*WARNING: Contains spoilers for Mai-HiME and Mai-Otome*
I'm bored again! So I'm going to blog about Mai-HiME (Or My-HiME if you prefer, but I like Mai-HiME better, even though My-HiME is the official name, lol.) since I don't blog enough about it, or anime in general! Haha, I love Mai-HiME, it's just so awesome. I think I'm going to blog about random characters when I have nothing to blog about on one day, though sometimes I'm going to forget to blog. So anywho, Mai, the main protagonist of Mai-HiME, and an important character in Mai-Otome is one of my most favorite characters in the whole franchise! Probably becuase she was the main character in Mai-HiME, and so she got a LOT of screen time and character growth. She didn't get a lot of screen time in Mai-Otome, though towards the end she did. Haha, I love Mai though, she's just an awesome character all around. I'm quite happy that she was featured very prominently in the first episode of Mai-Otome Zwei. Haha, which is probably why I liked the first episode so much. I'm not exactly sure if she is 
my favorite character, though she probably is. Haha, next to Shizuru! Though I like Natsuki too, and Akane, and Nao in Mai-Otome! Haha. Anywho, I'm just going to put up all the pictures I have of Mai up, probably because this is one of the only times I'm going to blog about her, and man, do I have a lot of pictures. xD
She's not the first character that I've known by the name of Mai, the first one was from Yu-Gi-Oh! Mai Valentine in the dubbed, Kujaku Mai in the original version. Haha, hey! I see where her surname came from, Kujakki means Peacock, so it's similar to Kujaku, in which Mai uses Harpy Ladies and such! :o Okay sorry, that was off topic. Lol. Haha, anywho, back to Tokiha Mai. In Mai-HiME, Mai is a very troubled girl who worries about everything, especially her little brother, Takumi, who has some kind of heart disease, though it isn't exactly stated what it is. Fortunately, yet unfortunately, Mai got a scholarship to Fuuka Academy, which is how Mai-HiME starts pretty much. The anime at least, the manga starts out quite differently. Anywho, at the Academy, she finds out that she's a HiME, Highly-Advanced Materializing Equipment which adds even more to her troubles because now she has to work and get money for Takumi's heart problem, and fight Orphans, as well as deal with the other HiMEs, especially the antagonistic ones like Nao. Also, she has to take care of Mikoto now as well, so that adds on, which builds up throughout the whole anime and causes a bunch of things to what the HiMEs were destined to do. Also, she starts dealing with love and romance in her life as well, from Kanzaki Reito romancing her, to falling in love with Tate 
Yuuichi. Mai-HiME meshed a bunch of genres together, haha. Which is partly why it's so good to me, there is romance, action, drama, comedy. It's great, makes the story and characters easier to follow and relate to, while at the same time adding supernatural and fantastic things to the story. I don't think Mai-HiME is a typical magical girl anime though, like Sailor Moon and Cardcaptor Sakura, it has more shounen elements than shoujo. Haha. I like CCS and Sailor Moon though, so I'm pretty odd, doesn't matter too much.
Haha, I've been wanting to buy the Mai-HiME manga for quite a while, though I've been reluctant because it's rated 18+. Which is odd of me, since I already read it online. I don't know why I'm so reluctant to buy it just because of the rating, I mean, I'm already 18! Haha, maybe it's because I'm so poor right now though. *shrug* Oh well, someone get me to buy it when I have money! I want to support the franchise. Haha. The more I support it, the more it will be brought here, even though I hate localizations most of the time, Bandai does a pretty good job with their DVDs, as I have them all. Haha, I only listen to the original Japanese voices though, I doubt I'll be able to stand hearing them in English after listening to them in Japanese for over a year. I heard a few bits of it in English and they just made me change it back to Japanese really fast. This is going to be a pretty long post actually, probably because of the pictures. Lol. I am writing quite a lot though probably because I want to fill in space for the pictures. Haha.
The manga is pretty good though! It's way different from the anime, I like it actually. With the manga, they are still HiMEs, but there isn't a fate that all of them will battle each other until there is only one left. Instead of Mai being the main character, Tate is and he is the transfer student instead of Mai. Takumi still has heart problems though, and eventually he "dies" in the manga, but turns out to be the Obsidian Prince instead of Reito, which kind of surprised me! Haha. Mai also turned out to be a QUEEN like Marie Antoinette and Yang Guifei. QUEEN stands for Quant Elemental Enchantress, which sounds cool. Haha, there are also PRINCESSes in the manga which stands for Perfect Realization of Independent Access. But I can explain that later for a character that is more relevant. Basically QUEENs are the most powerful HiME that exist, and not surprisingly, Mai is one. I mean she does have Kagutsuchi and was the most 
powerful HiME in the anime. She does become and antagonist for sometime in the manga, but that's only because of Takumi being evil and she doesn't want to oppose the brother that she has taken care of for most of her life. Her backstory is mostly the same as the anime, but the plot of the manga and anime diverge quite a bit. Strangely, I mostly have pictures of her HiME incarnation, haha.
powerful HiME in the anime. She does become and antagonist for sometime in the manga, but that's only because of Takumi being evil and she doesn't want to oppose the brother that she has taken care of for most of her life. Her backstory is mostly the same as the anime, but the plot of the manga and anime diverge quite a bit. Strangely, I mostly have pictures of her HiME incarnation, haha. 
Some of the art is from the PS2 video game actually, which I find absolutely gorgeous and just different from the anime in general. Haha, for Mai-Otome, she isn't so different from her HiME counterpart. Though she is dead in the manga, she was Mashiro's and Manshiro's mother with Tate, which is kind of strange. I'm sad that she doesn't get too much page time though. The anime is different! She is the princess of Zipang, while Takumi is the prince, but he still has his heart problem and is still being taken good care by Akira. However, this version of Mai is part of a Legend, which turns out to not be true at all! Which is funny, 
haha. Mai helps out Mashiro in her political affairs though, which is pretty cool. She also helps to fight against Nagi in the last episode, and against the strange Child in the beginning of the OVA. I forgot to mention that her Meister Robe is called the Fire String Ruby, and her Master is (accidentally) Mikoto, the Neko Kami-sama. xD
Mai is really the most powerful HiME there is in most of the incarnations, probably because of Kagutsuchi, haha. Kagutsuchi is awesome, I really like him, he's like a Phoenix/Dragon thing. It's really cool. Mai mostly controls fire in all of her incarnations. Her Elements are basically these rings with green jewels on them that allow her to fly and such. they're quite unique actually, I like her Element, though she never fought enough with them. Mostly defended. Mai wasn't a fighter in the anime, though she was in the manga because she fought with Natsuki a lot. xD She's a person that cares about others, and will do anything to protect her friends. Although she gets frustrated with all the problems in her life, she still remains the same in her ideals. Finally realizing that it's good to be true to yourself and your feelings. Haha, actually I think Mai really is my favorite character! If not, it's Shizuru, only because Shizuru is just plain awesome. Well, I think that's all the pictures I have, blah. I searched for some so I just added the amount of picures I wanted to add. Haha, oh well. I should go look for more for fun! I don't like taking up too much space on my computer though, but I've been saving pictures like mad for my blog. Lol. Oh well! I guess that's enough on Mai. :D I'll probably do a 
different character from something other than Mai-HiME next when I'm bored, maybe a video game one. Who knows? Whatever I feel like. Haha, it's like I wrote a Biography or something. :P Most of these pictures are from the official site of the PS2 video game, the official Mai-Otome website, and Wikipedia by the way.
