't really happen.
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Angel M Cazares



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PostPosted: Thu Jun 19, 2014 3:11 pm Reply with quote
Theron Martin wrote:
Sadly, Sentai Filmworks opted not to dub this one even though they are releasing it on Blu-Ray, a decision which seems odd given that Spice and Wolf did prove successful enough in streaming to warrant its own English dub.


Isn't the existence of a dub for Spice and Wolf more a product of the fact that Funimation pretty much dubs everything? To me MAOYU is a weird anime, and I doubt a dub would have made it that much popular. I think Sentai made a smart decision not dubbing MAOYU.
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Seif



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PostPosted: Thu Jun 19, 2014 3:38 pm Reply with quote
That's some pretty sick box art.
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prime_pm



Joined: 06 Feb 2004
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 19, 2014 3:47 pm Reply with quote
Loved this show. The economics surrounding a fantasy world was such an endearing focus. And that one "I Am Human" speech really grips you tight.

Last two episodes, however, were a train wreck. It's obvious, both from the show and the original source, they were shooting for a sequel, so they rushed through the last two episodes with just a bare ending with not much to go by. Whether another season will ever come up now is anybody's guess. But judging from the sequels to Deadman Wonderland and Btoom! I won't get my hopes up.
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John Thacker



Joined: 28 Oct 2013
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 19, 2014 4:23 pm Reply with quote
I found it a little strange that you reviewed it without comparing it to Mamare Touno (the author)'s other adapted work, Log Horizon. Both can be compared to Spice and Wolf, and both explore other aspects of fantasy worlds than typical shows do. Luckily Log Horizon is getting a second season; I wonder if that bodes well or ill for Log Horizon.
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meiam



Joined: 23 Jun 2013
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 19, 2014 6:36 pm Reply with quote
I've been listening to the soundtrack of spice and wolf today which got me thinking about this series, strange coincidence. As much as I liked spice and wolf, Maoyu was one of the most disappointing, pretentious and all around lazy anime I've watched (not fully had to stop at episode 10 when an army strategy involved having there cavalry charge right up to the enemy trench and then inexplicably ride along it while getting shoot at).

I think large part is the difference between the character in both series. In S&W, Holo is ignorant she knows next to nothing about the real world, but she's smart (which makes sense she's a God and all) and has large amount of "general experience", again makes sense she's hundreds/thousands of year old. This makes her a great character since she can act as an audience stand in one moment and the next she can bring forth interesting idea and drive the plot forward. In comparison Mao is incredibly knowledgeable, somehow being centuries ahead of the rest of the world in technology (I wouldn't have been surprised if she just spontaneously explained to people how to make an MRI machine), but she squander almost all these amazing advance because she's really dumb. At first I assumed that the demon world was simply more advance than the human world, but nope we see it a few time and it has about the same technology. It almost seems like we're supposed to believe she just casually revolutionized agriculture and invented the printing press, which is incredibly hard to swallow since pretty much every time she takes a decision, it's a terrible one, which isn't help by the show desire to spend more time underlying the fact that she has huge boob (in one case wasting half an episode on fan service, with the maid inexplicably fondling Mao boob, how this review can say that this show is light on fan service is beyond me) rather than why she take specific decision.

Then you can compare Lawrence and the Hero. Lawrence has very limited means, he possess very little, but he get by because he's fairly smart and has a good amount of experience, so we get to see him struggle to use what little he has access to in creative way. On the other hand you have the Hero who's insanely overpowered, he could easily stop all the war that were present in the show on his own immediately. But he doesn't for some reason… Rather he's content watching the two faction in both war presented slaughter each others.

Then you have the love story. S&W has a very slow love story, that slowly build up trough the countless dialogue between Lawrence and Holo, it's very predictable and everyone who pick up the series know where it'll end but still take the time to make it believable. The hero and Maoyu never really fall in love, there more like strapped to rocket, aimed downward and fired in love the moment they see each others. For some reason Mao has been aware of the hero existence since his birth (yet she, nor anyone ever attempt to do anything about it), and she therefore fall in love with him…? The hero could have been an horrible person and she would still have loved him apparently. Then it's never clear if the hero actually like her, he always seems more than happy to leave her whenever he gets an excuse to.

In spice and wolf you see two smart character of very limited means that try to make the best of there situations. In Maoyu you see two character with incredible means squander everything they have squarely because of there own action or inaction. I think large part of the problem is that both show ask the audience to think about the consequence of the character action on the rest of the world and it's inhabitant, which I'm more than willing to do. But where in S&W case I felt like I was learning stuff and was generally impressed at the level of tough put in place, regularly stopping reading just to consider the effect of the character action more in dept just to have the writer take it even further than I did or in an unpredictable yet believable. In Maoyu case I would come up with a possible sequence of event (Mao introduce revolutionary agriculture practice and use the church to disseminate that information throughout the world -> the church popularity grow and because the peasant wealth increase they give more to the church which increase there wealth and make Mao more popular ->Mao use here new found prestige within the church to gain political control and shift the country tendency) just to have the show instead use a lazy/cliche event instead (Mao introduce revolutionary agriculture practice and use the church to disseminate that information throughout the world ->The church hate Mao, because the pope is evil). Then I would expect (pope evil -> Mao ask the hero to kill the pope) but instead the hero would go in passive mode and do nothing, letting a conflict escalate and letting his friend get stoned without intervention, cause reason.

I think what annoy me the most is that rather than actually making smart character take smart decision the show is content with having them take stupid decision/decision that ignore some very obvious solution and then decide to compensate by having all the other character act like the decision they just took was really impressive. Considering that this is a far easier/lazier way to make smart character and that both this and Log Horizon (which overwhelmingly use the same trick) are both popular, it seems like I'll be seeing a lot more of these stupid smart character rather than smart character.
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Key
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 19, 2014 7:41 pm Reply with quote
John Thacker wrote:
I found it a little strange that you reviewed it without comparing it to Mamare Touno (the author)'s other adapted work, Log Horizon. Both can be compared to Spice and Wolf, and both explore other aspects of fantasy worlds than typical shows do. Luckily Log Horizon is getting a second season; I wonder if that bodes well or ill for Log Horizon.

Simple answer: haven't seen LH beyond the first episode, in part because its first episode was a massive turn-off. And from what I've heard about the series, there's really very little basis for comparison between the two.

angelmcazares wrote:
Isn't the existence of a dub for Spice and Wolf more a product of the fact that Funimation pretty much dubs everything? To me MAOYU is a weird anime, and I doubt a dub would have made it that much popular. I think Sentai made a smart decision not dubbing MAOYU.

I brought that up because Funimation actually wasn't originally sure that they were going to give S&W a dub and physical release, as they were concerned that it was too far outside the norm for fantasy anime to be salable. Both apparently happened because the series did quite well for them in its initial streaming run for them.

meiam: Why Demon Queen knows what she does is not something that is explained well in the anime (in fact, it's only vaguely alluded to), but it has to do with the flashbacks where we see here in the vast library occasionally mentioned - i.e., the Outer Library. spoiler[Apparently that library is a cross-dimensional space which has access to knowledge from innumerable different realms, and Demon Queen's specialty within her clan was collecting such knowledge. (There may be even more to it than that.)]

I also think you're entirely off the mark in your evaluation of logical process. As someone who majored in History in college and specialized in the Medieval/Renaissance/Reformation era, I can assure you that the Church of that time in our world would not have been so practical if exposed to such rapid innovation of ideas; see Copernicus or Galileo. In fact, I thought the series had a very accurate (if also rather cynical) read on how things actually worked. Historically, churches of all kinds are generally not progressive and thus not at all friendly to quick, major changes, no matter how logical they might seem.
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Kadmos1



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PostPosted: Thu Jun 19, 2014 9:15 pm Reply with quote
If Bandai hadn't closed their American company here and got this, I could see them getting the dub voices of Geass' Lelouch and Kallen for the lead couple.
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meiam



Joined: 23 Jun 2013
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 19, 2014 9:36 pm Reply with quote
Key wrote:
I also think you're entirely off the mark in your evaluation of logical process. As someone who majored in History in college and specialized in the Medieval/Renaissance/Reformation era, I can assure you that the Church of that time in our world would not have been so practical if exposed to such rapid innovation of ideas; see Copernicus or Galileo. In fact, I thought the series had a very accurate (if also rather cynical) read on how things actually worked. Historically, churches of all kinds are generally not progressive and thus not at all friendly to quick, major changes, no matter how logical they might seem.



They were against Copernicus/Galileo because there advancement directly contradicted there interpretation of the bible (and didn't offer any benefit, so what if the earth is round? How does that get them more stuff?). But they would have zero reason to be against increasing the production of the land because they get to reap the benefit of it, and they're literally the one sharing that information meaning they also get a big share of the credit. The church very much pushed for advancement in all area that helped them and didn't go against established knowledge in the bible, we own much of the improvement in architecture to religious building for example. Same for the printing press, print more bible, get more convert, get more donation. That's what I mean by lazy, it just take the cliche "evil church" approach that pretty much every fantasy setting does without actually thinking about it, doesn't even bother to justify it.
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lizardking461





PostPosted: Thu Jun 19, 2014 10:31 pm Reply with quote
I'm with that other dude - went into this hoping for something to fill the void left by finishing Spice and Wolf, and then six episodes later realised I'd never be getting those approx. 2 hours of my life back....
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nhat



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PostPosted: Thu Jun 19, 2014 10:35 pm Reply with quote
No dub? Pass...
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eyeresist



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PostPosted: Thu Jun 19, 2014 11:47 pm Reply with quote
Intriguing. I wonder if the "harem-like antics" were part of the original text?


meiam wrote:
Same for the printing press, print more bible, get more convert, get more donation. That's what I mean by lazy, it just take the cliche "evil church" approach that pretty much every fantasy setting does without actually thinking about it, doesn't even bother to justify it.
Man, you need to study the history of the catholic church. In the middle ages they were very much against bibles printed in languages ordinary people could actually read. They didn't want anyone thinking they could form their own opinions.
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BooktapC



Joined: 13 Apr 2011
Posts: 80
PostPosted: Fri Jun 20, 2014 12:55 am Reply with quote
Maoyu is in my favorites of anime. It is the reason stopped to check out the review on here when saw it. Nice seems like Anime News Network is keeping on top on the newer releases. Already planned on getting.

Still thanks for the review. Yeah. Maoyu is certainly unconventional and will stand out from the crowd of so many anime series out there. At the very least.
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Ali07



Joined: 01 Jun 2014
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 20, 2014 1:53 am Reply with quote
I can see why some may not have liked this series, but I loved it (for the most part). The thing that bothered me was that...I found it to be a lot of set up with little pay off at the end.

The larger goal that the MCs set out to achieve isn't touched upon.

With it's open end and my interest in the story, it really is something that I would like to see more of. Be it either with another anime series or being able to read the LNs.

Seems like the LNs are finished...unless I just haven't seen where they have mentioned a continuation after vol5 was released in 2012. But, there are, by the looks of things, 3 manga series that are currently being released.
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