[Hagoshod]

If Ishigami was supposed to be such a great mastermind all along, where was he during the Searrs arc? Why did he never use his supposedly WEASELLY WAYS to cut a deal with Alyssa? You know, a simple "Hey, grant my HiME and me immunity and I'll rat out the rest of the HiME for you" would have established the kind of character he was supposed to be in the second half of the show.

But no. When the Festival arc comes, he's just suddenly crazy out of NOWHERE for NO REASON other than to make the "Okay guys we're being dark and serious now" angle the writers suddenly wanted work.

Mashiro makes no sense from any perspective. Okay, she's immortal via using Fumi's Child as a host body. She was the previous Festival winner, but (as we're shown in a flashback in episode 25/26) she sternly rejected the world OL wanted to create just as Mai does in this generation. However, she still "guides the HiME Star." What the hell does that even mean? Again, you're talking about something that the entire plot is hinged on never being properly established. If she "guides" it, and she obviously doesn't want OL to get his way, what's stopping her from literally commanding it to drift AWAY from Earth so future HiME Festivals don't have to happen?

At the beginning of episode 17 or 18, we're shown Fumi rolling Mashiro up to a window as Mashiro says something along the lines of, "Hmm, are we really doing the right thing?" No, YOU AREN'T. Why doesn't she realize this? She literally has the knowledge and the power to single-handedly prevent the entire Festival from happening simply by telling the HiME what's really going on. There's no reason for the Festival to even happen other than, once again, the story wouldn't be as OOO DEEP AND TRAGIC if it didn't.

Mashiro's master plan isn't time-sensitive. It isn't overcomplicated, and it doesn't require some sort of huge gambit to work. Her strategy is literally, "Hey, everyone fly into the BIG RED GLOWY THINGIE," yet she refuses to tell anyone this. She nonsensically chooses to allow Nagi's manipulation to propagate until the HiME become unbelievably paranoid and murder each other (making them LESS likely to get along and work together) for no given reason. If she had simply gathered everyone in one place like she did during the Searrs invasion and explained how the HiME Star needs to feed off their negative emotions, the Festival would have been completely averted and the HiME Star never would have even gained world-destroying powers. Hell, she probably wouldn't even have to worry about Akane being bumped off early if she had explained things more thoroughly to her and told her to watch out for the Searrs spies that NAGI AND SHE BOTH KNEW ABOUT.

And don't try to tell me something like "Oh, but she had to wait until they learned acting selfishly wouldn't solve anything and they needed to work together." The HiME already knew how to do that. The entire premise of the first 16 episodes of the show (minus the Akane subplot, which can easily be ignored and the plot even goes out of the way to ignore with brilliant pacing ideas like "Kill dude; Follow up with completely unrelated Beach Fanservice episode") is nothing BUT friendship and teamwork saving the day. The HiME defeated Searrs, who used the exact same "Do as we say or our big space weapon will kill you" ultimatum Nagi would later rehash, WITH TEAMWORK. By completely ignoring this accomplishment and going "Okay everyone's suddenly going to be paranoid and angsty and untrustworthy of each other for no reason" to kick off the Festival arc, the writers set the entire cast's character development back by about 20 miles and just made everyone look like idiots.

Yeah. They set up Mashiro as this mysterious but sympathetic anti-hero, and it just ends up falling flat on its face the moment you start thinking about it.

HiME's anime ending gets bashed too much. In the specific trying-sooooo-hard-to-be-serious-but-not-working-at-all context of the anime Festival storyline, it's actually good. It rolled the characters back to their episode 16 state (+Akane), which is exactly where the show should have ended in the first place. It's not a cop out when it's correcting the Festival arc's nonsensical writing, which was a cop out to begin with.

I like the second half of My HiME for what it tries to be, but I hate it for its absurdity and pretentiousness. You basically have to watch it as a dark comedy for it to work.