Mertseger
One of the weakest asadoras in the past decade
Mai Agare! was the winter asadora which started in the fourth quarter of 2022, and is the fictional account (as opposed to a fictionalized biography) of Mai who aspires to soar into the sky. She makes a lot of progress towards doing so in the first half of the series in which she grows up and heads to college where she becomes the pilot for a club which works on building human-powered aircraft, and then shifts to flight school where she successfully graduates and is all set to become a commercial pilot in Japan.
And so, naturally, at that point the script turns abruptly from the exciting world of piloting to ... the manufacturing of screws and the plight of small production factories in Osaka.
Look. I'll spare you all the details, but I'm entirely the target audience for the second half. My Dad engineered parts for the B1 bomber in the 70s and the Boeing 767 and 777 jets in the 90s. He had his name on several process patents for the use of titanium. I have written tons of poetry. All of those things touch directly on plot points in this series. I should be the one person who should be eating up everything being served by this series in the second half, but let me tell you: the storylines in the second half are ... just ... so ... boring.
The scripts also suffers from tepid or nonexistent resolutions to many of the running story arcs. Are the Goto islanders able to recruit young people to establish lives in the islands and revitalize the community? Does Mai's brother face any real long-term consequences for his illegal investment activities? Can Takashi overcome his writer's block? Can local Osaka machine shops and factories band together to bring in more business opportunities? The answers will not surprise you, and are presented in ways that might well be a cure for your insomnia.
As other reviewers have noted, there also seemed to be real issues in the production budgeting for this series with no expenses being spared for the first half including at least one aircraft apparently specifically built for the production and lots of shots on location at a fight school and also at the reasonably distant Goto islands. After that the story is stuck in a handful of sets including the Iwakura family house which miraculously expands as needed over time. They splurged a bit more for the final two weeks where they still mostly skip over what would probably be a much more interesting plot than the rest of the second half with a couple of multiyear time jumps.
On the other hand, the cast consists of good, solid acting professionals doing what they can with the material. I have enjoyed Fukuhara Haruka in several other things, and would even recommend her turn in her two seasons of the live action Yuru Camp even though those series have even less plot than this one. Here she plays Mai as persistent and cheerful, and she handles the narrow range of emotions required for the role perfectly well. She has little to no chemistry with either of her love interests, but, to be fair, all sexual chemistry is apparently against the asadora style guide in general.
If you enjoy the asadora format, this series is one. If you've never tried an asadora, there are many I would recommend before watching this one with Amachan still being the best pure fiction series and the recent Tora ni Tsubasa being the best fictionalized biography in my experience and opinion.
And so, naturally, at that point the script turns abruptly from the exciting world of piloting to ... the manufacturing of screws and the plight of small production factories in Osaka.
Look. I'll spare you all the details, but I'm entirely the target audience for the second half. My Dad engineered parts for the B1 bomber in the 70s and the Boeing 767 and 777 jets in the 90s. He had his name on several process patents for the use of titanium. I have written tons of poetry. All of those things touch directly on plot points in this series. I should be the one person who should be eating up everything being served by this series in the second half, but let me tell you: the storylines in the second half are ... just ... so ... boring.
The scripts also suffers from tepid or nonexistent resolutions to many of the running story arcs. Are the Goto islanders able to recruit young people to establish lives in the islands and revitalize the community? Does Mai's brother face any real long-term consequences for his illegal investment activities? Can Takashi overcome his writer's block? Can local Osaka machine shops and factories band together to bring in more business opportunities? The answers will not surprise you, and are presented in ways that might well be a cure for your insomnia.
As other reviewers have noted, there also seemed to be real issues in the production budgeting for this series with no expenses being spared for the first half including at least one aircraft apparently specifically built for the production and lots of shots on location at a fight school and also at the reasonably distant Goto islands. After that the story is stuck in a handful of sets including the Iwakura family house which miraculously expands as needed over time. They splurged a bit more for the final two weeks where they still mostly skip over what would probably be a much more interesting plot than the rest of the second half with a couple of multiyear time jumps.
On the other hand, the cast consists of good, solid acting professionals doing what they can with the material. I have enjoyed Fukuhara Haruka in several other things, and would even recommend her turn in her two seasons of the live action Yuru Camp even though those series have even less plot than this one. Here she plays Mai as persistent and cheerful, and she handles the narrow range of emotions required for the role perfectly well. She has little to no chemistry with either of her love interests, but, to be fair, all sexual chemistry is apparently against the asadora style guide in general.
If you enjoy the asadora format, this series is one. If you've never tried an asadora, there are many I would recommend before watching this one with Amachan still being the best pure fiction series and the recent Tora ni Tsubasa being the best fictionalized biography in my experience and opinion.
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