Taro Sado is a masochist. For years, this has left him unable to confess to a girl he saw at his job. At the advice of his friend, he goes to join the school's Second Volunteer Club. The first one is for normal volunteer purposes. The second is for personal problems and everything else. When he arrives, Taro meets Mio Isurugi, the club president with a sadistic personality, and Arashiko Yuno, a shy girl who's also part of the Volunteer Club. A masochist and a sadist meet, and Hilarity Ensues.
MM! provides examples of:
- A-Cup Angst: Exploited. Taro insults Mio's flat chest in order to get her to follow him to a surprise birthday party for her. Taro does this knowing that Mio wouldn't resist trying to beat him to a pulp for insulting her small boobs.
- Action Prologue: The series opens with on Mio chasing down Taro with a kendo practice sword.
- Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: Tomoko and Shizuka's "phase four". Old photo albums and everything else from Taro's childhood is brought up, all for the sake of trying to embarass Taro enough into not dating anyone.
- Animated Adaptation: Based on the Light Novels.
- Attempted Rape: How Arashiko came to dislike men in the first place. It happened at the hands of her abusive ex-boyfriend, who then spread rumors of her sleeping around for refusing his sexual advances. When Taro finds out, he promptly beats the crap out of the guy.
- Balanced Harem: Mio and Arashiko have equal chances with Taro. Other love interests, like his sister and mother, are Played for Laughs.
- Batman Gambit: When the club is throwing Mio a surprise birthday party, Taro gets Mio to follow him by insulting her small boobs and calling her "the queen bitch of the universe." Knowing that Mio would chase Taro to beat him to a pulp for insulting her, the gambit works like a charm.
- Batter Up!: Mio once pulled a baseball bat out of hammerspace, complete with projectile baseballs and a baseball player's uniform, to punish Taro with.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Mio appears as cute as can be when Taro first meets her, but that facade is pretty quickly stripped away ten minutes into the first episode as she reveals herself to be a sadistic tsundere.
- Berserk Button
- Never try to insult Mio in any way (especially her chest). Never. Put to good use once, when Taro exploited this to get her to follow him, knowing her Berserk Button would be pressed.
- Yukinojo doesn't like it when Noa uses her age-upping pills.
- Blue with Shock: Taro's reaction when he sees his sister Shizuka enter the beauty contest. Followed with a Color Failure when he sees their mom Tomoko follow suit.
- Bunny Girl: Arashiko and Mio dress this way at one point, hoping that it will get rid of Taro's hypno-induced Single-Target Sexuality for Tatsukichi. It doesn't work.
- Bust-Contrast Duo: The two female leads, Mio and Arashiko, are respectively a flat-chested and violent tsundere with A-Cup Angst and a busty, shy, and sweet girl who fears being touched by men.
- Buxom Beauty Standard: Zigzagged. Taro (and most other males) certainly notices Arashiko's "gifts", but at the same time Mio is still considered by many to be more beautiful, despite suffering from A-Cup Angst. Inverted with Yukinojo, who very much does not like his beloved Noa using her special pills.
- Camera Fiend: Michiru always has her camera at the ready to take shots of Mio's latest de-M-ing device or cute people in lavish get-ups. Especially cute people in lavish get-ups.
- Catchphrase: Arashiko's "I'm scared of men!" cry every time Taro accidentally touches her physically.
- Cannot Spit It Out:
- Arashiko does eventually get over her fear of men thanks to Taro's Nice Guy attitude (masochist perversion notwithstanding). However, Arashiko has a lot of trouble actually working up the nerve to tell him.
- Mio also develops a crush on Taro, but she can't spit it out because of her tsundere tendencies. When Taro isn't around, Mio is asked point-blank how she feels about Taro. All Mio can respond with after a few flustered seconds is "I don't know how I feel about him!"
- Chekhov's Skill: Taro's masochism finally works for him in during his fight with Yoshioka in the third episode. Now, that's using your M!
- Child Prodigy: Noa was a super genius back in her childhood days. When the story picks up, she's a Teen Genius and the top of the class.
- Chivalrous Pervert: Taro. Too Kinky to Torture on the outside; Nice Guy on the inside. For all of his masochism, he does try to treat Mio and Noa nicely. It causes both of them to develop crushes on him.
- Cliffhanger: The 10th (and final) novel ends with Taro being confessed to by Mio, when he is already in a relationship with Arashiko. By this point in time, Noa already confessed as well.
- Clingy Jealous Girl: For all of her teasing, taunting, and sadistic behavior towards Taro, Mio wants him to herself. When he briefly gets hypnotized into Single-Target Sexuality, or even just looks at someone else, Mio defaults to "what do they have that I don't?!" with Taro.
- Combined Energy Attack: Taro uses one to stop Noa's incoming destruction, gathering the energy of perverts from around the world.
- Comedic Lolicon: Yukinojo cranks the dial up to eleven, including going ballistic whenever Noa, the object of his perversions, uses some pills to temporarily make her look like the teenager she really is.
- Comedic Sociopathy: Mio takes this to unparalleled levels. She refers to Taro as "Pig Taro," routinely subjects him to physical punishments (including kicking him in the balls), and generally beats the crap out of him on a whim. The only reason she gets away with it is because Taro's such a masochist that he enjoys it. Taro's constant enjoyment of Mio's abuse, as well as Mio's increasingly desperate attempts to try and stop him from enjoying his kink, are all played for comedy.
- Cosplay Otaku Girl: Michiru has costumes for any occasion, and will dress people up in them just so that she can take pictures of them in her get-ups.
- Crossdressing Voices: Tatsukichi is voiced by Rina Sato. And guess what, the voice isn't the only thing Tatsukichi's crossdressing.
- Cuteness Proximity: Arashiko around animals. Any animal. This puts Arashiko in contrast with Mio, who averts this hard. Since Mio is deathly afraid of cats — even cute little kittens — it causes a few tense moments between them.
- Defrosting Ice Queen: Mio, sort of. She retains her Comedic Sociopathy and Tsundere tendencies throughout the story, but she does warm up to Taro quite a bit. She even admits she has a crush on him with time, but Taro's love life has become such a Love Dodecahedron that it only complicates things.
- Does Not Like Men
- Yuno tends to respond with a punch whenever a guy touches her (even accidental ones). Tatsukichi doesn't invoke this when he's crossdressing.
- Yumi even more so, though it's out of plain old disgust rather than a phobia.
- Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male: Justified. Taro gets the ever-loving crap beaten out of him by Mio, the sadistic tsundere who likes using him as a punching bag, and by Arashiko whenever he triggers her androphobia. It's all played for laughs, in part because Taro is a hardcore masochist who loves being hit and actively provokes Mio and Arashiko into beating him. It helps take the sting out of some of the more extreme abuse.
- Dysfunction Junction: Oh, where to start?
- Taro suffers from a very extreme case of sexual masochism, which is of course the central point of the show.
- Tomoko and Shizuka both appear to want to jump Taro's bones, something he definitely does not want. Oh, and both of them are incredibly emotionally stunted.
- Yuno has extreme androphobia, though thanks to the efforts of the Second Volunteer Club she has started to get better.
- Yuno's friend Yumi, in contrast, isn't as androphobic as her, but she's definitely not as straight, either.
- Tatsukichi enjoys dressing up as a woman, and displays some dissociative tendencies as manifested in his "ojou" persona.
- Noa is extremely maladjusted thanks to Child Prodigy exploitations during her childhood, and definitely has a complex about her appearance.
- Yukinojo, Noa's pedophilic admirer, goes on a rampage whenever he senses she decides to use some growth pills that turn her into a lady befitting her age.
- Mio spent most of her childhood in and out of hospitals, or at least bedridden, and so isn't the best at interacting with others. Worse still, it looks like she's starting to enjoy her "treatments" for Taro.
- Michiru enjoys taking pictures of cute girls, especially when they're in costumes, and her reactions tend to suggest that kind of enjoyment.
- The Dōmyōji Shop Manager whom Taro's acquainted to in the festival half of the Episode 7 is rabid Otaku with a lusty craze for eroge girls.
- Kirino Ayasegawa is the ringmaster of Mio's Instant Fan Club... and a viciously fanatic one at that.
- Enslaved Tongue: Mio hypnotizes Taro into saying "hugetastic boobs".
- Fetish: MM! wouldn't be MM! without it.
- Taro is a masochist. As he describes it, he "totally get[s] off on being cussed out and beaten by women." Mio finds this so objectionable that she makes it her life's mission to cure him of this perversion. It's eventually revealed that Taro's masochism came from when a girl he liked slapped him.
- Becomes a plot point (as in literal fetish fuel) in episode 5. Specifically, Taro uses a piece of Noa's Mad Scientist tech to transform his perversion into raw power, effectively becoming a Super Saiyan for the duration of the episode.
- The Domyoji Shop Manager loves his eroge girls.
- First-Episode Twist: Tatsukichi is the "girl" Taro is after.
- First Kiss: Happens between Mio and Taro in Episode 4, as part of a plan to cure Taro's masochism. Yes, it was both their first times. It doesn't work.
- First-Name Basis
- Yuno and Taro get on these terms with each other in Episode 2. But it turns out Taro didn't fulfill his end of the bargain. And Yuno is using it as a way to get around her androphobia... because that's also the name of a dog that she used to own.
- Mio doesn't quite realize that she called Taro by his first name for the very first time in Episode 11. She also calls his name out in the last episode.
- Generic Cuteness: As far as contemporary typical anime standards go, no one is seriously ugly in this show.
- A God Am I: Played for laughs. Mio fits into the "kamidere" archetype; a character who acts like they're above everyone else, no matter who they are. Once, Mio literally referred to herself as God while attempting to cure Taro's perversion, and calls herself his "personal deity" a few times. She also refers to herself as "Lady Mio" and acts like everyone else isn't worth her time. However, she turns out to be a Type A Tsundere after all of her attempts at curing Taro's masochism end up making her like him when she sees he's a decent fellow underneath it all.
- Gratuitous English: All over the place! Blatant mentions ahoy!
- Strike one: The opening theme. Oh God, the opening theme.
"No, Jesus Christ is oh my God!"
"Go. To. Hell. Desu!"- Strike two: fourth episode. Theoretically, if Taro upsets Mio, he gets a kick in the face. "Oh, mai God-doh!"
- Strike three: Episode Eight had "Pretty Heart Max!" and "Let's! Over the rainbow!" and "My sweet honey!"
- Groin Attack: The one thing that can get through Taro's masochism is a hit to the family jewels. When Mio does it to him after he gives her a compliment, Taro instantly takes it back.
- Hammerspace: Mio has pulled all manner of objects from nowhere when she's mad at Taro. She's pulled out a baseball bat (complete with baseballs), a paper fan, and entire outfits from thin air.
- Happy-Ending Massage: Mamiya Yumi specializes in giving massages that make the client or, more often, victim feel more than a little too good. She doesn't just specialize in this though, she has a deep (and later demonstrably perverse) love of doing this to cute girls, whether the girls in question want it or not.
- Hypno Fool: The premise of Episode 8. Taro isn't convinced at first, but not long after, he begins to develop even stranger fetishes.
- Incurable Cough of Death: The Wham Episode where Mio suddenly has Blood from the Mouth! Impending Death! The entire series takes a darker turn! Or it's just another deliberately Invoked Trope that is completely Played for Laughs.
- Informed Attractiveness: Most characters commented on how beautiful Mio is, but really she's not more beautiful than Arashiko or any other girl... or for that matter, She!Tatsukichi.
- Innocent Innuendo: When it looks like Taro and Noa are going at it, the camera pulls back to reveal they're playing a children's game.
- Instant Fan Club: The Mio-sama Fan Club, or MFC for short. Very fanatic and vicious. Their leader is Kirino Ayasegawa. And they don't like it when Taro hangs out with Mio.
- Japanese School Club: The central group of characters all go to an after-school club. Taro exploits this to lead Noa into a surprise birthday party by tricking her into following him to the club.
- Jerk Jock: Yoshioka. Hell befalls any girl that rejects him. Too bad his last victim turned out to have a "boyfriend" who's Made of Iron. And said guy managed to punch him out, leaving him for his last "girlfriend's" best friend to finish the job.
- Knight Templar: The Mio Fan Club thinks that by hanging out with Mio, Taro will ruin her life. The club would use any methods necessary to get rid of Taro if it will maintain Mio's lifestyle in the way the club sees it. Thankfully they peacefully disband after Mio personally confronts them concerning her relationship to Taro.
- Leg Focus: The camera focuses on Mio's legs quite a bit when she shows up in a new outfit while attempting to "cure" Taro's perverted masochism. At one point, Taro thinks that "getting crushed between those legs would be paradise" as a slow-motion shot of Mio jumping out of the window focuses on the thigh-high socks she has on.
- Love Dodecahedron: Tatsukichi, Yumi, Noa, and Yukinojo could probably fit in there somewhere. Taro had a crush on Tatsukichi's alter ego until he found out that they are one and the same. Yumi showed interest in Arashiko, but also Tatsukichi. Yukinojo likes Noa, who in turn likes Taro.
- Lover Tug of War: Episode 4 has Arashiko and Mio doing this with Taro as they argue over him. With real tug ropes to boot.
- Love Triangle: A potential Type 3, or possibly Type 7, with Mio and Arashiko both showing interest in Taro. Granted, Taro is probably happy to be with any girl who will satisfy his masochistic urges, but only Mio and Arashiko seem to have deeper feelings for Taro (or vice versa).
- Made of Iron: Thanks to his masochism, Taro has a very high pain tolerance. This allows him to hold himself pretty well when he is getting beat up by Yoshioka, who is an amateur kick-boxer, in Episode 3.
- Magical Realism: The setting of the anime shifts more and more towards this as the story progresses. Unusually, most of the magical and sci-fi aspects of the story are fueled by the characters' perversions.
- The Masochism Tango: Mio and Taro have this sort of relationship, considering she's trying to cure him of his masochism by subjecting him to pain. He draws the line at anything that might actually kill him, but Taro seems to quite enjoy being abused, which just drives Mio even further into more extreme versions of her "cures" for his kink.
- Motive Decay: Mio started tormenting Tarou on the principle that there is a level of pain that even he could not stand. After a certain point, she just seems to be doing it because she likes to.
- My God, What Have I Done?: After Taro recovers from amnesia, he learns things that makes him see himself as a horrible cross-dressing pervert with no limits as to who he would have his way with.
- Nice Girl: Arashiko is very cordial and polite to people, most of the time. The only time she lets this drop is if Taro ever touches her, at which point she says "I'm scared of men!" and beats him up. Even then, Arashiko is fiercely apologetic afterwards.
- Nice Guy: Despite his masochism, Taro's actually a do-good dude. Most of the girls in his social circle develop crushes on him because of his positive attitude, especially once he has a moment of being a Wife-Basher Basher.
- Oblivious to Love: Taro's not feeling the affection from anyone in his Unwanted Harem. Mio, in particular. He likes the physical abuse as a masochist, but he thinks that's as far as it goes. Mio has to spell it out for Taro to his face that she likes him before he finally gets it.
- Ominous Latin Chanting: Ominous chanting of some sort serves as Taro's leitmotif when he's having powerful masochist moments.
- Once per Episode: Mio trying some new torture method on Taro to "cure him" usually involves her dressing up, thanks to Michiru-nee-sensei, natch.
- Out-of-Genre Experience: Episode 5's second half consists of an elaborate shounen action parody in which Taro foils a plan to turn the world into perverts using a Rider Belt and his own extraordinary perversion, which turns him into ero-Super Saiyan. Seriously.
- Overnight Age-Up: Noa has an aging potion that makes her stop looking like an grade schooler and start looking like a woman. Yukinojo does not respond well.
- Paper-Thin Disguise: In Episode 12, Mio and Taro, on a part-time job at a cafe, wear nothing but glasses while invading their rivals' shop.
- Paper Fan of Doom: As if Mio's baseball bat isn't enough already, she pummels Taro several times with a paper fan. In one episode, she even swings it like her baseball bat, which still sends Taro flying.
- The Power of Love: Averted. Mio's date with Taro was her once again trying to get rid of his masochism. Like all of her other tries, it doesn't work.
- Punny Name: Sado, the Masochist (Sado-Masochism).
- Readings Are Off the Scale: Taro's pervert level, after he gathers energy from perverts all around the world to perform a shonen-like attack.
- Rearrange the Song: The OP has two variations, "Hell side" (just Mio) and "Heaven side" (Mio and Arashiko). Both are used as openings.
- Running Gag: Every time Taro accidently touches Arashiko, she'll beat him up. Taro, being a masochist, enjoys every second of it.
- Shout-Out
- Yumi is a subtle nod to Kenshiro: she's a practitioner and successor to a martial art style that causes pain and pleasure to her opponents with a single finger, much like Hokuto Shinken. She even assumes his Tenha Kasattsu stance when she is about to punish the girlfriend beating loser Yoshioka at the end of Episode 3. She also has a tendency to use Kenshiro's high-pitched Bruce Lee style Kiai when she rapidly strike the pressure points of her enemies with her fingers. Finally, her surname "Mamiya" also happens to be the name of the love interest of Kenshiro's best friend Rei.
- Perhaps one to Eden of the East in the beginning of episode 4.
Michiru: I pray for your success.- In Episode 5, Mio dresses up as Louise with a wizard hat. The episode also features a Kamen Rider belt that turns the user into a Super Saiyan. Also, after all students in the school have been turned into perverts, there's a scene of two girls confessing their love for each other in a style nearly ripped straight off Maria Watches Over Us.
- In the opening, figures of Manaka, Azusa, Miharu and Asuka can be seen. The first three share the same seiyuu as Mio.
- Episode 6 for Mio donning Sheryl's concert clothes.
- Episode 7 brings back the Super Saiyan Kamen Rider belt and Fist of the North Star.
- Episode 8 features Himura paraphrasing Raoh's Last Words, Taro dressing up a la Tuxedo Mask, and Taro and Noa flirting by dropping Pretty Cure references at each other.
- The opening of Episode 9 has Hatsune Miku and Black★Rock Shooter viewed from the back. Also, at the start of the episode, there's a very obvious color-swapped Miku holding an equally color-swapped leek, and a Ruri Dakimakura.
- Episode 10's second Eyecatch has the shop owner pose with a blue Bardiche, a microphone, and a guitar. Also, an unconscious Taro has a dream of Mio kicking him into the sky and screaming "Looks like I'm blasting off again!" before vanishing into A Twinkle in the Sky. And for some reason, the final scene bears some resemblance to Evangelion, of all things.
Interesting... - Episode 12 has the shop owner visiting the cake store, ordering cake for himself, and spare ribs for his Nozomu figure.
- Smashing Watermelons: Occurs in the Beach Episode, only the watermelon is Taro's head. He draws the line at that, because even though he's a masochist, he's not about to have his head split open with a wooden sword.
- Split Personality: If Tatsukichi is called "beautiful", he slips into an ojou-like personality that praises himself and damns everyone else. Especially Mio.
- There Are No Therapists
- Taro's unchecked masochism is the most obvious example; he seems to feel his best option lies in a school club rather than seeking professional help.
- A more serious case is that of Yuno. Her Attempted Rape left her so androphobic she can't even share a train car with men for fear of close contact, yet no mention of her getting professional counseling is ever made and she relies entirely on Mio and Taro to overcome her phobia.
- Too Kinky to Torture: Taro. When Mio does things like put burning candles on his chest, strap him to a water wheel, and smash him with baseballs, he finds it enjoyable. Though he has his limits. He may be a masochist, but he doesn't want to actually die.
- Tsundere: Mio is a type A, being extremely violent to Taro while secretly harboring romantic feelings for him. Thanks to this, Taro never catches on that Mio's feeding his masochism is because she likes him. At least, not until she just spells it out for him.
- The Unsolved Mystery: In the anime, only Mio's story is really "resolved" by the end. Unfortunately, we may never get any conclusions at all due to the
death of the author.
- Verbal Tic: Noa, with her child-like "desu".
- Wholesome Crossdresser: Tatsukichi, all the way.
- Taro also pulls this twice. He was so convincingly feminine that the second time it happened, it was used and abused in a cafe to bring in male customers.
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Mio's afraid of cats. Even cute little kittens. So much so in Episode 9 she broke down crying in Taro's arms after a monster cat hologram spooks her out inside the Horror House where ghosts cannot faze her (unlike poor Taro).
- Wife-Basher Basher: Taro usually doesn't like to hurt people. However, upon finding out that Yuno's fear of men steams from being beaten by an abusive ex-boyfriend who then spread rumors of her sleeping around for refusing his sexual advances, he storms to the latter's boxing gym and, despite lacking any fighting skill and with words of inspiration from Mio, eventually knocks him out and ultimately leaves him at Yumi's mercy.
