舞-HiME S1

This is a pretty interesting anime from 2004. It's primary genre is fantasy/magical girl, but it handles that in a pretty unique and (relative to magical girl stories) grounded way - while still telling an overly complex story with a huge ensemble cast. Secondarily it has some romance (straight and yuri), and lots of talk about love or relationships. I wouldn't go into it looking for that though.

While I can't say it left a lasting impression on me, compared to say シムーン or .hack//SIGN, the characters and drama were fairly interesting, and I certainly found myself invested in them, and anxiously watching to see what was next. Mai certainly was an interesting protagonist.

Speaking of .hack//SIGN, Yuki Kajiura also did the OST for this, tho it's much more monothematic a lot more. Despite this (it's at times because of it), it works excellently as a score

My main critique would be that I felt the background plot was a little too abstract and slowly developed, and a bit w/e. Also maybe I missed something along the way, but I still don't fully get what Nagi's or the 理事長's story was. My other critique is the psychotic lesbian trope - tho I like the way it was resolved.

Language: idk it's your typical 2000s fantasy sorta thing - and probably on the easier side of that. Much less domain vocab than say .hack//SIGN for example. The student council president speaks Kansai-ben, and that's done pretty well for the setting.