620https://yattatachi.com/wpcontent/uploads/2015/12/ItsudatteMySantaReview.jpeg As I stated last year in my Tokyo Marble Chocolate reviewhttps://anilist.co/review/3860 the older I get the harder it is to get into the jolly spirit of Christmas. Is it schoolwork a general sense of bitterness the fact that I spend a notable portion of the holidays trying to write reviews? Whatever it is Im not one to accept failure without a fight. So after Christmas music I turned to anime. Watching the most horrifically brutal Gundam show more on that in a later review didnt really do my joviality any favors but what about My Santa a comedic Christmas OVA about a sullen boy named Santa who despises the Christmas season? On his birthday of Christmas Eve he runs into a woman named Mai who claims shes a Santa Claus in training. Determined to ensure that no one goes unhappy on Christmas Eve she decides to spend the night with Santa. I saw someone watch the anime on their activity feed and at two episodes around twentytwo minutes each I thought what the hell it could be interesting it could even be good. Well I got one for two. Scroll to the score to see which I got right. My Santa is a very very very very very odd OVA that I swear was made under the influence of spiked eggnog. Its quite surreal and not in that it purposely does things that are strange to create a unique viewing experience its surreal in that its so insanely inept in nearly every feasible category. Its almost impressive. 520https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/tl/2/29/SantaMai.JPG To drive the point home that My Santa is mediocre across all boards Ill start off with something I dont usually even focus on in my reviews: the voice acting. Its like My Santa heard my opinion that dubbing is good and took it as a personal challenge because the voice acting or directing if Im being generous to the actors is baaad. Mais English voice actor is particularly bad. Everything she says is loud and seems on the verge of a hysterical cry. Everything is eleven with her and she always has this odd...whining quality to her voice I think it is? Its hard to describe but youd know exactly what Im talking about if you heard it. I thought her voice sounded familiar so I gave it a search and lo and behold Mai is voiced by Brittney Karbowski who also voices Mio in Ghost Stories an anime Im currently watching. Ill get into it more in my review but the dub of Ghost Stories is essentially a parody so Karbowskis voice for Mios voice fits there since its supposed to be over the top while even the serious scenes of this anime have her overacting. Hell there are points where Mio sounds more subdued than Mai. From that her work as Selim Bradley on Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood and from listening to a clip of her in Fairy Tale I can tell that Karbowski is by no means a bad voice actor meaning Funimation just really dropped the ball on voice directing. If that wasnt proof enough we later have Sharry who sounds like shes trying to impersonate a prepubescent child. Then theres Santas voice actor who has the opposite problem in that he never sounds particularly intense even when Santa himself is animated as yelling. Then theres just how rapidly everyone speaks. Its hilariously bad. Speaking of rapidly the anime has an insane hysterical pace that makes it hard to process anything. In the first fortyfive seconds of the OVA proper Mai asks Santa does he want to spend the night with her gets flustered when passerbys criticize her the implication being shes asking Santa if he wants to sleep with her slaps Santa gets dragged off by police then reappears behind Santa demanding to know why hes unhappy. Theres so much going on I didnt have a chance to figure out the point or why I should care. The show in general just comes across as obnoxious. Its hard to resist the urge of just listing everything that happens in the show because nearly everything is an example of this insane pace. Soon Mai begins materializing things and gets in a fight with a delinquent leader because of...reasons. Well lack thereof. There truly is no rhyme or reason in this anime. The pace reminds me of a much less funny FLCL. 520https://fantasticmemes.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/vlcsnap2014121210h17m21s40.png The best parts are probably when it slows a bit down and we into why Santa dislikes Christmas: besides being made fun of due to his name and birthday Mai for one makes fun of him making me question why we should think shes likable he hates Christmas because hes always alone for his parents are always busy and his friends dont want to hang out with him. The OVA squanders this with its solution to the problem. We discover that Santas parents dont visit him because theyre busy helping orphans. While its altruistic it doesnt excuse the abandonment theyve subjected their own child to but Santa and the audience is supposed to accept this as a good enough reason to neglect their son. On a more humorous note it turns out Santas friends dont hang out with him because every year they throw a party to celebrate his birthday. Without him. Because they assume he doesnt want to go. Really heartwarming stuff right there. Any pros attributed to the first episode come from just the subject itself: Christmas even if its not handled particularly well I guess its still sweet to see someone find the spirit of Christmas. 520http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3566/1767/1600/bscap070.jpg Thanks to My Santa I can now safely say that I dont intrinsically love romance because by God was it handled ineptly here just like everything is. Mai and Santa have known each other for four hours tops before theyre falling over one another. This would be a bit more believable if Mai hadnt spent a significant portion at least that we as the viewers see of that time antagonizing Santa. Oh and dont get me started on the second episode. It features Sharry whos shown as being nothing but nasty towards Mai but at the end theyre revealed as friends just clashing due to having different ideals. This is despite the two characters conflicting ideals never being brought up besides this moment. The after credits scene takes away any sort of sweetness this episode has of course thats not saying much so you might as well watch it. It creates a pretty annoying plothole in which Mais teacher claims Sharry read a letter wrong mistakenly believing Mai had to return instead of MaiMai. But earlier in the episode the teacher herself stated that Mai had to return. The characters look quite bland not really popping out at all and I can say the same about the animation. Neither is terrible but they really dont add anything. It should be mentioned that this is an ecchi show. Its not a focus at all and it tends to just be distracting and not at all tantiliating due to the aforementioned blandness and the fact that it isnt focused on. We see plenty of Mais panties due to the anime realistically depicting a short skirt and theres a Sailor Moonesque transformation sequence that shows Mai getting a large bust and derriere. Plus theres a bit of Gainaxinghttps://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Gainaxing the second episode. If thats your thing I still wouldnt really recommend My Santa because there are doubtless shows that do it better. The shows supposed to be a comedy but it mainly tries to achieve this by being as random as possible which doesnt really do it for me. The only intentional funny bits were Mai and Santa eating Mais terrible cooking rendered as them inexplicable firing energy blasts from their mouth as well as MaiMais constant eating while Mai Sharry and Santa were having a conversation. I probably laughed the hardest during portion of the first episode where a young Santa looks absolutely broken while over dramatic sad music plays and his mother chews the scenery apologizing over the phone. Its so overwrought that it kills the mood they were going for and I cant help but lose it. 520https://pm1.narvii.com/6303/8c6b33702f581504ace0619ac3b06a1f43859243hq.jpg I suppose thats the best way to summarize this anime: unintentionally funny. Whatever it tries to do it fails miserably as indicated by its assurance that there would be a third episode only to have just two produced. Its suppose to be a Widget Serieshttps://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WidgetSeries in its randomness but its more weird in how inept it is. Theres honestly something fascinating in how terrible it is. I dare say its almost so bad its good. Almost. Thanks to this show I can finally tackle the question of what to rate something thats mechanically bad but still can be enjoyed due to its terribleness. Enjoyment is an important component of how good something in but it becomes tricky if the enjoyment isnt intentional. I suppose I can acknowledge how bad the show is in my score yet state how it can have merit in a sobaditsgood manner. Making my job easier is the fact that the sobaditsgoodfactor doesnt help it that much. At the end of the day My Santa is part comedy thats not funny. Meaning that there are few moments where the viewer will actually laugh. My Santa certainly has its moments of unintentional comedy but those are fewandfarbetween. The unintentional comedy and the sheer impressiveness of how bad it is save it from a lower score. 520https://photos.animetvn.tv/upload/filmbig/maxresdefault7.jpg But lets not make bones about it My Santa is still god awful. 200https://i.ur.com/DPSCjHM.png And I just realized that My Santa is a pun on Mai Santa and I hate it. In all fairness however the Japanese voice acting apparently wasnt very good either. As per the top review of My Santa on Myanimelist courtesy of DeSwitch Mai bounces immediately into the highobnoxious register and stays there so long as shes not in Santa Claus mode. Whiny shrill and always shouting her voice actor the talented Aya Hirano should be ashamed of this performance deeply ashamed. So points to the dub for equivalency I guess?