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This is a "Wild Mass Guess" entry, where we pull out all the sanity stops on theorizing. The regular entry on this topic is elsewhere. Please see this programme note.

Mai-Otome

The entire thing takes place on a far-future Earth and not on a colony world; the moon is Earth's moon, the Administar is positioned exactly where the old HiME star was, the Otome are a result of continued HiME research within SEARRS (which originally produced Alyssa), the characters are reincarnations of their Mai-HiME counterparts, and Miyu is the same android in both series.

Well, to be honest... this theory probably isn't crazy enough for this page. There are people who believe that. Some of this is true in the manga, though that is an Alternate Universe from the anime. Note, however, that Miyu's acronym is slightly different in the Otome version.

I'd say this is more accurate than a lot of people are willing to admit. Miyu, at one point, IIRC goes to Fuuka Academy which is underwater. It... doesn't get much more specific than that. Why would they uproot the school to another planet and hide it underwater? When just as easily, in the world-ending conflicts that produced the current civilization, the island the school was on could have been covered by rising seas.

Everything until episode 17 was orchestrated by Natsuki and Shizuru in a convoluted Xanatos Roulette to get more political power for Garderobe, with a puppet ruler in charge of Windbloom.

It is they who were intending to "liberate" Windbloom.

Let's look at the facts. There are Five Columns; yet only one of them is ever seen doing anything of significance, with another one as her obedient errand girl. Natsuki somehow knew of the yet-to-happen Schwartz attack and summoned Shizuru, who then cut the plane in half (with the girls still inside!) and allowed it to crash into the castle, which in turn allowed Schwartz to infiltrate the construction team with nobody noticing. Natsuki allowed Arika to enroll despite all objections, openly encouraged the rivalry between her and Nina, allowed her to carry the GEM around, turned a blind eye to the contract between Arika and Mashiro, didn't destroy the Harmonium when she had the chance, and finally, when everything was prepared, appointed Nao as the vacant Fourth Column - the one candidate most likely to completely neglect her Otome duties. Natsuki's intention was to provoke Schwartz into attacking Windbloom and then "liberate" it with the sheer overwhelming force of Garderobe's Otome, becoming the "protectors" of the weak Queen and her weak-willed Meister. The one thing that was overlooked was how they could be instantly depowered with one direct hit taken by the Fumi System...

The Otome technology (or some prototype form of it) was developed by NERV from Neon Genesis Evangelion, and Ritsuko is the founder of Schwartz.

Look at Misato

◊ and Ritsuko's

◊ earrings: the former has stud earrings like those of the Otome (albeit in both ears), and the latter has black octahedron-shaped jewels resembling Schwartz GEMs (like those used by the Valkyrie Unit). The Slaves are "obviously" a byproduct of the human/mecha synchronization experiments, and thus remote-controlled successors to the Evangelions. Also, NERV, with its questionable ethics, sounds just like the organization whose technology would enforce the painful (and often fatal) effects of Master/Slave and Master/Otome contracts. Then we have this

◊...

Nina and Sergay DID go through with... you know what.

It didn't look like Sergay knocked her out with a blow to the head or something; and since she started it, she would have noticed if Sergay had not gone through with it.

Possibly, the Black GEM was designed without that particular weakness.
It does not explain the events in Zwei, though.
Sergay has a supply of... protection... that he picked up in some foreign land. Or he knows where his limits are.

Otome nanomachines do not disintegrate when in contact with semen.

A doujinshi portrayed this idea.

The nanomachines do not disintegrate after contact with semen. This would connect with the theory immediately above this one. This claim is merely perpetuated by the unknowing Otome populace; only the nobles and the Columns know the truth. Considering the state of Earl, it's plausible that there would be an Ancient Conspiracy, or not-so-ancient conspiracy, wanting this secret kept, with enforcers to, um, silence anyone wanting to go public and plug leaks. As to why? Well... Well... No Guy Wants An Amazon.

Alternatively, they need to keep the public convinced that there's an easy way to keep the Otomes in check - a way that, if used, would make their approval rating plummet. A way that prevents the Otome from falling into various relationship pitfalls, helps keep their numbers down, and provides a sick sort of motivation for not getting defeated nor allowing themselves to fall into enemy hands.
The vulnerability thing is an Informed Attribute that, for all the fuss, is never triggered in the series. An Otome who discovered the truth would either keep it secret or be silenced, presumably by Garderobe.
It makes so much sense. You have to wonder if the show's writers had the same thing in mind — after all, they could easily have shown us a depowered Otome, but they never did.
- But they did. Arika's mom right at the start. She had lost her Otome powers and thus couldn't win against Rad.
  - There is another good reason for this conspiracy. As events in the show have proved, an Otome who has borne a child can be used as a new Shinso to create a whole new line of Otome independent of Garderobe. Even if the nanomachines were still fine, the original designers of the Otome System probably built in a safety device in the GE Ms to prevent entire clans or worse, nations, of Otome springing up each with hundreds of families centred around a Shinso who acts as their limiter much like Fumi does.
Allow me to throw out a possibility; they do not, in fact, disintegrate. They can't be used to form a robe any more, but still allow for the passive powers Otome get without the robe. Which is why pre-nanite-infusion Arika can still outpace Nina on foot and manifest a pseudo-robe for a few seconds when Nina grabs her.

Otome nanite restrictions are Copy Protection features

The nanites are vulnerable to semen. This weakness is Copy Protection of the Otome technology, part of applying the restrictions on Otome.

There are three known restrictions on Otome:

There must be a contract with a non-Otome using a GEM as an intermediary.
There must be certification from that non-Otome to activate each use.
The Otome must be a female virgin.

In the show, two of these restrictions are temporarily bent or broken.

Types one and two are bent by the GEMs themselves multiple times, most obviously in ep.1 when Arika, Nina and Mashiro are falling. Arika's GEM manages to make a robe before shutting down. Various other times, GEMs are projecting force-fields, activating nearby tech, or forcibly throwing their owners out of harm's way (Nina, Zwei 3.)

Type 2 is temporarily lifted by the Admin Star in the last TV episode, allowing all contracted Otome (students contracted to the school Founder) to materialize.

It's not hard to imagine that, when these restrictions were planned out, the decision to restrict otome tech to virgin females was made, and it was arranged to have the nanites self-destruct on contact with semen and allow antibodies against them to be created. Who would design machines that break and cause a cascade failure on contact with so common a substance without some purpose? It's like StarForce.

Remember, the nanites essentially take over immuno-defense of the otome from the immune system. Therefore, if otome nanites didn't self-destruct on contact with semen, then any child of a (female) otome would also be an otome, and there could be uncontrolled proliferation.

Anyone attempting to remove the restrictions from the nanites would be guilty of violating the otome non-proliferation treaty and subject to death.

For all we know, an Otome may have sex before being implanted with nanomachines.
- But considering the age that one generally becomes a student Otome at... that is something only a Complete Monster would do.
In Sifr 3, Rena overrides restrictions 1 and 2 by reprogramming her GEM. It displays "Warning: unauthorized access," followed by "Forced Robe activation" during the materialization process. This confirms that those restrictions are indeed implemented in firmware on the GEMs themselves.

Rena Sayers is the incarnation of Artemis, the Goddess of the Hunt

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis

Rena's hidden power seems to activate just in time to protect her from lethal damage. In Sifr 2, Rena is seen blasted away from the hotel by the android, and lands softly in a crater held aloft by wings. In Sifr 3, Rena is flung into the moon and knocked unconscious momentarily, during this brief moment, as the android goes in for the kill, the wings appear again, and a large translucent arm wielding a bow shoots at the android. Also, Rena overrides the Blue Sky Sapphire's authorization restrictions by calling out to Artemis, and again with the wings.

Mai was originally going to play a bigger role...

...but with how Gundam SEED Destiny turned out, Sunrise didn't want to risk a repeat of the hero from the previous show (Kira/Mai) coming in and taking over, and ordered Mai's role to be reduced.

Mashiro really IS the rightful queen of Windbloom...

...but not by the recent line shown in S.ifr. Come on, she looks exactly like Mashiro the first queen of Windbloom!

The manga indicates that Mai may have been the previous queen of Windbloom and mother to the Mashiro twins.

Mashiro and Nagi are infact...

...Half-siblings. The former Archduke of Artai looks a bit both like Mashiro and Nagi; according to The Other Wiki he was said to have six wives and fathered up towards 10 children. I'm simply putting two and two together on this one.

The characters speak a future form of English; possibly similar to the one in this article;

contemporary (to this world) English is simply a written standard used so that all the Futurese-speakers could communicate, much like Church Latin in the Middle Ages, because English itself split into several languages.

Though it is clear that English, in whatever form, is not the only language spoken on that world, it explains why one of the Aswad cyborgs lapses into English in the Japanese version, despite how much written English there is — it is simply speaking "classical" (21st-century) English as opposed to one of the several "modern" tongues, which the others speak. The existence of non-English languages does not invalidate this — remember, even Germans used Latin when they needed to.

Mai-Hi ME

WildMassGuessing/Anime and Manga

Mai-Otome Zwei