MM! Complete Collection (Bilingual Edition) Anime DVD Review

MM! Complete Collection (Bilingual Edition) Anime DVD Review

I don’t get the appeal of being physically assaulted by pretty girls, but those who do will probably enjoy this show.

What They Say:
There are twisted tales and twisted tales, but few are as twisted as poor Sado’s, who’s just realized that he actually likes being made miserable. Of course, knowing that only makes him more miserable, which in turn… well, you get the idea. Desperate to break the circle, Sado volunteers for a special club where he hopes he can work through his issues only to discover that the other members have equally… complex… issues to deal with.

For example, the hyper-aggressive club president Isurugi not only has a violent fear of cats, but also believes herself to be a god! Then there’s Yuno, who’s terrified of men; the Nurse, who forces other people to perform cosplay; and Hayama, Sado’s best friend and a compulsive cross-dresser, who’s also the girl that Sado is infatuated with. (We did say it was complex, remember?) If you think you’ve seen EVERYTHING that can happen in an anime, prepare to have your eyes opened to FULL anime size as you enter a whole new paradigm with MM!

Contains episodes 1-12.

The Review:
Audio:
For this new release (the show was first released on DVD sub-only in the fall of 2011), we have the original Japanese language track joined by a new English dubbed audio version, both in Dolby Digital stereo encoded at 224kbps. There is some use made of the rear speakers from the prologic decoding, but as the show is largely dialogue-driven, it is not particularly noticeable nor notable. Dialogue is clean and clear throughout and I had no problems with dropouts or distortions during regular playback while listening to the new English dub track. I spot checked the Japanese track but assume overall there is little to no difference from the first release.

Video:
Originally airing in the fall of 2010, the transfer for this TV series is presented in its original aspect ratio of 16:9 and is enhanced for anamorphic playback. The twelve episodes are now split across three discs (the original single-language release was on two discs) with four on each. Xebec’s animation is very bright and colorful, creating a cheerful atmosphere that is played off against well during moments in the show when matters turn (comically) dark, where storm clouds and grays take over. In general the video is clean and looks about as good as upscaling to an HDTV will look from an SD presentation. There were occasions where I noticed some mild noise in a few backgrounds, oddly more towards the center than the sides where I usually expect it to be more common, but it was not noticeably distracting and not very common.

Packaging: 
A normal-sized keepcase holds all three discs inside, two on a flippy hinge and one set against the back interior wall. The front cover has a busy but decent look to it as it features two of the main girls (Mio and Yuno) together in the center, Mio stomping upon the male lead Taro with her foot, while the other notable characters are ranged around them in super-deformed style. The back cover uses a purple-hued background along the top half that matches the top border on the front cover. The catalog copy is in rather small, but readable type. A selection of shots from the show and a clean listing of the extras, episodes and disc count are in the middle of the back cover. The bottom contains the usual run of production credits and the technical grid. The complete ride side of the back cover provides some fanservice with a full length shot of Mio wearing cute lingerie. No show related inserts are included nor is there a reversible cover. The disc art features fanservice pictures of the girls in swimsuits.

Menu:
The menus for each disc have a static picture dominating most of the screen, the episode titles and other options being arrayed along the right. Load and access times were quick.

Extras:
The same extras that were available for the original release are present again. On the first disc is one of those extras we do not get very often anymore, which is a commentary on the first episode featuring the voice actresses Ayana Taketatsu (Mio) and Saori Hayami (Yuno). The second disc has the Japanese Promotional Video, the TV commercial spots, the Japanese DVD release commercials, and the clean versions of the opening and closing animation sequences. The final disc contains 9 short extras that run from 1-3 minutes each: 5 “A Rather Extreme Short Story” segments and 4 “Hidden Camera Short.” These extra shorts are laden with fanservice that goes well beyond anything the main show has to offer. The shorts are only presented with the original Japanese track.

Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Since this show has been reviewed not once but twice before, I intend to limit my content review comments largely to my personal observations and will for the most part dispense with a complete synopsis and plot summary.

Taro Sado is a masochist. Sado. Masochist. Hilarious, right? …right? Well, if you’re not laughing already, then this show might be a little hard going. Anyway, Taro is a high school student (naturally) who in middle school discovered that he was a major masochist, taking great pleasure in receiving pain from pretty girls (getting hit by guys doesn’t excite him in the least). He handled the issue largely by isolating himself from others but that’s no longer an option when he falls in love with a girl he only sees when working his part-time job at a local convenience store after school. Knowing that being a perverted masochist is not going to put him in good position to win the girl of his dreams, he seeks help, on the advice of his best friend Tatsukichi, from the Second Voluntary Club, a student group that offers aid to those in need. There he meets Mio, the club’s head and an unmistakable sadist of the highest order. So, a dream pairing made in heaven (hell), right?

The problem is that MM!, based upon a light novel series with a manga continuation, is basically a classic “harem” setup, but one where the original author was completely aware of how cliched and trite that basic scenario became already some ages ago. It’s a high school boy who is surrounded by a bevy of beautiful ladies, all of whom fall into standard character slots (the sort-of childhood friend, the imperious upperclasswoman, the loli, the ojou-sama, the school nurse, the jealous friend of one of the other girls, the incest-crazed sister and mother (Good grief, really? Sigh)). Knowing this, the author sought to try to mix things up by tweaking the girls in various ways and choosing the sadist/masochist divide as a main theme to build the characters around. Some of the combining and altering of types included making Yuno, who is demure and sweet in general and would appear to be a classic childhood-friend type, into a girl who also has intense androphobia which causes her to lash out violently if a man so much as touches her (there is a reasonable and quite valid backstory given to explain her condition, but there were points at which it seemed more a hindrance to the show than a source of comedy). The genius scientist girl was combined with the loli, a fairly common combination in the genre. More unusual was the ojou character turning out to be…much more than simple appearance would lead one to expect. Another tweak is to have only three of the girls actually in love with the main character, with only two of them being serious candidates, so that a love triangle is the major relationship dynamic. None of that is innovative in any way, but shows that some thought was given to the setup.

While the author was not wrong to try to change things up, making the male lead into an openly admitted masochist (the “hero” being a masochist in itself is not entirely uncommon when looking at the wimpy, milquetoast leads which many harem setups feature, but few would self-identify as such) creates certain problems, most notably that I found it difficult to develop much sympathy towards Taro during the entire run. He’s not an evil or disagreeable person; in fact when not desiring punches to the face or kicks to the gut from attractive females he’s the standard sort of nice guy who puts others’ feelings first and tries to help those in pain that usually generates a good deal of sympathy from the audience. But when he is paired up with a largely tsun and rarely dere sadist like Mio…the joke of him getting off on being abused by her wears thin over time. When combined with Yuno’s ability to send Taro into orbit at just the slightest touch (for which she’s genuinely sorry afterwards, but…what good does that really do?), it gets tiresome rather quickly. If the characters are not going to do much to draw you into the show, then at least the comedy, the ostensible purpose of the series, needs to cover for that, but the comedy is largely repetitious and cliched, which results in only a few brief chuckles at times but hardly any sustained laughter. I had as much humor from a meta-critical thought as I did from watching the show itself: Ayana Taketatsu was playing Kirino Kousaka in Oreimo during the same season this show originally ran, which means one could picture Kirino doing these same things to Taro and…there would be no difference. About the only difference between Kirino and Mio Isurugi is that the former is 99.9999999999999% tsun and trace-amount-hard-to-quantify dere while Mio is at least a better realized 95%/5% mixture that is much more tolerable. Perhaps the funniest episode was the penultimate one where Taro gets temporary amnesia. During this time from both mistaken information given to him by some characters and true, but out of context, accounts of certain events he is led to believe that he is the most despicable person alive. His self-hatred and recoiling from what he had allegedly done was funny in an ironic way, much funnier than most of the show.

And that’s the problem. It’s not an outright bad show, but it neither pushes the boundaries that the catalog copy quoted above would lead one to expect nor does it provide either sufficient comedy or heartwarming sentiment to leave a memorably positive impression afterward. It’s not from want of trying, more from the limitations of the fairly shallow and one-dimensional characters who inhabit this work. There were only occasional moments of good comic writing and execution (the early part of the amnesia; the beach episode morphing into a very twisted version of “playing house;” the surprise identity of Taro’s first love), but they were sadly undone by too much repeating of the same old tired joke of Mio angrily stomping on Taro and Taro gasping in pleasure in response. As a short 5 minute gag this could have been funny. As the main premise for a 12 episode series, it just runs out of fuel far too early to sustain the show. Another route that could have been used, the route of massive fanservice, was consciously avoided except in the short omake extras. Of the three leads, only Yuno makes any serious inroads into becoming a character one can care about (considering what happened to her in the past), but her knee-jerk violent response to male touches chips away at the sympathy generated. Mio is only humanized slightly near the end, far too late to make any difference. Taro has the problem of being off-putting because of his fetish.

So, largely a dull show with only fleeting moments of fun. Not a total disaster but hardly memorable and certainly not one I’ll feel inclined to watch again.

As for the dub, directed by John Swasey and Jason Grundy, it is somewhat uneven. It’s generally good, though some roles sound a touch flat. The standout by far is Monica Rial’s Mio. A very reliable performer, Ms. Rial brings Mio to life with bravado and energy. Blake Shepard is fine as Taro as is Emily Neves as Yuno. None of the other performances caught my attention, which was hard to do as the show at times tried its hardest to put me to sleep, through no fault of the actors.

In Summary:
Taro Sado had the misfortune of learning that he is a major masochist while in middle school, a secret he’s been hiding in high school. But now that he’s fallen in love, he desires to break free from his condition and seeks help from Mio Isurugi, the head of a school club that tries to grant people wishes. Unfortunately (fortunately?) for Taro, Mio is a major sadist who will be only to happy to abuse him until he breaks free of his predilection. Other girls, including middle school acquaintance and high school classmate Arashiko Yuno, enter the scene but that only muddles matters further. A classic harem setup that tries to stand out from the crowd by focusing on a sadist/masochist theme. While it might stand out slightly from the tired genre, it doesn’t necessarily stand out in all that positive or thrilling a way. A mediocre show at best with a couple bits of comedy smothered in layers of repetitive and boring material.

Features:
English 2.0 Language, Japanese 2.0 Language, English Subtitles, Commentary with Ayana Taketatsu (Mio) Saori Hayami (Arashiko), Japanese Promo Video, Japanese TV CM spots; Japanese DVD Commercials, 9 Short animations, Clean Opening Animation, Clean Closing Animation.

Content Grade: B-
Audio Grade: B+
Video Grade: B+
Packaging Grade: B+
Menu Grade: B+
Extras Grade: A-

Released By: Sentai Filmworks
Release Date: February 11th, 2014
MSRP: $59.98
Running Time: 300 minutes
Video Encoding: 480i/p MPEG-2
Aspect Ratio: 1.78: Anamorphic Widescreen

Review Equipment:
Sony KDL-32S5100 32-Inch 1080p LCD HDTV, Sony PlayStation3 Blu-ray player via HDMI set to 1080p, Sony Bravia DAV-HDX589W 5.1-Channel Theater System connected via digital optical cable.

Greg Smith has been writing anime reviews and a review column on anime dubbed into English for several years, first at AnimeOnDVD and now for The Fandom Post. His occasional column on English anime dubs, Press Audio, appears whenever he comes across a dub worthy of a closer look.

G.B. Smith – who has written 279 posts on The Fandom Post.

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