Sai1
Which was better?
Personally I go with Mai-Hime. I think it had a much better story and better characters. Someone had said that Mai-Otome had more action. I wasn't actually counting the number of action scenes so I don't know if that's true or not but I say Mai-Hime definately had better action scenes. In Mai-Hime everyone had fairly unique abilities. In Mai-Otome, with the exception of a few, all the Otome (or aspiring otome) pretty much do the same thing. Also there was only one Child and it was only called on twice. Mai-Otome got a little more interesting towards the end but if it weren't for the borrowed character designs, I don't think I would have watched it all.
And those Otome costumes were absolutely horrid.
Personally I go with Mai-Hime. I think it had a much better story and better characters. Someone had said that Mai-Otome had more action. I wasn't actually counting the number of action scenes so I don't know if that's true or not but I say Mai-Hime definately had better action scenes. In Mai-Hime everyone had fairly unique abilities. In Mai-Otome, with the exception of a few, all the Otome (or aspiring otome) pretty much do the same thing. Also there was only one Child and it was only called on twice. Mai-Otome got a little more interesting towards the end but if it weren't for the borrowed character designs, I don't think I would have watched it all.
And those Otome costumes were absolutely horrid.

. As with My-HiME, the title is a quirky mix of English/Japanese wordplay, intentionally using an irregular romanization of 舞 (mai) as "My", and 乙HiME also stands for 乙-Type HIghly Advance Materializing Equipment.