Today’s deck is the Gothic Whispers Tarot.
By “Gothic” it refers more to the literary movement which is fine, but the box has a line about being humorous which… sorry I guess the humor went over my head. Deck’s cool though.
I’ve been doing a lot of paperwork lately and today’s reading feels like it’s related to me trying to balance that with the actual creative work I’ve been managing to do.
I didn’t mention it yesterday, but my relationship with Mai-HiME is… complicated.
Would I say I like it? No. Would I say it holds up? No. Would I recommend it? No. Is it nonetheless a formative experience that I reluctantly cherish? Yes.
It’s extremely early 2000s but in like… a different lane from the geeky extremely 2000s. It has that specific flavor of edge you saw in things like Kamen Rider Faiz and Blade.
To be fair though, at least Mai-HiME is “very 2000s (compliment)”, Mai-Otome is “very 2000s (derogatory)”. There’s quite a few reasons, but the key point is that the girls are military magical girls but if they’re not virgins they cannot use these powers.
Now, I don’t need to explain the many ways this is such manufactured bait that, to be fair, I’d be more angry if the plot didn’t bite on it just from how blatant it is. The thing is that they go the extra way to go like “yeah it’s because so and so protein in sperm neutralizes the thing we use to transform” and I remember the point where I stopped watching (at least until a further viewing years later) was the moment I went “wait… so can’t they just cum in the water supply or something?” “Can’t they isolate the protein?” “If they know the problem, can’t they revert it?”.
That’s when a young Fer learned in a very funny way the writing trappings of thinking you’re smart by being very specific.
Anyway, it came to mind because I remembered a while ago they released a set of Mai-HiME/Otome artbooks and blurays and I imagined a scenario where someone’s like.
“Oh, you like Mai-HiME?”
And I go.
“Hell no.”
Anyway, lazy Sunday otherwise.