Ah, I'll finally able to release... this...! Let's breathe in...

ECCHI IS WRONG! IT'S WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG! ...

...

Let's take advantage that Mahoro is dreaming to explain a little how ecchi is treated in Mahoromatic.

Mahoromatic is an anime series categorized as "ecchi". Ecchi is how japanese pronounce the H letter, which means Hentai, pervert, porn, and the like. However, "ecchi" is more suited for animes with sexual innuendos or showing a little too much flesh compared to more normal animes (without getting graphically explicit. It's more of a teasing.) To sum it up, it is like comparing erotisme and pornography in movies.

Mahoro fights every form of ecchi in Suguru's house by picking up his ecchi magazines and confiscating them. This is quite rare, in anime, as Mahoro is one of the only female anime characters to openly condemn ecchi and hentai, without being ridiculized by her creators, or without being too naive. Her motto, by the way, is "ecchina no wa ikenaito omoimasu!" which she repeats often in the series, and which means that ecchi is wrong, basically!

This leads me to talk about ecchi in the series itself, may it be via Shikijou-sensei, or even Mahoro who we can see quite undressed sometimes. Many people think ecchi humour is gross, useless and easy. By considering it like that, series with such humor are automatically pushed back to second zone series, which don't even earn a second glance from these people. This is quite true in most series. Some abuse from their ecchi humor, or sometimes show too much panties to really be serious...

However, in Mahoromatic, there isn't anything like that: ecchi is completely part of the humor, and most of the time, a ecchi moment will make you laugh more than blushing, because the whole thing is willingly exaggerated. It's like a sex joke: People who take it seriously will get offended.

In other words, ecchi in Mahoromatic is like its characters: cute. Never gross and useless, always monitored closely by Mahoro. Putting a series full of poetry and warm and fuzzy feelings aside because you saw panties on the floor in a scene is really wanting to feel superior intellectually to other people...