i find mai-otome to be amusing, but then again my preferences are different from yours.
when i first heard about mai-otome i thought it would follow up the mai-hime story... man was i worng,
i like the concept of the parallel universe.

{btw the word they used for mai (or my for some people) means dancing in the chinese language (i'm not sure if the japanese use it for the same meaning) so with that said
mai-hime means: dancing princess (that explains why nagi called their battles dancing)
and
mai-otome means dancing maidens (that explains what they mean by porformance).