Jan 17 2012 09:08 PM So about Maken-Ki, I'm not really sure how I should be responding to this show. In the 12 episodes shown I'm not just confused but I don't see a direction in this show. As far as I'm concerned everything except episode 12 was relevant to an actual plot and maybe a few other happenings in the other episodes like episode 4 where Himegami was awesome. Speaking of episode 12, everything happened so fast that I had no idea what was going on and felt as if I just watched the entire series in one episode's length...or at least what should have happened in the series.
Animation is by AIC Spirits. Not something we haven't seen from them in the last 2-3 years given Strike Witches and Ga-Rei -Zero-. In fact, I found Ga-Rei -Zero- to generally have higher quality of animation than this show for the most part. Furthermore, the art is absolutely terrible. Odd physical proportions aside, I recall often seeing facial shots that were too long (e.g. nose too far above mouth or nose too close to the eyes, etc...). Lastly, while the sketch-like artworks were probably the highlight of the show, the overuse and length still shots of them made me further question the low animation budget for this show.
Music was pretty bad for the most part. The OP was okay but not something worth listening to over and over again (decent instrumental though). ED was awful and background music wasn't particularly noticeable or memorable. Seiyuu was pretty bland across the board with literally everyone sounding the same at the end of the day. Not even Sayuri Yahagi as Kodama Himegami could save the show at the end of the day.
Enjoyment? None absolutely none. At first I thought the show might have something going for it in its finale, but then they not only rushed it, but also seemingly skipped every important detail possible.
Overall, this is really not a show worth watching. Unless you were in for the ecchi I wouldn't waste your time with this. Furthermore, there are far better ecchi titles than this series and I'm not going to bother naming them since almost every major ecchi title (good and bad) I can think of outclass this one. Heck, if you want a similar title with a similar premise, go watch Freezing.
Preliminary Score: 5/10
Final Score: 3/10 