Title: Ai Mai Mi, あいまいみー
Producers: Seven, Dream Creation
Genres: Comedy, Slice of Life
Duration: 3 min. per episode
The anime adaption of the four-panel manga “Ai Mai Mi”.
The story follows girls in a manga club —Ai, Mai, Mii, and Ponoka-sempai—who might be fighting evil invaders threatening Earth, facing off against rivals in tournaments, and dealing with other absurd situations when they are not drawing manga.
Fansubs watched: Crunchyroll
And so, the torrent of short anime continues. And to think, that Ishida to Asakura would’ve been the weirdest one. Ladies and gentlemen, Ai Mai Mi. The anime is weirder than Ishida and much, much worse. Running at the measly 3 minutes, you wish that those 3 minutes would’ve been given back or stuffed in some plushie doll so that it would come to life to laugh at this anime, at its hideousness. Well, it’s not the worst thing ever but it is very, very bad. Lets get into the first episode!
The episode begins with some turtle popping out of a lake and the main character tossing a cucumber at it, which crushes its head and instantly kills it. The main girl is mortified and cue title card. And for some reason, there’s a tag that states: “recommended for those mentally 18 and up.” Whaa? Next scene has a voice over of the main characters: Ai, Mai and Mi with one of them throwing up and with blood gushing out of her ears. This goes on for 10 seconds. Oh, we also find out that they’re creating a manga- sounds similar… Then the next minute involves some manga ideas from Ai’s embarrassing ideas. The next half-minute is about Mai and Mi talking about swingers and swinging. Then some random girl gets mortified over that conversation and has a breakdown over some guy who sucked his partner’s nipple till his death. Then it’s the ending and suicide part. I think the latter didn’t happen.
Here’s the thing, I have no idea if the anime is taking itself seriously or is just a super clever series parodying all the current anime trends. There are also posters of some other anime, so the latter isn’t so far fetched. The jokes in here are apparently for “those mentally 18 and up,” maybe the translation is wrong but the jokes aren’t very tasteful or funny. Not even the randomness could amuse me. It was just a big ‘what the hell did I just watch and why is this a thing’ kind of vibe. The characters don’t really have any definable traits, expect for Ai who gets embarrassed. Also, why is there a turtle in the beginning and an octopus lifting up Mai’s skirt during the wipe card…
On to the animation, well it is poorly drawn either on purpose or on purpose. The girls have overly moe designs, to resemble the state of the industry I assume… The colouring and overall design shows that the anime has little going for it and is only purely for petty moments. The drawings looked rushed- once again, maybe the entire motif of the anime. The backgrounds are uniquely designed to reflect this weird world, so that’s a positive. I don’t know, the colours of the characters remind me of the early 90s and late 80s style of shading. How everything looks murky and not crisp and clean. Like drawing on bad paper.
There is only the Ending, which itself is not bad. It has an 8-bit theme to it with the main characters traversing popular old JRPGs from the NES and SNES. Things go haywire and interesting as they explode and destroy the game. The song itself is catchy, so there’s that. The voices for the characters are probably the only modern aspect of the anime but Ai’s voice is piercingly high.
And so ends the first episode of a weird and subjectively bad anime. Maybe this is all a big Whoosh and the anime has real depth, and reflects on the clichés and tropes of modern moe anime. That or I’m giving it too much credit. I might stick around for two more episodes to see if the jokes get better, or that it’s an introduction episode for parodying- like the first broadcast of Haruhi but worse.
