Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei Episode 8 Discussion

Takuan_Soho said:


You can't compare this series and Mahou Sensou like that. Granted other series may have been worse this season, but those series did not have the expectations this series had: after all the novels had sold around 200K per volume BEFORE the animation. The goal of the animation was to increase sales and to sell a ton of BDs.

If you look at the Light Novel sales, NGNL's animation has been a huge success. Just in the last 2 weeks the series as sold around 18K per volume (or roughly a 40% gain on what had been sold before), which is due solely because of the animation. Mahouka, has seen less that a 5K gain per volume. Considering that Mahouka had sold 200K before the animation, that is only a 2.5% gain. So both relatively and absolutely, this has to be considered a failure.

So all that is left is the BD sales. According to the BD ranking thread, Mahouka has dropped since the series debuted, dropped so far indeed that now NGNL is projected to sell more than Mahouka. Based solely on the sales going into production that can only be viewed as a failure for the Mahouka.

Now, please allow me to stress that I am not saying that NGNL's novels are better than Mahouka, I have not read either, but just looking at the reception of the animations, it is very clear that NGNL's adaption has been a relative success to date and Mahouka'a adaptation has been a failure. Now we are only 2/3rds through the season, so there is plenty of chance for Mahouka to recover (since it is two cour), but given the performance to date, I can't see how you can call the adaption anything but a failure.

This series should have been projected to be in the 20-30K range given the popularity of the Light Novels, I am sure that the production team was counting on something similar. Just to give a comparison, SAO averaged 40K+ with similar per-production volume sales, so if Mahouka does end up south of 10K, this would be a massive failure, though of course for nearly every other animation this would be considered a smashing success. But success is relative.

As for why it has been a failure, I don't blame the "too many explanations." I think a show can have plenty of exposition and still be entertaining. Where I blame this show is that it has done nothing to make any of the characters interesting. While Leo and Erika are slowly starting to become distinct, this show has done a horrific job at making Tatsuya or Miyuki interesting. Now both could be interesting in the novels, and based on what I have heard they probably are, but based solely on what has been shown neither is worth spit. That is the adapters fault. It is there job to make the animation interesting, even if they have to change the source to do so.