Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei 08-18
Tatsuya is the unstoppable force
I said I’d keep covering this show after the arcs, and even though it’s a week or a bit late, I’m back with the 11 episodes of the Nine Schools Competition. So how did our main prodigy do as a representative for the school?
It’s like Schoolympics
It was even MORE like Mahou Shoujo time after everyone started flying
First off, the Nine Schools Competition pits the 9 Japanese magic high schools against each other in a bunch of made-up competitions using magic. And to be honest, a lot of them are pretty lame, led by Speed Shooting (magic skeet, but played totally haxx) and Mirage Bat (which is like a Mahou Shoujo Wannabe Party). I did like a few of the competitions, like Battle Boards (probably cause I like races, but it still had a terrible name like a cheap Atari 2600 game), Pillars Break (another terrible name, but at least it is a straight up description of the game: break your opponents pillars), and Monolith Code (where you either wipe out the other team or read the gazillion number sequence off their Monolith and input it into a terminal). But it really could have been so much worse.
Mari got knocked out too early in Battle Boards, but Honoka had the best outfit
And that Star Trek: TNG link is applicable in more ways than just “a terrible ‘sport’.” Mahouka has a very similar feel to TNG, with its sanitized world, people politely talking to each other, trying to be cerebral kind of setup. They both also had a super wonder kid, but I have to say that Tatsuya is a little less annoying than Wesley Crusher. Speaking of Tatsuya, it was probably a surprise to nobody in the audience that “Tatsuya Shiba” is Taurus Silver. Right? Noone was surprised, since they both have the initials “T.S.” and you can pronounce “Silver” as “Shiba”, right? Oh it’s so clever. I have no idea how Azusa didn’t get that through her moppet skull. I guess she was too busy fangirling about Taurus Silver to put two and two together when Tatsuya pretty much admitted he was Taurus Silver (“maybe he’s just a normal student like us”).
A-chan fangirls out. Plus, seriously, a vest and tie under that coat?
Honoka says “I’d let you ‘adjust’ me any time…”
Anyway, because they need someone to keep breaking down the barriers between Class 1 and Class 2, and because Tatsuya is pretty much criminally misclassified, they railroad him in to being an engineer for the First High team, where he proceeds to make the whole rest of the engineering team look like chumps by making the first years (who are generally shoved into their own junior competition) an unbeatable juggernaut with things like his skeet haxx, his awesome programming, and the magic flying routine that he just happened to develop before the competition started. This starts to build him up a harem of fangirls (because apparently he’s only the engineer for the first year girls) who want to get his hands on their equipment. In fact one of the girls who has a different engineer loses and whines about it, causing Miyuki to scold her for being rude. But it’s pretty obvious that having Tatsuya as your engineer is going to get you a win… unless you have to fight Miyuki.
Shizuku never had a chance against Miyuki
Nefarious Deeds and Dudes
Meanwhile, back at the lab: “I’ve invented something impossible… again.”
Three primary subplots were woven through the Nine Schools Competition. The first, and most easily disposed of, is Tatsuya’s continuing involvement with the Army and Yotsuba Magic Development Lab. Basically, he’s got a hand in everywhere, and is not afraid to use his connections to get information or support. He even gets the counselor, Turtleneck McBigBoobs, er, I mean Haruka, to be an independent informant for him.
I don’t know if they tried to play it up, but it wasn’t much of a showdown when it actually happened
The second subplot is the ‘rivalry’ between Tatsuya and Masaki Ichijou. Nicknamed “Crimson Prince” he’s actually famous for his military exploits, something like blowing up a whole bunch of people. Ichijou has a sidekick in Shinkurou Kichijouji, “Cardinal George” who came up with one of the Cardinal Theorems of Magic. These two are on the Third High Monolith Code First Year team, and end up going head to head against Tatsuya when the main First High team is wiped out due to some nefarious doings. With a showdown between Tatsuya and Ichijou promised through the whole first half of the series (since those two pointing ‘guns’ at each other at the end of the OP would indicate that), their battle was actually pretty good, basically a magic slugfest with Tatsuya absorbing a lot of Ichijou’s attacks. It could be argued that both of them ended up ‘cheating’, since Ichijou used an attack that was stronger than allowed in the competition, while Tatsuya recovered from it with his self-repair routine (which I can’t believe is allowable by the rules), and used an amplification spell to debilitate Ichijou with a snap of his fingers. And with all the attention on those two, First High ends up winning with their makeshift team of Course 2 students, Leo and Mikihiko, whom Tatsuya selected for the replacement team because he knew their abilities and crafted their strategies and weapons for them.
You do NOT mess with Miyuki, even if you have a big room with an overlook
The third subplot is probably the cheesiest: the yakuza trying to rig the Competition so that First High wouldn’t win the overall title. They are the ones who engineer an ‘accident’ to take out the main Monolith Code team, and also a sabotage to take out Mari from Battle Boards (thus sidelining my favorite character, jerks). But they hadn’t counted on Tatsuya the Amazing Engineer nor Tatsuya the Amazing Investigator getting all up in their stuff and making the first year team be an unstoppable force, while realizing that there are Bad Dudes doing Bad Stuff. The biggest confrontation comes when he is getting Miyuki’s CAD registered for Mirage Bat after another girl from First High has had an accident and gotten knocked out, and as he’s watching, the plant tries to tamper with Miyuki’s CAD. Oops. That dude’s lucky he’s still alive, to be honest. The same can’t be said for the leaders of the crime group, who get magic-sniped from 10 blocks away by Tatsuya after he finds out who was trying to fix the matches. Of course, at that point those guys were already thinking of killing themselves since they were hosed because all their betting went the wrong way and they lost their boss’s money.
Mahouka continues to be exactly the same show that it was through the Enrollment arc. Back then I described it as “Stiff, undernuanced, slow developing” and it’s still all of those things. But it’s still watchable, and still has a really interesting premise of magic. There’s still no idiot ball being passed around, and the characters don’t do dumb things just for the plot, except for those yakuza guys. That mostly felt like a tacked on kind of subplot, something to actually challenge Tatsuya and First High, because the opponents ON the field sure weren’t going to. I think they’ve established Tatsuya’s bona fides, maybe overestablished them, because he’s basically peerless now. The only thing that’s going to be holding him back in the next arc is stupid political BS, I think. But we’ll see how that one goes, since I imagine it will get us to the end of the series.
About Highway
Proving that you don't have to be young to love anime, I enjoy all genres and styles of shows. If it's not hurting anyone else, you should never be ashamed of what you like!
POWUH: Meta Team and Meta-Analyst with 3844 comments
Unstoppable? O RLY?
*Force(tm) chokes him followed by a good Lightning(tm) fry*
*Dumps corpse down the Reactor Shaft(tm)*
A lot of shows are watchable, it’s whether if its enjoyable watching. A good example this season for me is MajiLOLi Rurumo. A shame skylion abandoned his LOLi quota and I was tempted to do so as well until I saw episode 5. It was actually quite heartwarming to watch the episode. Haven’t actually watched episode 6 but from what I have seen, it looks like a tearjerker. I would compare Rurumo to Henneko except Henneko
POWUH: Meta Team and Meta-Analyst with 3844 comments
Please delete this thread here. Accidentally hit submit… ^^;; TIA.
POWUH: Meta Team and Meta-Analyst with 3844 comments
Unstoppable? O RLY?
*Force(tm) chokes him followed by a good Lightning(tm) fry*
*Dumps corpse down the Reactor Shaft(tm)*
A lot of shows are watchable, it’s whether if its enjoyable watching. A good example this season for me is MajiLOLi Rurumo. A shame skylion abandoned his LOLi quota and I was tempted to do so as well until I saw episode 5. It was actually quite heartwarming to watch the episode. Haven’t actually watched episode 6 but from what I have seen, it looks like a tearjerker. I would compare Rurumo to Henneko except Henneko sprinkles the ecchi on the delicious caek instead of innundating it. I hope it focuses less on the H in order to keep the interest going otherwise it would end up in the Hall of Shame of being dumped near the end…
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
For me, implicit in ‘watchable’ is that one would enjoy spending the time to watch it. If one is not enjoying that time, they should be doing something else.
POWUH: Meta Team and Meta-Analyst with 3844 comments
True… true… But sometimes neutral enjoyment still can mean watchability. In the end though, ‘watchable’ would be the total sum of a number of factors.
POWUH: 400-499 with 462 comments
If you’ve actually been watching the series you would know that those powers would barely even slow him down, and he’d have killed you ten times before you even got to the third part.
POWUH: Meta Team and Meta-Analyst with 3844 comments
Boooringgg.
POWUH: 400-499 with 462 comments
Yes, that’s what most of the viewers have been saying.
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
I know my post comes off as a bit snarky, but in honesty I do like the show, and I don’t find it slow, or boring, or even overly technical. I talk about it in the upcoming metaverse and I think the show is doing pretty well for what it’s doing. I think it helps a lot that Tatsuya rides a line between confident in his abilities, and demure about trumpeting his abilities. He’s a little bit ‘go-to’ but the show is centered around him. Yet it does a fairly good job working other characters in. For instance in this week’s show, we get Leo, Miki, and Erika being the focus of the action, with almost nothing from Tatsuya.
POWUH: Meta Resident and LN Informant with 1529 comments
LN readers say that the anime is being very, if too faithful to the source LNs. Speculation is the anime was made to solely appeal to its loyal Japanese fanbase, which seems to be working so far.(Apparently 10000+ Bluray & DVDs of Vol 1 were sold in the 1st week).
A lot of content directly corroborates with Vol 3-4, albeit with the detailed technical infodumps and internal monologues missing.
Here’s a reddit LN vs anime comparison:
http://www.reddit.com/r/anime/comments/2d31px/spoilers_mahouka_koukou_no_rettousei_episode_19/
POWUH: Meta Resident and LN Informant with 1529 comments
What does everyone think of the new OP and ED?
Yasuda Rei’s end PV for Mirror is currently up!!The Japanese-American alliance is strong with this girl. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuOWIsDZBvI&feature=youtu.be
Grilletto’s PV, unfortunately, has been blocked by the Japanese.
POWUH: 600-699 and LN Enthusiast with 623 comments
Is it bad that I thought the singer of the 2nd ED was male? I didn’t bother to look for the singer’s name actually and was just listening to the song when it plays.
Full version when?
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
I actually listen to the OP song a lot more than I did for Rising Hope. I don’t think either of them are particularly great, tho. Just don’t really appeal to me.
POWUH: Meta Resident and Werewolf Chaser with 1270 comments
Rising Hope>Griletto but each of them is fine. I vastly prefer the second ending song though.
POWUH: Meta Resident and LN Informant with 1529 comments
The Onii-sama body pillow:
http://37.media.tumblr.com/a58fd6b9a5a1367860ef8432b90a9db3/tumblr_n5x7sfmU3a1r1g0uvo1_500.jpg
POWUH: and Vampire Lover with 11746 comments
Something to vent her pent up desires in secret, I guess.
POWUH: 600-699 with 691 comments
possibly…pretty creepy though…i know for a reason, that i would never have a giant pillow with my sisters image on it…even if i love her(no incest!)
POWUH: and Vampire Lover with 11746 comments
The first in an anime I’ve seen that it took episodes to complete a single arc. A record in and of itself. However, the “Nine Schools Competition” turned out to be surprisingly entertaining. More so than the “Freshman/Enrollment” arc. What remains difficult to absorb are the huge info dumps revolving around the use of CADs and other magical items which sometimes hampers the attempt of trying to understand what the people are talking about. Even Index/Railgun’s explanations on their abilities aren’t this condensed.
Tatsuya remains overpowered and inflexible as usual but thanks to his seniors breaking that wall of “nobility” out of misplaced concern for his appearance in front of the student body, prompting him to take part in the competition, he’s gotten a bit tolerable. Revealing he has a volatile side taking out the pestering saboteurs raised some eyebrows but it’s solidifying his relationship with his sister as near incestuous. As if it didn’t look like that already.
POWUH: 600-699 with 691 comments
their relationship is pretty suggestive indeed, but i’m rooting for Mayumi…she’s just too awesome, sorry i’m a sucker for oujou-sama’s like her. X.X
But, honestly speaking, Tatsuya seems more human when she’s around(Myuki’s effect aside), for a guy who’s feelings got, well…changed?!(is this the word i should be using?) he seems pretty human like with her, i might just be crazy…since i’m with the MKR fanbase
POWUH: and Vampire Lover with 11746 comments
Being a fan makes you more tolerant of things than those who aren’t. If only Tatsuya wasn’t so stiff all the time. He’s practically humorless and if he tries to joke, if a small one at least, it falls flat.
POWUH: 600-699 with 691 comments
it’s not that he’s stiff…Show ▼
POWUH: 600-699 with 691 comments
it feels slow because the LN is very slow paced sometimes, very technical and it would’ve been even slower if they used all the little details that are missing…(some of them actually needed to be here), it’s doing a pretty loyal( as it can be) job at following the LN
BTW Show ▼
, basically the spoiler means he’s awesome.
POWUH: and Vampire Lover with 11746 comments
Slow paced is right. 7 episodes for the “Freshman” arc and 11 for the “Nine Schools Competition”. Previously, the only series I knew that took an insane number of episodes to complete an arc was Attack on Titan with “Defense of Trost”. Nine episodes were needed for that. That’s nearly a whole season’s worth. And from what you’re saying for Mahouka, there’s material that’s still, however, being shaved. Those LNs must be huge.
POWUH: 600-699 with 691 comments
there’s 15 LN with at least 180 pages(some had 300 pages), i only have the first 12 translated…i want the volume 13 T-T
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
I don’t think the lack of different names for the episodes is evidence that it’s slow paced. The pacing is more down to the amount of time that conversations take, and the amount of detail they talk about. I like the amount of detail that’s in the episodes, but I do wish that they could get on with some of the conversations and scene changes. There’s a lot of Tatsuya and others standing around looking at each other.
POWUH: 600-699 with 691 comments
i just noticed(i’m seeing MKR again), Myuki is really creepy and it’s a one-sided something from her side, did you guys noticed that Tatsuya says she misunderstand things a lot, which means…he’s not on incest side! Go Ms.President!
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
They have the most two-faced relationship possible, I think. They both publicly say that they’re not interested in the other one, and then Miyuki takes every opportunity to hang on him, and Tatsuya takes every opportunity to indulge her. But “I’ve never thought of my brother as a romantic partner”, riiiiiight.
POWUH: and Vampire Lover with 11746 comments
I’d like to call that “bare-faced lying”.
POWUH: 600-699 with 691 comments
i’m pretty sure she is…Show ▼
but i’m not sure Tatsuya is that interested in her, though the author seems to be going on the incest route…Mayumi’s route as well…in other words he just wants to confuse everyone