English Dub Season Review: Mao Season One Part One
Overview:
Nanoka passes through a portal into the Taisho era, where exorcist Mao reluctantly rescues her from the jaws of a grotesque yokai. When Nanoka gets back to the present, she discovers she has some new, incredible abilities. She returns to the past looking for answers, only to get caught up in Mao’s investigation of a series of gruesome murders. As her questions about herself multiply, Nanoka learns that Mao is cursed by a cat demon named Byoki—and so is his sword. If anyone but Mao attempts to wield it, they are doomed. But when Mao’s life is in jeopardy, Nanoka picks up his blade and swings!
Our Take(Spoilers):
I can’t decide if I’m a fan of Rumiko Takahashi’s works or not. I know that everyone loves Inuyasha; other shows like Urusei Yatsura and Ranma 1/2 are fan favorites. With all the remakes her works are getting, I’d love to see something like Maison Ikkoku get a remake because there aren’t any current, legal ways to watch that show, which is one of the only Rumiko works I like so far.
You would think I’d love her works because almost all of them have some form of romance in them. Even in this series, you can tell that our main character, Nanoka, is developing feelings for the other lead, the titular Mao. The main reason I’m bringing up how much I dislike most of her other stuff is so that you know that me liking this one is kind of a big deal.
Mao explores a time period of Japan that we rarely get to see: the Taisho period. That’s the early 1900’s. The only other show I know of that does that for sure is Golden Kamuy, I think. I’m sure there’s more, but it’s still nice to see something that isn’t just feudal Japan.
The voice cast also knocks it out of the park. Howard Wang voices Mao, and Anjali Kunapaneni voices Nanoka. Together, they do great things with their characters, and I have to admit that the first time I saw Mao and heard his voice, I wasn’t surprised at all that Howard Wang voiced him.
Can we somehow add to Patrick Seitz’s contract that he can only voice villains? That’s not to say that he’s bad when he voices good guys, but he does such a good villain voice. He brings to life one of the best villains in anime, Dio Brando from JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. He voices the villain here as well: the evil spirit Byoki. I think you’ll love his performance as much as I did.
One of the only things I don’t like about this show is that we’ve only got part one dubbed so far. The good news is that this season will be twenty-six episodes, according to MAL. That means we’re going to get thirteen more episodes at some point!
Sunrise handles the animation for this show, as they do for all of Rumiko’s works, it seems. We all know that Sunrise can knock it out of the park with animation, but I wouldn’t say that’s the case here. It’s not bad by any means, but it’s also not doing anything crazy. The action scenes flow well, and the way some of the abilities are animated is of good quality.
This show has some great action to it and a decent amount of heart. Nanoka is an interesting character, but I think she needs a little bit more to do in the second half. I hope we don’t have to wait too long to get that second half.
