
<MAP NAME="boxmap-p8"><AREA SHAPE="RECT" COORDS="14, 200, 103, 207" HREF="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm/privacy-policy.html?o=1" ><AREA COORDS="0,0,10000,10000" HREF="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect-home/thearmchairem-20" ></MAP><img src="http://rcm-images.amazon.com/images/G/01/rcm/120x240.gif" width="120" height="240" border="0" usemap="#boxmap-p8" alt="Shop at Amazon.com">	10 Episodes over 3 DVDs – 4 on the 1^st, 3 on the next 2 Distributor Pioneer Animation
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Hand Maid May Volume 1

hmm_titel01.jpg (14488 bytes) kazuya01.jpg (13475 bytes)

Anime finally seems to be moving away from it’s ultra-violent lead into North America from Akira and the Robotech series. (Don’t kid yourself, I enjoy violence just as much as the next guy… maybe even more so). Evidence of this can be seen in the immense popularity of the Tenchi Muyo OVA series on Cartoon Networks’ “Toonami”. With the market of humorous shows involving great single guys and a glut of beautiful women firmly established, here comes Hand Maid May!

HMM is an OVA series involving the life of Kazuya, an oblivious electrical engineering student who is working feverishly on his project Doraemon (an interactive squid robot named Ikariya). Not noticing anything, he fails to notice the scorn of his self-proclaimed nemesis Nanbara (a really loud, self-important rich kid who is always overshadowed by the quiet Kazuya). In an attempt to cause Kazuya to fail, Nanbara inflicts a rather nasty computer virus on the protagonist which ends up ordering a cyber doll maid from Cyberdyne Corporation. The cyber doll arrives

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instantly (yeah right, like I’ve ever gotten anything over the internet in less than 2 weeks) and immediately falls in love with Kazuya. Although only 1/6 the size of a human, May tries hard to keep the apartment of Kazuya in operable order.

The series is very much in the same vein as the Tenchi series where a loveable character has his solitary stable life invaded by a plethora of gorgeous women all of which are polar opposites of each other and fight

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for the attention of the protagonist. From the watchful, and unable to express her true feelings, Kasumi (daughter of the landlord and next window neighbor), to the childlike Rena (another cyber doll about the age of 8), to the super-intelligent Rei (yet another cyber doll), and finally the sort-of villain Sara (who has a truly disturbing love of Ramen and eventually falls in love with Kazuya). It’s disturbing how much this group starts to develop into a harem… without the sex.

The first episode introduces Kazuya, May, Kasumi, and Nanbara. By the second episode, you meet Sara and how she allies herself with Nanbara (him to destroy Kazuya, her to recover the unpaid for cyber doll May). For the last two episodes, Sara tries to recover May by sending the cyber dolls Rena and Rei to capture her, but instead the girls fall in love (or hopelessly intrigued by Kazuya) and stay.

First and foremost the show is a comedy series, but it’s more sinister side is the disturbing amount of fan service (read: excessive T&A). If a girl is in a scene, odds are that you’re either going to see some cleavage or a panty shot. Think of it as a way of providing something for everyone but not enough for any group. The animation is decent and does intermingle some nice CGI (Computer Generated Images) into the action, like rain sequences, and doesn’t suffer from any discoloration issues like the transfers of older animated series to the DVD format. The menu is a mixed bag though – it is well designed and incorporates voice acting nicely but has the worst opening (an extended sequence with Nanbara where you have to choose the adjective which best suits him before you can proceed – unfortunately none of the adjectives that I would have used were available). The extras menu is extensive, but incomplete, that is all of the eventually available extras are shown but are divided amongst the three disks (and you don’t discover that until you try and watch one).

All in all, Hand Maid May is an entertaining series but be warned what you’re getting into, it may not be what you think.

- Tazman

“I knew that we should have gone to the Laundromat, ‘cuz chicks like to clean”

-Master Shake