Hand Maid May

When I first bought the DVD collection at the Anime Mid Atlantic 3, on the first volume you're in Nanbara's room you had to choose the right password to proceed to the main menu. In th first 4 episodes of Hand Maid May, she was a 1/6 scale cyberdoll. Episode 5, was her last time she was a 1/6 scale cyberdoll and was reprocessed by Sara because Kazuya did not pay for her. But thanks to Cyber X, who helped Kazuya special order her for his research, Kazuya got to see May again, this time she had gotten a lot bigger then before. There were some funny parts I liked, (Episode 1). Kasumi threw a potted plant at Nanbara because, he was spying on her. And some neighborhood kids were drawing on his car. (Episode.6) Dr.Hell slipped on a banana peel, because someone left it on the floor. He didn't know it was Kei, who left it on the floor. She was inside the room and heard him outside in the hall. My favorite characters in the series are: Kazuya, Cyber X, Kei, and May. Another cool thing about this series, the character's I liked were that their voices were done by, Steve Cannon, Lia Sargent, and Ruby Marlowe. Also, the soundtrack has all the themes to the show. So in closing, add this one to your collection. You will see what I mean.

Another installment in the ocean of maid anime series that's flooding the market these days. You got your Hand Maid May, your Hanaukyo Maids, your Mahoromatic maid, and so on. The storyline is a bit messy and the characters a bit noisy at times, but it gets a chuckle out of you. And it has the required fanservice, such as pantyshots and such, of course.

And it has 11 out of 10 episodes too, in case you just wondered. :) (episode 11 is one of them so-called specials)

I really wanted to like this series, and for the first few episodes I did. Saotome, Kasumi and May make for an enjoyable show. But once Kei, Mami, Rena, Sara, and the annoying Nambara get added to the mix, the show is just diluted beyond hope. It's a Tenchi / Hina formula that just doesn't work and too many characters are just plain annoying.

Not to give anything away, but later in the show things come together and wrap up rather well, if quite a bit stretched. The ending is quite nice. This series had a chance of being great, but it ends up simply sub par. If you really like Robo Girl series and Tenchi / Hina series, give it a shot. The first few and last few episodes are quite worth watching. Sadly, the middle is rather filler.

• Rirath_com

I really thought this show was very funny and I seriously thought Lia Sargent as English Dub May was absolutely awesome. Her voice definitely suited her character and like it's hard to do a goody too shoes anime girl without being squeaky and over the top but nope, the character was likeable and totally adorable!

I also gotta give an applaud to Robert Martin Klein for voicing Kotaro who's like this type of show off person you really hate but really like at the same time. His over the top personality made you laugh out loud each time with his failed attempt pranks he does to Kazuya.

I normally am not a fan of harem stuff but this one was right up my ally and it is considered one of the good ones out there for me to really like it! I'm giving this bad boy a 8/10!

Kazuya our male lead is a university student whose hobby is working on his squid-robot, developing its artificial intelligence and speech synthesizer. For some unknown reason one of his classmates Nanbara is secretly jealous of him and plans to give him a computer virus on a disk. When Kazuya runs the program somehow an order is placed to the Cyberdyne Corporation (from the Terminator movies) for a mini-robot. A delivery arrives at his door and inside the box is a doll-sized robot named May. May is a cheerful, enthusiastic girl and every episode she has to talk about trying to do her very best. Nobody ever wonders aloud about how today's technology can produce such a marvel but this issue is resolved in time. Eventually more cyberdolls wind up in Kazuya's apartment building. Even though you might see the various girls as stereotypes - brainy Kei, bubblehead Mami, little kid Rena - they all seemed interesting to me.

I mustn't forget Kasumi, whose mother owns the Kasumi Apartments. She is Kazuya's neighbour and good friend. She has a secret crush on him and drops hints but Kazuya doesn't notice. The ending song "Real Feelings" is a sweet one and from the lyrics it must be Kasumi's song. In it she wishes she was more girlish so he would pay attention but is hopeful that one day he will notice her.

Although it can be said that the setup has been used before (decent, likeable chap somehow winds up with many cute girls vying for his attention) what matters more is how you feel after watching the show. I first saw the fabsub edition at the Ryerson club and I've just seen the first two English-language volumes from Pioneer and I must say that I really enjoyed the series both times. By the way, Pioneer did an interesting thing by labelling the episodes 1/10 and so on to 10/10 to let you know there was a definite end to the series.