Welcome to Maid Spin, the personal website of iklone. I write about about otaku culture as well as history, philosophy and mythology.
My interests range from anime & programming to mediaevalism & navigation. Hopefully something on this site will interest you.
I'm a devotee of the late '90s / early '00s era of anime, as well as a steadfast lover of maids. My favourite anime is Mahoromatic. I also love the works of Tomino and old Gainax.
To contact me see my contact page.
This article was originally published in the Nottingham Anime Society Zine issue #12. It is written without the expectation that you have seen Mahoromatic and with only cursory spoilers.
Once upon a time there were a pair of kingfishers that were cursed to live out on the open sea, their names were Ceyx and Halcyon. When it came time to lay her eggs, Halcyon had no option but to nest on the shoreline, close to the danger of the crashing waves and tide. The sea noticed the birds' plight, and calmed the oceans for fourteen days straight, giving Halcyon the chance to brood her eggs and for her young to fledge. This is from where we get the phrase 'halcyon days', meaning something similar to 'the good ol' days' in common usage.
For most of us, our halcyon days are from our youth, the times we are nostalgic for. Most of us are nostalgic for many things: a familiar sight, sound or smell that triggers the recollection of a bleary scene of youth, or a totally indescribable but powerful emotion. That which we are nostalgic for are often those things that we wish to return to; and in this way our experience of time is mirrored through the present moment. Our hopes for the future are constructed from the nostalgia of our past.
In Mahoromatic we see the 'good ol' days' of Suguru, the story's hero. Chapters of his life with his maid Mahoro form a vignette of his youth: both the good, the bad and the seemingly mundane moments. The show itself is often presented within a literal vignette, the colours fading at the borders as if the memory is incomplete. But the end of each rose-tinted episode is punctuated with a reminder that the end is inescapable: the slowly decreasing count of the days remaining for Mahoro, since as a deprecated android her lifespan is limited. With it you are pulled out from the moment and reminded that 'this too shall pass'. Somehow I always forget it's coming, even though I have watched the show many times over, and the affect is still strong: not because it is surprising but because it was always there and you looming in the background. We can all be glad we aren't shown a daily countdown for our own lives, but memories of the past are different; once the conclusion is known it's impossible to ignore the eventual ending, and it is this that gives nostalgia a painful edge.
In the end we see Mahoro and Suguru's golden age come to an end, with their destiny being writ in stone before they had even met, controlled by malevolent forces outside of their control. Being the story's heroes, their fates are also tied to the fate of the world itself, and soon the imminent destruction of the Earth becomes clear to everyone on the planet. But humanity is not thrown into panic. Neither Mahoro nor Suguru nor anyone on Earth despairs at the coming armageddon; they neither welcome nor curse it, but simply carry on. 'At this moment all the people of Earth, facing their day of judgement, did not fall into panic. As never before people calmly passed their time in thought. Is it a miracle? Resignation? No. This is the beautiful side of man.' The moment the series had been literally counting down to arrives with an unexpected tranquillity: for something that is destined isn't terrible or scary in the end, it just is. Mahoro and Suguru and the viewer have all understood for a long time that this is where it ends, and so when Mahoro sacrifices herself for the sake of the world it's not a shock, but rather a fulfilment of fate.
But Mahoromatic's story doesn't end there. We get to see humanity twenty years after Mahoro's ultimate sacrifice to save the world. Man has reached Mars: a new colonial age has begun with millions emigrating to the space colony of 'Na-Geanna'. The name is taken from a Gaelic term meaning 'wild goose': a moniker given to the young men that left the old world for America in the 18th century. We see Suguru as one of these new wild geese, living out a vengeful life as a bounty hunter forever seeking revenge against the androids that he associates with taking his Mahoro away from him. He has never let go of the past and still grips tightly to his nostalgic youth. This is the negative form of nostalgia, bitter, one that drives you to despair rather than to hope. Suguru's friends have all moved on and grown up, leaving just him behind. It is at that point, his lowest, when God finally answers his prayers. Matthew, the essence of God in Mahoromatic, shines part of herself down onto Earth to save Suguru. Matthew describes the gift simply as 'memories of a springtime sun': it is his emotion of nostalgia. This manifests as a direct answer to Suguru's prayers and Mahoro is reborn into the world.
To me Mahoro represents the piece of perfection that is here on Earth. That feeling you sense at the moments in your life that will go down as your best. She's something otherworldly but yet the most natural of things at the same time. She's something that we all will find at some point in our lives and when we do we must clutch onto it as hard as possible. She is 'the maid who runs on tears' because she is the melancholy that pervades all thoughts of eternity in a fallen world. A supernatural being that by virtue of being perfect must become a servant to the imperfect, such are maids.
It is often debated how literally the ending of Mahoromatic is meant to be taken, but I wholeheartedly believe that it was meant to portray a real miracle, rather than just a hallucination. Through this it sums up the world which Mahoromatic portrays. It's a world where you are rewarded for good deeds in material ways by a higher power through the goodness of its grace. A world where the divine is reality and where we are all destined for salvation. A world where the gods will grace all men with their own halcyon days if only they ask. It is our real world, and we just need to build the robot maids.
