[Film Review] Mai-chan's Daily Life (まいちゃんの日常, Mai-chan no Nichijō)

Mai-chan no Nichijō, or Mai-chan’s Daily Life, the newest release from Tetrofilms, begins by looking more like a highly experimental (if splatterific) student film rather than an adaptation of a popular ‘ero-guru’ manga series. The term ‘ero guru’ is a wasai-eigo, or Japanese mash-up of the English words erotic and grotesque, which should give you something of a sense of the fetishistic contents ahead.

The original manga series is known for its salacious portrayals of blood and sex, and its blend of sadism and bondage, that comes with an edge of class commentary along with the cat ears and frilly panties. The film takes what was a ten chapter story plus an omake (bonus story) by Waita Uziga and cherry picks enough content to make an hour or so’s worth of gore and good makeup effects, interwoven between all the panties and chains and garter belts. 

The original story is told through Mai-chan’s sad eyes. She is a maid cursed with immortality, who is forced by her mistress to serve her upper-class guests, enduring routine torture, sexual humiliation and dismemberment as a part of her daily life. The real sadness behind Mai-chan’s eyes is the fact that she can never escape. Like Prometheus bound to a rock, her liver will always grow back, as will her eyes, her limbs, her breasts, no matter how much pain she endures. While the set-up for the film was a decent premise for this genre, and one that could have been taken in several directions, the writer/director Sado Satō is more interested in the surreal juxtapositions here, opening with the double acts of eating and torture, focusing on the tearing of flesh as a symbolic act. The visual connections are more interesting on a conceptual level than a real one as a lot of the camerawork focuses more on fitting what it can into frame rather than going for thought-out composition and design. Additionally a lot of the violence loses its force because of the timing of sound effects in the edit of the film.

The makeup effects are particularly good, but without an equally strong sound effects track to match it, even the better moments don’t quite stick the landing. For a film that includes one splat-tastic sequence after another, auto-cannibalism and heaps of nudity, I found it strangely slow and unsure of itself. No doubt, this film could have benefited from better production value, that would have enabled a better score, better sound, and a better location. Without these outer trimmings in place, the young actors who play the maids give their all in their performances in a really admirable way. Without a doubt, it’s An Koshi’s performance as Mai-chan that brings forth any semblance of pathos from the original story. If you read the original manga, I say go for it. If not, tread lightly with this adaptation unless you are an absolute gorehound who enjoys the unique Japanese mixture of Eros and Thanatos with a side of tortured cat-girl.

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