Maria Watches Over Us - Season One

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Maria Watches Over Us, or Maria-sama ga Miteru in the original Japanese, is an interesting experiment in manufacturing drama. See, when you sit back and think about it, very little of consequence actually happens over the course of the series' 13 episodes. Don't tell that to some of these characters, though – they keep the angst-o-meter pinned at the redline, to the point where they should seriously consider a course of mood stabilizers and therapy. At the very least, they could use a glass of warm milk and a nap.

Our number-one blown stroker engine of angst is Yumi Fukuzawa, a first-year student at Lillian Girls' Academy. This is an idealized version of an all-girl Catholic school, and the social order is built around a peculiar custom. Each girl has a mentor from the year above her, a "soeur," who provides her with guidance and chaste sisterly love as part of her development into a perfectly repressed model of conservative Japanese femininity.

This is well and good and only mildly homoerotic, but Yumi's soeur is no ordinary soeur. For reasons that would take far too long to explain, she winds up being chosen by Sachiko Ogasawara, daughter of an insanely rich and eminently proper family, who also happens to be part of the school's eight-member student council. That makes Yumi one of the officers of the "Yamayurikai" too, and more to the point, it leaves her drowning in a sea of abject terror about what might happen if she makes some crucial social faux pas.

What's unusual about the way that the series creates its tension is there aren't any genuine human antagonists in the story. This is nothing like Brother, Dear Brother, a superficially similar tale of boarding-school dramatics that featured some of the most savagely bitchy teenage villains ever crafted for the screen. Every one of the characters in Maria-sama means well in her own way.

The villains, if you can call them that, are miscommunication, passivity, paranoia, and Yumi's crippling puppy-like need for approval. Nearly every issue over the course of the series could be settled by a simple, short, frank conversation, but what fun would that be? Instead, Yumi and her fellow soeurs fret endlessly about what their friends think, what everyone around them thinks, and what they might have done to make somebody think whatever terrible thing they might be thinking.

There's one character who actually possesses something like self-awareness and a sense of humor, and not coincidentally, she's the most entertaining thing on the screen. Sei Satou, or "Rosa Gigantea," one of the senior student council members, is an enthusiastic jokester and shameless flirt who's addicted to tweaking poor Yumi's neuroses. She's also the only member of the cast whose feelings for her soeur go beyond simple friendship, which inspires the best storyline of the season by a long shot.

The rest of the time, Maria-sama can be frustrating and silly, but that doesn't mean it can't be a lot of fun as well. No matter how trivial the issue – Will Sachiko like the chocolates Yumi made for Valentine's Day? Tune in next time for the exciting conclusion! – the show screws itself up to such a pitch of dramatic intensity that it's hard not to get sucked along. It's not for everyone, but once again, it's an interesting experiment.

7 out of 10