Mayo Chiki Review
Screenshots
He accidentally discovers that Subaru, the favorite of every girl in school, is a girl himself (er, herself). Subaru decides that the best way to deal with this is to literally beat the memory out of Jiro's head. He comes to on a bed in the nurse's office. Or rather, chained to a bed in the nurse's office. Here we find Kanade, the school's perfect girl, sensually threatening either his life or his manhood if he breaths a word about her butler's secret.
Jiro and Subaru wind up spending quite a bit of time together. The students fairly quickly conclude that the couple must be gay. "Jiro, come on man. Didn't we used to share our porno mags?" Every student that is, except Jiro's little sister. After shadowing the couple during a forced date, she comes to the conclusion that her big brother is dating a guy that likes to cross-dress.
What a weird show.
You know, I can't help but have mixed opinions of this show. On the one hand, it shamelessly plays up a stunning number of anime cliches and unlikely events. On the other hand, we end up with a surprising amount of depth and development in several of the characters.
Kanade is probably the most surprising. She is downright sadistic, taking honest to god joy in causing pain to those in her power. I often wonder if her attempts to help Jiro get over his fear of women has any thought to his benefit, or if she does it purely to watch him squirm. She does all kinds of terrible things to Subaru, her supposed friend.
Then there's the other side. As sadistic as the first meeting was, she had chained Jiro to the bed to prevent Subaru from either (A) being discovered, or (B) going to jail for murder. At another point she runs away from home, kidnaps Jiro, and pretends to be his lover; all so Subaru would have a chance to visit her mother's grave on the anniversary of her death. She looks after her friends; and causes them great pain in the process.
Over all, I have to give this show a straight average score. It is predictably weak in plot yet strangely strong in character development. I will probably wind up watching it again.