Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei

Alright, despite giving a score of 9, allow me to make this perfectly clear, THIS SHOULD NOT BE WATCHED BY EVERYONE!!! There are three very crucial aspects to this show that form a fissure among the viewers. If you are able to tolerate or enjoy these aspects, watch this show. If you find these elements unbearable then you should definitely walk away because they are ubiquitous throughout the entirety of the 26 episodes.
I: An over-powered protagonist. When I say over-powered I mean it in the most literal sense possible. This guy does not lose, ever. He's a genius with combat capabilities surpassing every other person ... we encounter within the show. This world practically made him a god. Someone tell Kira to take notes because becoming this guy is how you really conquer the world. You will never have to ponder who will emerge the victor, the contest was won as soon as our hero decided to make his appearance. If this aspect will bother you, DO NOT WATCH THIS SHOW!!! This never proved bothersome to me. I accepted the simple fact that this narrative would have a god in the driver's seat and just enjoyed watching the moments when the other characters realized the true power our protagonist held.
II: Exposition heavy dialogue. The dialogue can be said to bore some people to tears with the snail-like pace it moves at. In this story it's not just that magic exists, no, there is a system to it. This system that is more akin to science than the traditional wizards and wands style. The specifics of this system of magic, it's integration into society, the social standing of those who can use magic, all of it is explored through the dialogue. A fight with magic will occur and the next 10 minutes will be a discussion of the fight. History, politics, and a magic that behaves as science are all explored in heavy detail. If that sounds monotonous, pass on this title. Personally, I found this fascinating. I loved that the author took time to craft a world filled with detail and societal nuances.
III: Hints towards an incestuous relationship between the two main characters. With the main characters being an elder brother and sister who are very close, incestuous hints are littered throughout their interactions and thoughts. This never impacted my enjoyment in the slightest, it's a work of fiction, not myself. I can separate my own actions from that of the characters. Not to mention the simple fact that I could not think of any reason as to why incest is fundamentally wrong (potential genetic issues in offspring irrelevant, reproduction not mutually inclusive), but I digress. If you dislike seeing siblings with a relationship that seems to go beyond the standard definition of a sibling relationship, then do not click play on that first episode.
For all of you who find yourselves unperturbed by the aforementioned elements then by all means, keep reading. Now, onto the standard format for reviewing on this site:

Story: 8
This story is far from unique. Two new students showing up to a school and taking an ax to the beliefs and perceptions of the entire student body is nothing new. These siblings arrive and the foundations that everyone believed to be stable are shifted. That being said, I loved the execution of this concept in the world the author created. In my exposition portion I mentioned that this world has an incredible amount of detail to it. Said detail is exactly why I love the idea of shaking the roots society stands upon. The school has a very discriminate social standing that our main characters are able to shatter.
Outside of the school itself we also have the governmental structure of Japan, foreign nations and terrorist groups, etc, etc. These components were all stacked together to build a world that felt real.
The narrative of this show is arc-based. This shouldn't be surprising given that light novels serve as the source material. The arcs follow a logical sequence of time and progression, so a drastic disconnect between the episodes never seemed to exist.

Art: 9
The animation was fantastic. Madhouse once again came through in extraordinary fashion. The movement was fluid which was especially noticeable in the combat scenes. The back-drops were pleasant and the color palette was rich without feeling exceedingly vibrant.
The character designs are also something I found particularly nice. It's an absolute fact that most men are going to be larger than women. Greater height, broader shoulders, simple size and body mass. Yet all too often this fundamental truth is all but forgotten in the world of anime. But not in this series, no, the characters in this series are for the most part correctly proportioned. This also applies to females in the sense that they weren't erroneously sized in their bust. Not being a fan-service show that may seem to be normal, but even then this show felt real in regards to how the characters were built. The remainder of the character designs (faces, hair, etc, etc) were also pleasant. You won't find exceedingly wacky hair styles or colors. The majority of the main and supporting cast were fairly individualistic in design, but there are a few noticeable exceptions where two characters will appear to be carbon copies of one another.
Oh, and a special note: Coolest school uniforms ever. The end.

Sound: 7
There's not too much I can say in this department. The OST was good, but at the same time it wasn't particularly special. Featuring a lot of techno music each scene was complimented well.
The voice acting was also solid. The respective actors managed to express the unique qualities of their characters. Their performances weren't too stand-out or deserving of excessive praise, but at the end of the day I could say they did a good job.

Characters: 8
This score is probably pretty surprising. I mean, with an over-powered main character there's no way he could actually be a good character, right? Well, this is where I disagree with many people. I am not one to say that "over-powered" and "bad character" are mutually inclusive terms. They can be synonymous, sure, but no subjective thought could ever be set in stone. Tatsuya Shiba, or as I like to call him - Japan's lord and savior, is a 16 year old genius who comes across as very calm and apathetic. He possesses almost no magical affinity but still shows up at the magic high-school to study as an engineer. His combat capabilities aside, I think Tatsuya is a good character. He may come across as just a boring lump of clay with a sister-complex, but as we come to learn of his dry humor, logical manner of thinking, and direct mannerisms, my perception of him as a character was altered. He never undergoes any sort of development, but we do get insight into his past, learning why he is who he is, discovering why he holds his sister so close to his heart. His emotionless attitude becomes sympathetic, bordering on tragic.
Then we have his sister, Miyuki Shiba. Her character can be summed up as this: "Onii-sama". (And get used to that name, you'll hear it a lot.) I kid, I kid, Miyuki harbors extreme love for her brother (so much so that it might as well he obsession), but she does have a few additional aspects that make up her personality. (The name still stands, though. Many, many times will "Onii-sama" grace your auditory glands). Miyuki is in part the ideal daughter. She's intelligent, capable, well-spoken, beautiful, her genetics and upbringing ensured she would be nothing but the best. She's also a girl who holds a great deal of resentment towards her family, simultaneously feeling extreme gratitude towards her brother. She has a massive brother complex and most of her actions are taken in an attempt to help her brother or make him proud of her. However, I do think that I am in the minority for finding Miyuki to be an interesting character. The large majority of those who watch this show find her to be bothersome and annoying. But fear not if you happen to be one of those who find her irksome, her initial presentation in the first few episodes changes slightly, accompanied by less screen time as the episodes progress.
The supporting cast is fairly large. You have the respective councils within the school, the normal students, military personnel, family members of students, etc. None of the supporting cast are particularly deep characters, but I wouldn't classify them as complete cliches either. On first glance these characters will seem to fall into a general archetype. Contrary to that initial perception, however, these characters do not fall into the pitfall that is stereotyping. As I said though, they are lacking in depth. Whilst walking the path of a character, Mahouka's managed to get past the trap of cliches, but stopped short of the bridge of development. One element I loved about the cast on the whole was their perception and strength. Tatsuya will definitely steal the spot-light, but these characters are all skilled in their own regards Some fights they will manage alone, some explanations will come from their own lips. Tatsuya is ultimately the one who will save the day, but prior to his arrival we witness the remarkably adept capabilities of the cast.
A special shout-out for the best girl that is Mayumi Saegusa. The adorable student council president and the only character capable of trolling Tatsuya to the same caliber he trolls others.

Enjoyment: 10
I won't lie, I initially turned this show on after looking up shows with a bad-ass protagonist. I had watched one too many series with a weak male that had to be protected. One too many series where the protagonist was the only character to over-react to a situation. This show was a fulfillment of my wish to not watch a spiky-haired pansy get his ass kicked. I never expected an emotional narrative with compelling themes and deep symbolism, I just wanted a protagonist that would kick ass in a spectacular fashion, and this show delivered. The copious exposition was just a bonus for me who loves detailed world building.

Overall: 9
I loved this show. The sheer amount of "Holy shit that was awesome" moments made this show great. From the first episode I never looked to see who would win, I just wanted to see how many jaws Tatsuya could drop when he showed the world how he won.
All in all, if you want to watch two siblings who love each other very much kick some ass, accompanied by friends that talk about how the two siblings just kicked ass, watch this immediately.

The conception of "perfection" we previously had is going to change, because after watching Shiba Tatsuya (the protagonists show) in action, the word we used to describe the type of character which is sightly too powerful among his peers, overpowered, is going to be "Onii-sama" from now on. With Shiba Tatsuya, better known as Onii-sama, we reach a level of perfection never seen before in the anime industry, characters we reputed as OP, notable recent examples such as Kirigaya Kazuto (Sword Art Online) or Gilgamesh (Fate/Zero), are practically nothing next to our glorious Onii-sama, capable of turning the Impossible into something actually possible.

> Is a ... problem an OP character as main then?

To that question I reply: "not necessary", since an overpowered main character isn't a big iceberg enough to sink an entire ship, we have plot development and side characters after all; and overpowered isn't a synonymous of " Bad", sometimes is good to watch a main character that isn't completely a weakling, but problems comes when the plot's development is nothing more than a series of events made to emphasize the greatness of our main characters, plural, because Onii-sama didn't descended from Heaven alone, there is his sister, the main female protagonist, Shiba Miyuki, another example of absolute perfection, to accompany him in his journeys.

> So this is an anime about these perfect couple of siblings and nothing more?

We aren't that far to describe this show with that phrase up here, but actually there isn't a better phrase to describe this show neither, since the anime I'll now introduce you is going to be the anime with the most perfect main protagonist I've seen in my whole life, and as you've probably noted, the word 'perfect' isn't used with a positive tone in this review. I'll now claim that I haven't read the LN, this is going to be my judgement from what I've seen in this adaptation.

This show is set on the year 2095 d.c, after the conclusion of the Third World War and the introduction of the Magic System, magician isn't a term anymore related to fairy tails, Science and Technology converged into what we now call Magic. Society developed itself around this new form of Science, and this lead the necessity to create new generations of youngsters capable of crafting this new kind of science, so Magic High Schools were born. This show follows a particular brother and sister, fresh enrolled in the First Magic High School (there are only 9 in the country) at the beginning of the first episode.

"We're not the same"

As everything that isn't "uniform" in the Society, it creates a fracture between the population, racism in few words, and Magic is not the exception. Some individuals are more capable of others, that is a fact, and so is also related to Magic. People who show an incredible magic ability form the Course 1 in the High School, and the others, less capable, form the Course 2. Somehow Onii-sama sucked at the enrollment test score and ended in the Course 2, the so called "Weed" course, meanwhile Miyuki ended in the Course 1, the "Bloom" course. How a perfect being such as Onii-sama ended in the course 2?, that will be explained through the show, something I'll not reveal, let's keep going. Funny fact that actually all Onii-sama's friends, course 2 people, are above the course 1 students in matters of skill combat and magic. This is the classic shounen pattern where all the protagonist's friends are better than everyone else and save the world, with the difference that only Onii-sama is able to save the day here, the rest aren't of any use actually.

In this 26 episodes adaptation from the best-seller Light Novel, there are adapted three arcs, each of them, naturally, revolving around Onii-sama and his friends dealing with an unexpected conflict, unnaturally always is Onii-sama the center of everything that happens in this show, leading the viewers to ask themselves a such basic question as:

> "If Onii-sama doesn't want his true identity being revealed, why does he keep trying everything to be in the spotlights every time?"

Such a million dollar question sadly didnt get an answer, events just keep happening and Onii-sama always saving the day, in the most perfect possible way. And that just seem to be irony, since a characteristic of this show is that of explaining EVERYTHING, well...at least the things related to magic spells, magic sequences and effects. Practically a huge time was spent on explaining things that aren't real and somewhat irrelevant for the development of the story, time that surely could have been spend in a more useful and productive way.

The cast of characters was surely wide, we have practically a character for every kind of stereotype. There's the glasses girl, the tomboy, the cute and moe girl, the silent girl, the tusndere, the Student Council President, the best protagonist's friend, the bad guy who didn't accept the protagonist but later he accepts him, the rival, ect ect ect. Actually none of them had an important role in this show, since its all about Onii-sama, but we're able to find something in common between them, possibly the only reason why the author decided to create side characters for this show, and that would be: "to praise Onii-sama and his sister". Actually that may sound like a joke but believe me when I tell you it isn't, every single side character in every single episode, when they aren't wasting time explaining Magic related things, that remaining time is spend on praising Onii-sama for x, y and z reason, a fact that I found overly above the ridiculous level.

By the other side there's no need to spend a lot of words for our sibling protagonists, there's only a word capable of containing all their essences, 'Perfect'. Onii-sama is good at everything possible imaginable, every presented female character falls for him but he doesn't have eyes for any of them, because Onii-sama cares a lot about his sister, and that was stated several times through the show. Meanwhile Miyuki is his female counterpart, a beautiful young girl which excels in Magic and in everything she does, I'll just end here to write about them, since my writing skills are way too far of being perfect to describe this pair of siblings in the proper way.

When it comes to Animation and Sound, at least, this anime isn't mediocre, animation is made by Madhouse, characteristic trademark of this studio is the high quality animation of its adaptations. The actions scenes were quite fluid and very well done, camera angles and sudden zoom ins and zoom outs were coordinated very well, as well as the OST fitting them, electric-rock oriented, we can't say its perfect as our protagonists but we can say its done quite well, above average for sure. OPs and EDs were quite nice, Rising Hope by LiSA was by far my favorite song from this show.

At some point of this show I couldn't take seriously anything that was happening, too much perfection, events emphasized to show how great the Shiba siblings were, too much useless explanations, pathetic side characters, and a lot of details I didn't mention because they're spoilers, overall is a quite interesting anime that shows how would be to have a perfect MC gaining the praise for each side character presented, something completely original I must say, nothing that I've seen come close to what I've seen in this anime but this is not surely something I would feel to recommend to people.

Set in 2095, magic is now a form of technology and science. After the 3rd world war, magic wielders were high in demand in the world to defend their individual countries from further chaos. Mahouka follows two siblings, Tatsuya and Miyuki Shiba, who are enrolled in Fist High School. Based on enrolment test scores, the brother becomes a Weed, a presumed low-achieving magician, while his little sister becomes a Bloom, a presumed high-achiever in magic. However, there's more to these two siblings than as first thought. And school life at First High School will no longer be the same...

And thus, the most anticipated, but highly ... controversial, anime of the spring season has reached its conclusion. Controversial in the fact that this series ranged from "Mahouka is the best anime ever!" to "Wow, this series is complete BS." So how did it truly turn out? Was it as good as the die-hard fans claim it was? What about the opinions of the critics who truly despise this series? I find that Mahouka truly fits in between the two; it's neither really good, nor really bad. It was nonetheless a somewhat enjoyable anime series that I didn't regret watching.



Before I begin, I will say that there's a high chance that you may end up being in either of the aforementioned polarizing sides. To make things a bit easier, for those who really like and would only watch a huge action-packed series with an adventurous plot, non-stop fight scenes, and emotional characters like some shounens have, you probably want to stop reading this review and find another anime series. The relatively slow-paced Mahouka will actually bore you really fast, and would DEFINITELY not be for you. I probably weeded out a few of you, and you'll thank me for it. Now, I can't guarantee that this review will be spoiler free, but let's dwell a bit further into this series, shall we?



Story
Mahouka focuses on two main leads, who are the Shiba siblings, Tatsuya and Miyuki. The series is split into three arcs, each having a specific school event attached to them (enrolment, a school competition, and a thesis competition). The general idea of Mahouka is that conflict arises, usually from a specialized group having ulterior motives for magic, preventing these school events from going as calm and smoothly as planned, and the students from First High School and other acquaintances will have to deal with them. Conflict doesn't happen immediately, however; everything is set up with loads of dialogue and explanations. Unfortunately, the huge amount of set up can turn stale for some viewers.

The biggest problem about Mahouka is definitely its pacing. Some would find this series to be incredibly slow due to all the explanations and dialogue used to set up a conflict, especially as a shounen anime. This is highly prominent in the first arc. Later, the events in the story became extremely rushed, which happened most often in the second arc. Most magic was no longer explained in its entirety, and some prior background have been omitted at times. I ended up consulting light novel readers a few times of what I just witnessed. Regardless of your opinion on Mahouka, this is easily the biggest flaw. I like to turn that around and use it as a way to say that this series is unpredictable in nature because of this pacing. You don't know what will Mahouka bring the next episode, but even this can be a relatively frustrating process, especially considering that the plot had very good potential to be great. In all, the story was executed well to a certain extent, but it definitely could of been better. Viewers will have to acknowledge this imminent flaw should they decide to take the plunge to this series.

However, each arc does have some pretty interesting perks in the story. There were very well thought out concepts for all the arcs, but the 3rd arc of the series (Episodes 18-26) was easily my favourite. Of course, I won't say what happens then, but for me, the final arc made the series a worthwhile watch. It might be frustrating to have to consult LN readers at times to know some background facts that Madhouse has omitted, as well as a lot of confusing bits here and there, but it's flushed out enough to at least give a small sense of satisfaction at the end to the typical anime watcher such as myself. 6/10


Art
No complaints here. The art style is very typical of shounen anime, and instances where the animation quality gets noticeably bad is extremely rare. Action scenes are fluid and flashy, while the character designs are very cool and slick. Honestly, those are some pretty badass school uniforms. There's nothing about the art and animation that really stands out compared to other series, but it gets the job done, and does the job well. I really give Madhouse credit for the great animation quality of this series. 8/10



Sound
Another one of the better points of this anime. Mahouka has a huge cast of characters (which will be explained later), and Madhouse pretty much recruited the best of the best to voice them. No character sounds awkward or out of place, as most match their individual character's personality very well. I mean, it's like a dream team of all-star seiyuus, including Yuichi Nakamura (Tatsuya), Saori Hayami (Miyuki), and Kana Hanazawa (Mayumi), just to name a few. A job well done to all the voice actors and actresses involved in this series.


LiSA's “Rising Hope” is arguably one of, if not, THE best opening song of Spring Anime 2014, while GARDiNELiA's “grilletto” stands up as one of the better opening songs for Summer 2014. The ending themes are decent too, but sometimes, the ending scene of an episode does not transition well into the song, especially when suspense was attempted to be made. Mahouka's OST is good in general, and definitely sounds very shounen-like. A good plus side of the series. 9/10



Characters
Now, this is the second category that many individuals critic about Mahouka. The story focuses on Tatsuya Shiba and Miyuki Shiba, two characters that are, for some reason, really hated by a lot of people out there. Do the Shiba siblings make or break the series? For some, there is that chance. So I'll explain the pair to the best of my abilities, alongside the other characters of series, and note the places where some people hate about them.


Tatsuya is enrolled into the First High School as a weed. This would mean that he's presumably weak in magic, right? Wrong. Rather, this guy is seriously overpowered. We definitely can question how on earth was he determined to be an inferior weed in the first place due to these placement tests. The problem some people have over Tatsuya is that he is claimed to be just another “Gary Stu”. He only seems to get more and more OP as the series progresses, making him pretty much the “perfect” protagonist. I personally don't think he's completely perfect; he comes at the cost that he rarely develops emotionally. Tatsuya in a sense doesn't feel human, which does make it difficult for him to fit with his classmates and live a perfectly normal school life with his little sister. His lack of human emotions is definitely a conflict that he must always go through, and is something that is explored throughout the series.

Tatsuya's mysterious nature definitely creates some suspense in Mahouka. We know Tatsuya is great, but just HOW good he is? What skills will be pull off next? The enigma that is Tatsuya really makes viewers wonder just who the hell he really is. How many things he can pull of his sleeve is pretty damn incredible. Heck, his classmates don't really know who he really is as well later. Tatsuya is an enigmatic character, but whether this is an enjoyable trait is definitely up to the viewer.


Miyuki is the other main character, who is perhaps as controversial as his older brother. Miyuki is your beautiful, smart and kind female character that many look up to. However, her personality and ideals in general, like Tatsuya, are very simple. Some may argue that it's even bland. Oh, and she may have a slight bro-con for Tatsuya. I'm pretty sure all the complaints that Madhouse got over her cries of "Onii-sama" ended up having her get less screen time later in the series. Now, it definitely isn't as black and white as this; however, Madhouse unfortunately does not dwell into this further, which is something that I'll be looking into in the light novels. I do like Miyuki, mostly because of her sincerity and well-mannered demeanour, while getting notable roles in the story as well. However, I'll note that both Tatsuya and Miyuki barely undergo development throughout the series, at least emotionally and a character as a whole. If you get frustrated about characters who really only develop in terms of OPness, then this probably won't be the series for you. For others who don't mind, you're in for a treat.


The supporting cast is very cool, but they are the supporting cast for a reason. After all, Mahouka centres around Tatsuya and Miyuki the most, who are relatively mysterious but simple individuals in the first place. Some characters appear in episodes to glue some parts of the story together, but they don't get quite enough spotlight to have them fully develop. Again, a lack of character development may be a flaw of this series for some viewers, but that would be way too much to put in a 26-episode series, especially considering that some parts were already feeling rushed. There's at least enough of a blueprint for all the supporting characters to be able to pick a favourite. I personally love the student council president Mayumi myself, but I was slightly disappointed that she didn't get that much time to develop as a character. Overall, this huge cast of characters is nice, but unfortunate sacrifices had to be made in order to prevent these 3 arcs from stretching over 40 episodes. 7/10




Personal Enjoyment
This series is flawed, yes. The pacing of the story is my biggest concern, with a somewhat lack of character development being another. But I did have the motivation to continue and look forward for the next episode. I personally found the series to be quite enlightening, and there was enough substance for me to be intrigued to continue in watching, even if I know there was quite a few things wrong about it. The concept of Mahouka is very nice, although Madhouse may have not brought it out to its full potential. I do look forward to reading the light novels and continue the series from there.

 8/10



Overall
On a completely realistic overview, character and story must be weighed more than the art and sound of an anime series. The former may be the weaker points of the series, but it definitely isn't AS bad as some people say it is, nor you should write if off just because of the flaws I've listed above. This is a series where you really have to see it to give a proper opinion on it. Don't inflate your expectations, or you will be disappointed. If you are interested enough after the first few episodes, I'll say that you'll be on the road to watching a pretty nice series. Will it blow you away? No. Will this be a waste of your time? Mostly likely no as well. All in all, despite some flaws, it has been a pleasure watching Mahouka, and I hope some of you will consider watching this series as well!

Final score: 7/10

(First review, feel free to give some feedback!)

What does it mean to be a good main character? Does it mean being weak and growing strong throughout the story? Or could it mean starting strong but learning how to overcome your weaknesses in order to continue growing? How about starting off absolutely perfect at everything other than noticing girls affection for you? Well, if you answered "no" to that last one, you should probably stay away from this show. If you answered "yes," let me show why I believe that is not the right way to create a protagonist.

Shiba Tatsuya is a new high school freshman at a prestigious magic academy in near-future ... Japan. Magic is being studied like a science and used in order to gain an upper-hand in a long-lasting global conflict. Tatsuya and his twin sister Miyuki happen to be excellent at using magic. Despite that, due to some poorly explained reason, the absolutely-perfect-at-magic-in-every-way-ever-showed Tatsuya somehow ended up in the lower class at the school though Miyuki ended up in the upper class. Most of the students in the upper class look down on the other students as being inferior. Tatsuya soon breaks that boundary and forces his way (and is forced) into the student council by being absolutely perfect. Still, it will take more time than that to fully mend the broken relationship between the upper and lower students. That's just a bit of the stuff that happens at first in MKnR. The story is divided up into several arcs ranging from a few episodes to around ten episodes in length.

I'll go over the characters first since that really is the biggest downside to the show. There are way too many them. This show throws characters at you left and right with minimal explanation given for most of them, and almost zero back-stories for anyone, even the main duo. There is nothing to connect to these characters with emotionally (unless you can relate to having a brother complex). They are bland, two-dimensional characters who serve almost no purpose other than to further the plot, though most don't even do that much. Most characters' designs are so similar that they are easily confused with one another and made even more forgettable.

Now for the main duo, Tatsuya and Miyuki Shiba. They are twins from a wealthy and powerful family that is shown on a couple occasions but left out of the picture for 99% of the show. Tatsuya and Miyuki are both flawless with the exceptions being that Miyuki has a brother complex she cannot admit, and Tatsuya is terrible at noticing he has about a handful of girls with a crush on him. Tatsuya seemed like an interesting character in the first episode to me. He was looked down upon due to the class he was put in despite actually being quite skilled. However, the main reason (as I have said and will say many times) is his utter lack of any flaws. He doesn't even seem human. Similarly overpowered genius protagonists like Yagami Light from Death Note and Shiro from No Game No Life are far better than him for that reason. Despite being extremely cunning and seeming to win in basically every situation, they have flaws that make them seem like actual people. They have greed, lust, jealousy, emotions, goals, etc. Tatsuya just goes through this story beating everyone in his path without showing hardly any emotion at all. Even in unimportant situations like just hanging out with friends, he is stoic and emotionless and bland. He always says exactly what he needs to say and executes plans without any hitches. I really don't see why any other characters are necessary in this story since it seems like he could have done everything himself. Miyuki is also similarly strong, but ends up playing a damsel in distress role on one or two occasions making her not quite as perfect. She tends to be rather emotionless as well unless she is flustered romantically or embarrassed. She and Tatsuya together are just some of the most boring main characters I've ever seen.

The story is not much better. Given the huge character cast and boring main characters, the story tends to be slow paced and takes too long to explain things. 90% of MKnR is spent explaining. Almost every time an action scene occurs or a new magic is shown, the show stops and has the characters indirectly explain to the audience what happened even though I never really cared to know most of the time. There's no letting the viewer piece together events to figure out how things occurred. The information overload often makes you forget things as new info is poured into your brain faster than you can stop and think about anything that's been said. Plus most things that are explained are rather unimportant overall and make it hard to focus on the actual important information.

The animation is shoddily done. Created by the same group in Madhouse who did the failure that was Mahou Sensou, the animation really brings down the company's famous name in the anime industry. The characters' faces are devoid of expression throughout the majority of the show and everyone's design is so similar with nearly the same facial structure given to all characters. The backgrounds are not very detailed and the foreground images are sometimes noticeably poorly drawn. On the other hand, the action sequences have good choreography and are well thought out. Most of them involve group battles that involve strategy between fighters. This is also where the animation tends to be the best.

The soundtrack is mostly techno music with some rock music thrown in for some of the action scenes. The music does a good job of adding a nice calm, yet mysterious atmosphere to some of the scenes with explanations galore and makes them slightly better. There are many tracks that are used too often though, and many scenes are devoid of any music where some really should have been used. The second OP and ED are excellent despite the first ones not being anything out of the ordinary.

This show flops on nearly all aspects. The gigantic character cast with no personality or development was truly the biggest hindrance. Tatsuya is just so flawless that there is absolutely no tension created because you can be sure that he'll wrap everything up easily and move on to the next problem. This show could have been much better which is the most frustrating part. It had potential and an interesting premise but wasted it all on pointless or bad characters, poor animation, and an ending that politely asks for a second season without really offering anything worthy of receiving it.

When I first heard of Mahouka from a recommendation someone gave me, I thought I'd give it a try thinking it being something new to fill my boredom. With it's rave reviews from different sites, you can't help but think that this should be one of the favorites for 2014.

Unfortunately that is not to be and if I could sum up this series in one word, it would have to be "disappointing".

If BGM's were included with reviews, I know mine would play Public Enemy's "Don't Believe the Hype" as that's what's been running in my mind when I wrote this.

So getting back to why ... I rate this series poorly:

Mahouka isn't original and if anything, tries to borrow a lot of settings/tropes which I've seemed to have come across already in manga and anime:

- You have the magic high school setting
- A 'Gary Stu' who for the most part feels like was written as pure fanfic wish-fulfillment ridden with plot armor
- A 'Mary Sue' little sister who for most of each series is pretty annoying with her "onii-sama this and onii-sama that"
- The stereotype society who looks down on said 'Gary Stu' for not being at 'their level'(even though he pretty much overpowers every character in the series so far)
- The stereotype friends who place said 'Gary Stu' on a pedestal

Story: 3
Art/Animation: 5
Sound: 4
Character: 3
Enjoyment: 4
Overall: 3

The series is bland in terms of animation and sound, and coming from a studio whom I actually like(Madhouse), I am pretty disappointed in regards to the overall outcome in which the series has been portrayed. The world building is one info dump after another and the pacing is as slow as my grandmother!

It's only because I've picked up the light novel that I've given the remaining series the benefit of the doubt, but considering we are 9 episodes in to the show(from when I wrote this) does not give the series any hope that it will be in the top 100 by the end of 2014.

So to wrap up this review; all I can say is that if you're a first-timer to anime(have seen around 5-10 series) this 'may' be a hit for you, but if you've seen a fair few series like me then be prepared for a snorefest.

"Onii-sama", these words are the very heights of the human spirit, they are the essence of a male soul. It is the light that will guide a man during his darkest hour. Make your imouto recite these holy words exactly 167 times over the span of 10 hours and you will be granted what your heart truly desires, my child.

Mahouka is like solidifying the shit your dog left on your mattress with liquid nitrogen then dipping it into gold and expecting people to buy it just because it's shiny. And well, people buy it. Apparently. ...Well, actually, that's not quite the case. Mahouka should have ... been just another forgettable fighting magic school themed story adapted from a novel, except for some inexplicable reason, it gets popular. Mahouka is really just boring op-magic-imouto-harem garbage that adopts a not-quite-so-distasteful complexity within it's written dialog. About the only positive thing that I can really say in it's defense is that it somehow manages not to be torture. — Ah, yes! This is proof that the otaku culture is truly a bliss!

Every damn magic spell is accompanied by long winded explanations and technobabble. None of which is used for world building, characterization, or whatever else that it could possibly be used for. Zip, zero, nada. The "intelligence" in the script is just there for the author to stroke himself — or I should say Tatsuya Stuba's dick, technically?— Perhaps it's actually an abstract form of fanservice, it follows this sort of mentality of "the more complicated the vocabulary the more depth the character has", uguu! It's similar to the intelligence-fetihization of a loli in the whatever plethora of lolicon tittles I couldn't be bothered to mention. Hey, I would even go as far as to say that the whole series was built around this technobabble. I mean, if you're going for needless complexity in such volumes, why not go all the way and write a pseudo-political thriller a la Code Geass instead? We already have Spinzaku here, and Tatsuya is pretty much scumbag Jesus anyway. At least that would have been more eventful than all of the nothing that happens in the twenty-six episode run of this anime. Something else I should mention, they try to incorporate this idea of discrimination but they don't do anything with it. They had actually tried to justify the puerility of these teenagers pretending to be mature just to rather quickly brush it off with an empty speech. Funny because, this whole issue of "labels" could have stopped Mahouka's script from further plunging itself down the drain. The script is actually pretty terrible whenever you aren't being bombarded by technobabble. It's either harem garbage, hue hue not-really-incest heh heh heh heh, or indirectly stroking Tatsuya's dick. The action scenes can also reach irksome levels, almost as bad as what you see in hollywood movies. The Incompetence displayed by the terrorists can be described as simply sad. You would think that being equipped with sub-machine guns and RPGs one could be able to at the very least kill one person in a considerably populated school.

"There's no one who can possibly defeat my brother." - Miyuki.

Repeat the above piece of dialog thirty-or-so times with slightly different variations and you can begin to see the quality of writing in Mahouka, if you haven't already. Also, yup, what Tatsuya has isn't just any piece of armor, what he has is reinforced plot armor that's heavier and thicker than a whales hide.

Suffering several bone fractures, damaged organs and massive hemorrhaging? Not a problem, he'll just magically restore himself back to perfect health. Getting shot through the heart? Barely so much as tips him off balance a bit. Catching bullets with his bare hands? You betcha~ — There's absolutely no tension when a character is this powerful. And that isn't even the worst of it, the biggest offender of all happens in the last episode. It speaks for itself really.

No, better still is his ability to make girls drop their panties faster than you can say "bullshit". He does this in his usual inhumanly calm demeanor without so much as lifting a finger. No, he doesn't even flirt with the girls, the reason for this being because imouto pussy is best pussy. Just about every female subconsciously gravitates towards him and instinctively want to have his babies because they just know that he has superior mating capabilities.

No, wait, wait, wait, wait!! Tatsuya is a deconstruction of the Gary Stu archetype as he's actually a pathetic fatass okatu in a show that's actually a clever self parody.— Just an instance of Mahouka's brilliant comedy, when a high-school girl whose been hiding behind a tree gets her position compromised, she escapes her pursuers in the most dramatic way possible: by getting on a cheap looking scooter that actually takes off with two jet engines. You just have to see it for yourself, I'm clearly not writing it down correctly.— Tatsuya may not look like a fatass with an imouto fetish... but that's because you're already under his spell, see? Yeah, it's a spell of his that affects all your senses so you can't tell. When Miyuki asks if she looks weird in the new apron she bought for him to see her in, he replies with "You look lovely. So much so that I want to secretly display you in a glass case just for me." See? This is proof that he's a fatass basement dweller. It simply won't do you any good to deny facts.

Oh, wait, how could I forget? Whenever these two say anything incestuous it's just a joke.

Final verdict: 0/10 Nowhere near racist enough, needs more propaganda.

I thought this anime was going to be really good. I watched the first episode and thought maybe it gets better later (which I was told happened in the Light Novels). Sadly it didn't. I really wanted this anime to succeed, with my friend introducing it to me. However it's not what it's lacking is the problem, it's what it does too much of.


~Story~
-I gave it a 5 because I hardly could get into the story. When it introduced a school setting, alarms already started going off in my head. 'Oh no, this isn't going to be one of those convoluted teenage identity crisis dramas ... is it?'. Thankfully it wasn't. Unfortunately it was something else just as bad. Seriously what is it with this "Blooms and Weed" classification of the students? This really doesn't make sense because it's just another little path for the Gary-Stu of a main character to completely trample like he does everything else. A little action here and there, mostly exposition, almost NO development of plot or character. Utter bore.

{Art}
-It's not too shabby. The fight scenes are nice with the magical effects and what not. Only problem is, the fights last like what? Less than a second? No seriously that happens. It's foolish. The reasoning behind it is even more so. However it is decent, passable.

[Sound]
-Same here, although the droning of the main character doesn't help. Not much to say honestly because it's just that: fair. Nothing great but at the same time nothing bad to point out.

\Character/
-Oh boy here we go. Like I said: the MC was emotionless for a reason which was extremely stupid. The relationship between the MC and his little sister is just iffy. Why does it exist? Is the creator trying to tease at some sort of incestuous relationship? Is he trying to induce some sort of comedic value (since it is only hinted at). Besides that little sister is just plain soulless like every other character in the show. She's only there to make the older brother look good like some sick fantasy of a wish-fulfillment type story. Without him? She's absolutely NOTHING. At least the other characters have some sort of niche trope to fill although still laughable since the main character is just so good at everything. (stu stu stew stoo)

-Enjoyment-
-Interesting AT FIRST because I was hyped to see this "magic" in action. I saw the first fight. I tried to be forgiving, watching it recapped in the second episode. Disappointment. All this show did was talk about something. Nobody ever said "I FEEL this" or "This makes me want to do X". And there's the problem right there. Almost little to no expression. And if these characters are so unwilling to show some real emotion? Why should I? Oh yeah like I could feel sorry for that samurai girl when she was an idiot for mistaking her senior's words a few years ago. Honestly, there was nothing to pull me in. Nothing to say: 'Watch this anime, it's interesting for this reason!'. But there is no reason. Do I want to see triumph after triumph? No. I want to see development, feeling, action. Some substance to this lifeless anime.


!Overall?
-It was bad:

-Story was boring. It was a generic school setting with generic student barriers with a generic unbalanced ratio between female and male student characters. Yeah, you know where I'm going with this.

-Art was Ok
-Sound was Ok

-Boring characters with little to no substance. The MC was boring and never made anything interesting. His little sister is a damn barbie doll. Everyone else is there to make our robot of an MC look good.

-Nigh enjoyable, unless you like to jump on hype trains, see Gary-Stus just do boring stuff because of self-projection unto characters FTW.

It could have been good. It really could have. Removing the little sister because she provides nothing but a pseudo goal for the main character would have immensely improved the story because then it would have been fun seeing a robot own everything and then do some exposition for the hell of it. Giving the characters more substance because: seriously... what are their names again? Anyways, not much to say but don't blame me, blame a boring anime. Cheers.

I just found out about this website... It's pretty neat. I'm going to try writing a review on here for an anime I really enjoyed: Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei.

So, for the story part of this anime, I have to say that it's really cool. First half of the show takes place in a Magic School, where people learn magic. But not like wizardry magic, but a futuristic technology that allows people to use magic. There's a lot of dialogue that may annoy people, but I personally found the dialogue really interesting. There's a school magic competition, and multiple magic schools compete in it. Pretty fun ... to watch. The second half gets even better. It's about another organization trying to sabotage the Magic High competition, and it goes even further than that. The ass-kicking that goes on in the 2nd half was the best.

The art and the music are the best parts of the show. The art was perfect HD-level beauty. The opening and ending songs to the show are one of my favorites ever.

The characters of the show, oh man. This was spectacular, there are so many great characters. But I'll start with my favorite anime character ever, Shiba Tatsuya, the main character. He is so overpowered and badass, it was a beaut to see. Furthermore, my name is Tatsuya! We have the connection! But really, all the characters were awesome, except for Shiba Miyuki, whose love for her older brother was sort of disturbing.

I enjoyed this anime so much, and I'm guessing that this is where I recommend this anime to people. I definitely recommend this anime to anyone that likes magic and badass main characters, and can sit through some dialogue that I know a lot of people will dislike.

Honestly, I thought this anime was schlock. Literally the only things I enjoyed about it were the art direction (some of the magic looked really cool, surprisingly) and the premise behind it was intriguing enough to give it a shot.

After 10 episodes, I'm done. I can't do anymore, and i can't in good conscious recommend anyone else follows this show.

The characters are paper thin. Tatsuya Shiba has no emotional depth or complexity in any real or meaningful way. And were that intentional, were the anime to demonstrate how dangerous divorcing oneself from emotion and refusing to empathize with others can be, that would ... be fine, I suppose. But the prime means by which it could manage this is through his sister. And when presented with this opportunity, the show basically goes "Fuck that, instead she wants to sleep with him." She's used as a means of propping up how great he is, rather than a humanizing element of a show in desperate need of it. Every single character is sterile, boring, serving their plot purpose with no real humanization behind them. Nearly every single female character swoons over Tatsuya, to the detriment of their own character, which is annoying as hell too.

The plot is garbage, but I could have lived with a garbage plot! I would have been fine with just a schlocky, terribly plotted-and-paced show with cool fight scenes, were it not THIS bad. There are multiple instances in the beginning that basically go "hey so you know how these people face oppression and a societal system that continually treats them as lesser? FUCK 'EM, IT'S THEIR OWN FAULT." Rather than attempting to take a complex look at a system where people are disproportionately privileged, it chooses a hyper-simplistic route, saying, in essence, that the reason people are less privileged is because they don't deserve it.

That's not an exaggeration, by the way. There's literally a scene in which they discuss a terrorist organization and Tatsuya basically goes "Oh well, their main issue is with the disproportionate median income, but you see, magicians DESERVE to be richer, they just work that much harder and they're that much more important."

What I saw of this series left a bad taste in my mouth. Decent looking animation and some mildly cool magic and concepts don't make up for terrible plot, worse characters, and generally gross Author Preaching coming from the characters. If you could send somebody around to give me a severe enough concussion that I forget everything I know about this anime, that would be fantastic.

There is a reason why anime with a setting that revolves around a high school rarely becomes successful. Because it is to me one of the most overused settings for the last few years and only once in a while does it work out particularly well like in the case of the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. Now with this show there is a lot of hype around due to the proclaimed success of its light novels. I personally haven't read them myself so I can't say for sure how good it is. But after viewing six episodes I feel I can give my unbiased review ... of this show that was adapted. For starters it brings up a topic that's been been shoved down our throuts since any of us as children started school. bullying and discrimination. Yes it tackles this issue head on as the issue many people in this story face comes in one of three types. The oppressed victims who see no way out, The overconfident and biased opressors, and the realists who realize true equality can't exist but can be made better. I feel that part of the reason this show got so popular in the first place was because of how relatable it's premise is because everyone at some point in their life has either been bullied or was the bully for the sake of popularity. Now in this show that reasoning for the bullying or harassment has simply been about perceived intelligence due to grades. Because this show separates people in two classes with outfits that easily distinguish them "course 1" the honor students, and "course 2" the remedial class students". The general idea in this school is that if you are in course 1 then for some reason you get the right to be a complete dick to everyone in course 2. They even have a different, more straightforward but offensive term for the course 2 students and have called them "Weeds" while course 1 are "blooms" due to their potential as magic users and weeds percieved inability to grow. Now that we got the premise here the main character is something that contradicts this class based system. There's Tatsuya Shiba, he is a course 2 student with skills that are in practical use, far superior then even those of course 1 but this is due to how the school evaluates certain qualities in students way more then others which is pretty realistic given how they work. His personality as a character is to be cool an reserved and his motivations are simple. Get the diploma from magic high school and become a magic scientist. Now I know what you are thinking, why did I give this show a 7 out of 10? Because there are some serious faults when it comes to this show.

List of problems
#1 the main character has a blood-related sister who loves him and the relationship is one sided and extremely echhii. I don't understand the big deal with brother-sister relationships in anime and can be extremely off-putting if not in the right light. I have seen this work many times like with attack on titan with Mikasa and Eren and even the show currently airing Hitsugi no Chaika makes it work because they aren't echhii or blood related. If they didn't put too much focus on this I'd probably have a a better time watching this show.

#2 Too big a cast of supporting characters and not enough variation in character designs. There are way way way too many people in this show to make this work for a 26 episode anime, so many that I highly doubt that you can remember half of them as their character introductions are also very short and abrupt and they also all wear essentially the same uniform with the only two things that can possibly make them different are the flower or grey shoulder patch or the the pattern on the blouse for females. It's made it so I can only focus on the main character and what his main focus is for the time being. Because of this I can't feel like I should care about most of this supporting cast as they more or less take up space.

#3 the main protagonist gets all da bitches. Yes just like in sword art online literally every girl in the school is interested in Tatsuya for no real reason. This is serious wish fulfillment right here as some of these girls from course 1 should be shrugging him off but instead are flocking toward him. And that brings me to the final problem

#4 easily distinguished class structure. If a school wants to make honor and remedial classes, that's fine, if they want to categorize these classes, that is also fine, but whoever was the genius to that decided that giving kids uniforms that clearly differentiated their grade level from one another wouldn't cause discrimination has got to the biggest idiot on the planet and isn't realistic as to how schools are ran.

So with that I give this show a 7 out of 10, it can be an interesting show when the magic starts flying around but don't get your hopes up too high

The Irregular at the magical school........Frankly the title alone was a bit misleading, since the main character-in this case Tatsuya was more like a overly protective brother to Miyuki. Whether it is an anime, light novel or manga, we can't deny that this anime is a combination with bits and pieces from "Harry Potter" and James Bond sagas, and frankly, the series' combination of Sci-fi with magic wasn't bad except that it lacks one thing........and yes, it lacks a formidable antagonist, also there is the geo-political thing added to this anime where it indirectly concerns Japan's current conflict with China. But enough of that ... as I present my ratings for this anime:

Story: Fair 6.

Ok, high rating is for the anime's story plot where from the first arc involves the conflict between the Blooms and the weeds, where I like the part that them "Blooms" got owned by a weed in Tatsuya, however, as the first arc ends the second arc wasn't a bit exciting because the main character become one of the blooms and all of the sudden the conflict between the weeds and the blooms were forgotten. Another thing about the story plot was the fact that it has that geopolitical theme that was present on the last two arc where it indirectly concerns Japan's current conflict with China as I've mentioned, as if writer Tsutomu Satō was trying to put his nationalist thought into it in which in my opinion is unbecoming of the latter. Ok, so I do enjoy this anime's action-combine with magic and sci-fi, however I just couldn't fathom the fact that in this series where magic is turn into rocket science, which is not bad except that more emphasis was given to most of the blooms and little for them weeds, which is the reason why this part should be fair enough co'z it ain't that good but ain't that bad either.


Art: Pathetic 1.

Ok, so my question is what's up with the granny dress that them First High schools were wearing? Now, this is probably the only anime where there isn't much moe in it, where the schools girls wear what can be describe as nun- attire and the boys who wears nerdish coat, generally speaking I just don't like the school attire that the characters wore.


Sound: Good 7.

Basically, the score is for the closing theme in the last arc and the 1st opening theme that I like.


Character: Poor 3.

Whether it is an anime, light novel or manga, on thing is for sure.....that everything was put on the siblings and they are not other than Tatsuya and Miyuki, frankly the two obviously have an incest relationship and there is no denying it. I gave this part a poor score since at first, Tatsuya being able to owned them blooms was exciting, however he becomes a disappointment when he becomes one of the blooms despite of being a weed, though, for him to be this top dog isn't bad, but, he lacks one thing and yes he lacks a formidable opponent and I'm talking about an antagonist who has the capability to kick him hard and make him suffer, unfortunately his portrayal as an protagonist who is the best was seemingly a one side affair where it gets boring when he can kick his enemy's ass like hot knife to butter. It isn't just limited to him where it also includes the entire student council as well who also have their share of being able to defeated an enemy in a snap that also adds to the boring stuff, however the only consultation here is Miyuki whose allure and sweetness keeps ones boredom of this anime at bay.


Enjoyment: Decent 4.

Despite of the predictability that the protagonist can defeat the antagonist in a snap, it was still enjoyable enough to finish it up to the last episode, but only barely.l


Overall: Poor 3.

IMO, writer Tsutomu Satō should have not put any geopolitical theme in this series, also, since the latter didn't put his main character in such hard predicament and by making him have such godlike abilities really proves to be a drag which is why this anime deserves a poor score. Another reason why this anime (including the manga and the LN) should have a 3 was the fact that the title alone as I've mention was misleading, since how the heck can the main character (Tatsuya) be an irregular when he is suppose to be high school student and not someone working a part-time job in some cafe or restaurant, also it wasn't clear as how writer Tsutomu Sato defines 'Irregular" in his work title,which is one more reason why I gave this anime a low score.

Do you like boredom? Do you like agony? Do you fancy the sensation of feeling like your soul is being pruned from your lifeless, withered husk of a body? If so, then boy do I have the anime for you! It’s called: Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei. I repeat, Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei. In just 26 episodes, you’ll feel like you were quarantined in your room for a year as all life ceases to shine from your eyes! Call now at 1-800-XXX-XXXX or text “KILL ME” to this number!

What does one go about describing Mahouka? Is it bad decorum to just go “generic OP MC with ... lifeless harem, wish fulfillment bad” and call it a day? Perhaps, as wish fulfillment isn’t inherently a bad thing. People often come to entertainment mediums to escape, sometimes self-insert into fun stories with likable, memorable protagonists who are about as cool as the scenarios they tackle. They might identify with the characters or be so fascinated by the culture and worldbuilding on display that they wish they were there themselves. Harem shows and isekai are often born out of this idea, even the better ones such as Tenchi Muyo or That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime. That begs the question: what about Mahouka, or Irregular at Magic High School, is so bad that it ends up becoming the antithesis of fun?

Well, obviously, your mileage may vary as sometimes people just wanna watch an overpowered badass do overpowered badass things while getting surrounded by beautiful girls. It’s a classic high school power fantasy. The problem with Mahouka is multi-layered but can best be described as “everything working in tandem to make the experience as lifeless as humanly possible”. A show doesn’t need to be deep or emotionally compelling to be entertaining, but it does need a soul. Mahouka does not have a soul. It is devoid of tension, bereft of spectacle, missing even a trace of genuine emotion or humanity. It’s not “just some generic LN high school battle anime”. Chivalry of a Failed Knight is what one would call “just some generic LN high school battle anime”, but it feels like people actually cared about presenting it in a fun, enticing way beyond just looking at the “otaku-pandering checklist”. Mahouka no Koukou Rettousei is just dead and broken. Fossils have more of a pulse than this show.

One does need to start somewhere in order to get into why, so let’s look at the protagonist. Tatsuya Shiba is a lobotomized God. He is about as infallible as protagonists can get. He’s every generic LN protagonist you can think of, but worse. The only “flaw” they decided to give him was that he can’t pass some stupid magic block aptitude test when he is literally invincible and perfect at just about everything otherwise. The dude’s a better hacker than Kirito from Sword Art Online. He knows just about every single combat system under the sun --we'll get to that-- and can pretty much cheese every fight he has with someone outside of a sparring match with his master. The man has nigh-instant regeneration powers, and it’s actually worse than it sounds because of reasons explained in the finale which further elevate OJesus-sama way past the point of Gary Stu status, which he had already achieved in the first half of the show. GodSuya is so good at magitech that not only has he been responsible for the bulk of his society’s and military’s technological and magical development under the pseudonym Taurus Silver since he was 7, but he’s able to look at scientists’ constant failed tests regarding flight magic, and both create and refine the system in an afternoon!

This happens offscreen, and isn’t even the most audacious thing about how holy or infallible he is. The second half of the show somehow one-ups this arguably twice, and it all borders on self-parody.

All of this would be at least somewhat palatable if GodSuya had a fun, vibrant personality to make the viewers root for him. Unfortunately, we live in a cruel, heartless world where all of his emotions except for love for his sister --which is a state of being, not an emotion-- have been sealed off. We don’t get to see what’s inside his head, either. He’s just this almost exclusively stoic badass who’s slightly off on jovial social cues. There’s no other way the audience gets to see his personality in action or really learn what makes him tick. There’s no internal struggle, there’s no interesting personality quirk, there’s just about nothing here. What you see is what you get, and there’s hardly much of a view to take in. When the only sense of flavor your protagonist has is “bitch better cover up” and “huh, my sister is in love with me, oh well, also she should really calm down” something has gone incredibly wrong. He honestly might be one of the worst characters...ever, straight-up.

Speaking of Miyuki, she’s just as insufferable for completely different reasons. She’s a pokemon, not a person. Half of her dialogue is just her screeching “onii-sama” because “I want to fuck my brother” is basically the only noteworthy thing about her aside from her looks and constant apologizing. She is so ungodly annoying, which makes it all the more deflating that she’s the only relevant character even remotely as capable as GodSuya since she effortlessly trounces all of her opponents as well. She also marks the start of his harem as early as the weird shoujo climax-esque first scene of the series premiere.

Other non-harem shows such as Irresponsible Captain Tylor and arguably Code Geass had harems for their main characters, but each girl who fell in love with their respective protagonists each had their own vibrant, distinct, well-defined, and explored personalities. This show does not; what a surprise. Mayumi, Erika, and even some random chick who hacks the school just to get GodSuya to notice him are also participants and while they have their own personality quirks and Erika has her own unrelated subplot, none of them are very likable, interesting, or anything other than bland and dull.

In addition to being bland, some of these characters are unreasonably douchey. Erika’s a dick to her brother for the sake of her subplot, while Hanzo, a member of the student council, really hates GodSuya. Anyone who disagrees with GodSuya is inherently wrong, but in this case, he’s wrong because he’s a bigoted asshole “bloom” aka an upperclass “I have better magic stats” guy while GodSuya is a “weed”, someone who sucked at the block pushing test. That is the general hierarchy of the school and the only real attempt at any thematic confrontation in the anime, or rather, the first arc since that largely goes away by the second half. This is what defines Hanzo for a large chunk of the series and while he does improve, he’s still barely even a character. There’s a large ensemble cast but almost none of the characters matter or have anything interesting to say about them. They’re just sorta...there, at best, with almost no relevance outside of specific moments in the first and third arcs, such as Kirihara. The cast is just that devoid of life, and as a result, there is almost no sense of chemistry in the show. When the best thing that can be said is “hey, some of them are cute and have maybe a few slightly chuckle-worthy interactions” like Kyouko, there’s a real problem here.

You probably don’t even know who half of these people are, even if you’ve seen the show. Be honest.

It doesn’t help that the plots are about as weak as the one-dimensional villains instigating them. Some manipulator who turns out to be a little bitch once GodSuya reaches him, plants the seeds for the proletariat “weeds” to lobby up to make demands of and attempt to uphieve the hierarchy established and cruelly enforced by the bourgeoisie “blooms”, only for them to be painted as the bad guys on blanket terms because they were a little too rough and some terrorists ruined everything. Corporate guys do corporate money-grubbing things in the 2nd arc, and it’s up to Tatsuya to assassinate them following a “battle of the schools” tournament before the military gets involved and things get really crazy in the city for the third arc that makes up the last 4 episodes. There is no sense of transition between these two arcs. Ignoring the appalling implications of the first arc, these storylines barely even mean anything and are just an excuse for characters to endlessly babble about the convoluted magitech and combat systems at their disposal as GodSuya and his sister endlessly make quick work of anyone who opposes them.

Actually, we need to dive a bit deeper into those implications and the worldbuilding of the show because it is frankly RWBY levels of bad, possibly even worse. The first arc is basically how magically adept “blooms” discriminate against “weeds”, and how the school and its student council barely do anything to combat this outside of sending out people to deal with brawls despite the fact that it is in direct violation of school rules. Naturally, “weeds” are fed up with this and try to challenge the system. This is why, even outside of how some of them got utterly punked by some manipulator trying to tear the school apart by inciting a class war, they’re the bad guys who get assisted by terrorists. GodSuya may be a weed, but he is the exception rather than the rule. Blooms disrespecting weeds is wrong, but they need to learn their fucking place and not try to incite a revolution. Class traitor GodSuya over here is the one who the blooms need to treat with respect because he is a powerful and respectable individual who is secretly Steve Jobs and Bill Gates combined, while the structure can remain the same if blooms aren’t as blatantly dickish to weeds.

Kinda fucked ain’t it? Well, guess what: this might as well work in Mahouka’s world because this conflict is almost never brought up again outside of when people need a reason to be objectively wrong and bad by giving OJesus-sama grief. Nothing is fundamentally changed outside of us not needing to see that kind of systemic conflict since it no longer matters.

What will always matter, though, is the sheer number of combat systems the show never shuts up about. Episode 1 shoves 5 combat systems down our throats with basically no breathing room to explain any of them. There are 3 hand-to-hand fighting styles they don’t really go into explaining and so they’re essentially interchangeable. There’s regular magitech that come in the forms of both the run-of-the-mill school level CAD stuff and highly dangerous non-military magic,, military magitech, regular military equipment for its own kind of combat, and giant robots. Good luck figuring out how a lot of these work for a while, especially when everything except for regular military equipment and giant robots are thrown in during the 2nd half to turn 5 systems into 7. Obviously, magic systems are going to be intricate and complex a lot of the time, and whenever super cool and highly specific techniques are thrown into the mix, they’ll often still fall under the umbrella of a primary combat system that require an explanation the first time before they just become standard usage. Look at most shounens like Naruto, Fairy Tail, etc. Even RWBY, which eventually has a lot thrown at you with almost none of it making any sense or being consistent, at least allows you to really get to know a lot of the basic mechanics before it starts breaking them or introducing new ones.

Mahouka does not do any of this. You don’t have room to breathe in the first episode, and a lot of the more broad explanations of the mechanics come later. This hurts worse than you think, and that’s not just because there’s so much you need to keep up with at once lest you just tune all of it out altogether. It’s also because they KNOW this is too much to process, and will spend every single solitary episode sitting you down for lengthy exposition dumps of what just happened, how each magitech device such as CADs are supposed to work, and what each and every technique does and how they work. This is all done in excruciating detail, and can take anywhere from 2 to what feels like 10 minutes. Pacing is utterly glacial as a result, as more time is spent talking about and breaking down the fight scenes than actually showing us the fights! By the second half, the act of watching a cavalcade of cardboard cutouts freeze up and suffocate the viewer with exposition dump after exposition dump with each and every episode, without fail, becomes nothing short of maddening! This right here, more than the nightmarish protagonist, more than the repugnant messaging and implications, more than the broken and inconsistent worldbuilding and narrative writing, is what makes this anime an absolute nightmare to watch! It isn’t just outrageous to the point of inducing anger or being offensive, it’s simultaneously boring enough to drain one’s life force until they wonder if they’re even conscious before they start screaming in existential terror!

There’s no point in bringing up dead and unearned emotional climaxes. There’s no point in detailing how some students can do magic on their own despite the show establishing you need the use of CADs to do it. Some CADs can be gauntlet things, while others can be magic guns, which makes it really weird that they can be used in duels where “no weapons are allowed” like in the second episode. They’re more minor issues compared to the sheer level of indigestibility the pacing, character writing, and exposition dumps all have. That said, these issues could still bug you whenever they come up...assuming you can pay attention to any of these without your eyes glazing over as they beg for mercy.

Yeah, the show looks like shit, too. The artwork isn’t the problem here. The art style is fairly plain for LN adaptations, and it at least has some intricate detail regarding people’s hair. The animation, while being passable at best during the action scenes, isn’t the big issue, either. It would still be a relatively lukewarm production on its own merits, but what utterly tanks it is how blinding everything is. The uniforms are probably the tackiest, gaudiest pieces of clothing ever, with the peppermint greens and whites being so bright that they hurt to look at. Moreover, the lighting in the show is some of the most oversaturated one may have the misfortune of coming across. The backgrounds and environments are as plain as they can get while being irritably blurry to boot, so they heavily clash with and do not justify such blinding lighting. Sure, it makes the magic look more “magical”, shiny, and flashy, but they’re still eye-searing.

At least in No Game No Life --another 2014 MADHOUSE show--, the colors are generally vibrant, varied, and saturated enough for the lighting to feel at home, even if that show is visually very busy and another example of an anime where you might need to squint at while watching. Here, it makes no sense. We’re forced to shield our eyes because the director, Manabu Ono, really lights ultra bright colors. Just look at shows he’s made since this one such as both seasons of The Asterisk War or Sword Art Online: Alicization. His aesthetic is bright and sunny, with eye-popping colors. As blinding as The Asterisk War can be, and even though the colors in SAO Alicization are a bit much, they at least make more sense regarding their aesthetics than this show does! It’s an aesthetic mismatch that utterly kills to look at.

The show isn’t just a visual nightmare either. This form of sensory torture is also an auditory endurance test. To be fair, this is not the fault of the OPs or EDs. The OPs are both actually quite good. The first one, “Rising Hope” by LiSA is a quality J-rock banger with more personality than the rest of the show could ever hope to muster, even if it does cut off weirdly. OP 2, “Grilletto” by GARNiDELIA, is even better and grander, even if the climactic breakdown at the end is very ill-fitting for the show itself and the lifeless still image of the main siblings sleeping on grass together.

The real kicker here is the OST. Taku Iwasaki is not a bad composer by any means. His work on Akame ga Kill and Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann are proof enough of that, and apparently there are still decent pieces here. Good luck finding them however with how badly the OST for this show is implemented. Half of the tracks are extremely ill-fitting for the myriad of exposition dumps, in particular. Incredibly pleasant, almost peppy music during dumps, and weirdly dramatic music during the scenes get played a lot, too, when we’re just being briefed on whatever magic is going on this time in a certain fight scene or what have you. The flavor of techno he went with is also very gaudy here, and it plays constantly. However, the worst has to be this one track that plays during several scenes in the second arc where characters are just standing and talking. There’s this one incredibly high-pitched beeping noise that plays over a very dull, otherwise barely audible background track. It’s such an obnoxious sound in its own right, especially when it goes through a cycle every 3-4 seconds that never changes. However, when combined with how agonizingly dull the scenes it gets played in are, and for how many episodes this plays, that particular beeping sequence becomes a form of mental and auditory torture that has been embedded into my memory, and it can still be heard while this very paragraph is being typed. It’s a fucking trauma! Do you see how one can be led to absolute madness when viewing this piece of shit?!

Let’s be clear, here. You are absolutely allowed to like this show. Absolutely no one has the power, let alone the right to directly take that away from you. Overpowered protagonists in power fantasy scenarios resonate with teenagers for a reason, and escapism is perfectly fine. If you like this show, then it might be the equivalent of a water park or amusement park for you. Sure, you have to do a lot of standing and waiting around, and that can be incredibly boring unless you’re into that sort of thing and like to process everything. However, the rides, or in this case, GodSuya no-selling people and being perfect, is what tends to leave the biggest impression. Sure, I’d never self-insert into this since it’s not even like the characters would be fun to interact with. However, some people just wanna be a cool guy surrounded by cute and pretty girls as he gets proven right all the time as everyone grows to care about him. That’s ok.

It’s just that one would hope there was some semblance of a soul to go along with that fantasy. Neither that, nor any semblance of decent writing is present in Mahouka, and that’s why it’s so much worse than most other seemingly generic or broken LN adaptations and school battle harem shows can be. The show has nary a hint of humanity, and in its place lies a mix of soul-sucking boredom and headache-inducing rage. Very few shows embody both of those extremes, even on an audiovisual level, so at least there’s that to help this show stand out. Whether that's something to be proud of...now that's something to think about.

Pop Quiz: What happens when you take a giant sturdy, steel block and throw rocks at it to try and move it?

It won't move right? The rocks will all crumble, right? And doing it repeatedly will get frustratingly boring, right? Well that experience would still be more thrilling than watching 26 episodes of The Irregular at Magic High School.

Based on the light novel series of the same name, and animated by Studio Madhouse, Irregular at Magic High School, also known as Mahouka is what happens when a writer completely gives up making an interesting story or cast and instead tries to make their main ... character, Tatsuya Shiba in the case, be on top of things in every situation imaginable. Since so many of Mahouka's problems exist because of this character, and his existence massively drags down any interesting elements the show might have going for it, let's talk about Tatsuya first.

Tatsuya AKA Onii Sama AKA Jesus kun mk 3 times infinity, is completely overpowered in every way possible. The show literally says that: "there's nobody can surpass you in either studies or martial arts" in the very first episode. But it gets worse.

He never loses any fight, never shows any signs of emotional weakness, can weaponize magic to be able to fly before anyone else, has a countermeasure for his opponents moves before they even attack, can take a sniper wound head on and heal instantly, can destroy a magic raven just by looking at it, invade people's psyche, can catch and dissolve multiple bullets shot directly at him, develop new technology for their society in secret/make flawless weapons for everyone at his school, has a radar to see where any person comes from, never misses with his weapon, takes down a terrorist organization from the inside singlehandedly, BRINGS PEOPLE BACK FROM THE DEAD, and most painfully, gets nearly every single one of the many girls in the series, including his sister, to never stop talking about him or even falling for him because of how "cool" he is.

The worst part (no, the worst part is a HORRIBLE plot point that comes out of nowhere in the last three episodes, but the second worst part) is that the show's way of justifying all of this overpoweredness is by saying he does SLIGHTLY worse at moving a heavy block across the floor with his mind than anyone else. This "weakness" is only brought up in a vain attempt to convince the audience that God Almighty is not overpowered, and it's never mentioned past this or used as an obstacle in any fight he enters.

What Mahouka doesn't get is that intelligent audiences won't think a character who always wins is "cool". A character is admired for trying, and then eventually succeeding with more effort. Pixar's first rule of storytelling is "You admire a character for trying more than their successes", so in turn, a character who always succeeds gives you no reason to admire them or be invested in their growth. Some of anime's most beloved protagonists like Guts from Berserk, Simon from Gurren Lagann, Edward Elric from Fullmetal Alchemist or Lelouch from Code Geass are ones who don't always succeed, and have to learn to overcome their physical and emotional flaws to grow as people. Nothing of the sort happens with Tatsuya, he starts at Square Infinity and his feats keep growing from there.

Now, having an overpowered protagonist doesn't immediately make a show terrible. A writer could use their overpowered character as a joke and build the show around their strength (One Punch Man), you could make your character fun to watch personality wise (Sora from No Game No Life or Alucard from Hellsing) or have an interesting side cast to make up for the overpowered protagonist (again, Hellsing). But they don't take advantage. Mahouka is solemnly serious the whole show, Tatsuya has a dull expression on his face at all times and never truly emotes, and as I'll get into later, other characters have less character than the rocks thrown at the steel block and are made obsolete in the story.

When it comes to the story itself, it's suprisingly pretty shallow. In 2095, a sizable portion of the human population has died off, but those remaining learned how to use magic as technology and made schools that have competitions with it. Trite. Enter Tatsuya and his sister Miyuki. Because Tatsuya failed that square inch block test I mentioned earlier, he's put in the lower of the school's two classes, and the early parts of the series are all about Tatsuya being seen as the underdog just for being in the lower class because of that BS test method. There's only one other major character in the lower class, and she's taken out of the plot far too quickly. Tatsuya is far stronger than anyone in their world, let alone the upper class, so it gets really annoying.

Other elements of the story include various terrorist attacks, and a high school competition, and while some ideas for the competitions are creative like Magic Bat and the Surf Races, they aren't fun story wise because Tatsuya's overpoweredness transfers to everyone on his team at "First High School". Wow. What creativity there in the naming. One of the dumbest scenes in the show (and that says a lot) involves one girl in First High School crying her eyes out for losing in the finals of an event, which might've worked if it was against another school, but it's against the girl's own teammate! She has no reason to cry because their school wins anyway!

One interesting thing the show does attempt to do is create its very own magic system with lots of types and intricacies, but they also fail because their system of blending magic with technology is incredibly confusing or it's only used to justify Tatsuya winning a fight through technobabble and info dumping. It's unimportant and important in the same story which never works. Something like RWBY, where the characters have two magic powers a piece and their own technology makes it much more clear and practical. Aura for defense, Semblance for a unique power. Mahouka doesn't need such a complex and confusing magic system to make the fights interesting, and no matter how easy the system might've been, it doesn't matter because how strong Tatsuya and his team are compared to everyone else.

Nothing is interesting in the story beyond that. Even the various side character subplots brought to fill up the runtime mean nothing in terms of relevance or even development for most of them. How could you make a cool idea about military grade magic weapons into a cliche high school not-harem Jesus fantasy?! It's lazy, cheap, incredibly full of itself, frustrating and boring, and no amount of polished looking techno animation can save it.

Speaking of the animation, it's not bad, but really doesn't have much to work with. By Studio Madhouse, all of the character designs have a nice polish to them and unique faces with well inserted lips, and the character animation is fairly smooth and consistent. Even some of the technical explanations have very Tron-esque backgrounds that fit the style of the show well. But at the same time, it feels wasted on being given so little to work with. The backgrounds are, for the most part, very unoriginal and standard with little to distinguish them from other future city series, the choreography can occasionally be very flat (in one case literally being two characters walking at each other to shoot each other with guns really slowly), some character designs don't fit for their gender or feel unoriginal, and the flat directing leaves a lot of times where characters are positioned in rooms at very basic angles. Overall, the animation is good, but held back by the source material's lack of anything interesting to animate. Even Guilty Crown, bad as it was story wise, at least had some creative designs and ways to use their animation.

The sound is a similar story. Rising Hope is a solid OP, but it can't hold a candle to LiSA's other song Crossing Field. The first ED and second OP aren't very memorable, but the second ED is actually very nice. In the series, the OST mostly consists of techno and dubstep themes, which aren't really bad but very unmemorable. So overall an OK soundtrack, but what puts it at a 5 is the rather bland delivery from most of the voice actors, and Miyuki's constant need to say "Onii sama" over and over again in the dialogue. It gets rather annoying, even if that's more the fault of the script and her "character".

As as characters in Mahouka, everyone in this show is either bland, one note, or a missed opportunity. And there is 0.1% character development whatsoever in 26 episodes.

I've already talked enough abou Tatsuya, but I'd like to add that making him emotionless only feels like a lazy decision to not have him react to anything and not to actually show subtle character change (Oreki Houtarou from Hyouka). Now to everyone else.

Miyuki Shiba- Tatsuya's sister. Not only the worst character in this anime, but one of the worst characters in any anime ever. And this is coming from someone who watched Mirai Nikki and Guilty Crown. Her only character trait is incest. You heard that right, the ONLY character trait Miyuki has in 26 episodes is loving her brother, being clingy to him, and getting all rosy red cheeks every time he's nice to her. She even rolls around in her bed basically orgasming over him once. It's not even delved into. Even Sword Art Online did a better job handling an incest plot because we actually got to see Suguha's inner thoughts and how she learns to get over it. Here, it exists to be incest, and no other reason. She looks cute, loves her brother, and is the most pure, precious, literal special snowflake with her ice powers. Honestly she's a worse character than Tatsuya! Because at least with Tatsuya, we could understand why he acted the way he did, but with Miyuki we get nothing. The most memorable thing about her is her constantly saying "Onii-sama" over and over and over again nonstop. For being the second most important character in your show, this is absolutely pathetic.

Not-Suzaku- I'm serious, the show literally just stole his character design. Basically he's Tatsuya's rival as indicated by the OP. His first appearance had me curious about what type of character he would be as he stood in a room with blood all over the walls, and he had a weapon that kills people just like Kira in Jojo Part 4. I thought he would be some sort of Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon type character who'd encounter Tatsuya many times and be some sort of diabolical mastermind but NOPE! Mets Tatsuya a grand total of once, fails like a chump, and then he turns into the most generic Pokémon rival possible, with whom Tatsuya lets his sister dance with. You had an interesting idea and then you completely forgot about it. WHY?!!!!

Erika Chiba- A tomboyish girl with a very teasing personality with a relationship to her brother and a mentor to another character. While by no means a good character, she's the ONLY character in Mahouka to have something resembling a personality and at points she was the most fun character to watch. That said, it's the difference between a two dimensional character with a cast of one dimensional characters, but an achievement for how little it may be.

Mibu Sayaka- I brought her up because she's the character who has that 0.1% of character development I mentioned earlier, by realizing that it wasn't right to turn against the High School for their class discrimination based on one test. She could've been a much better candidate for representing the underdog theme, but the show thought it was better to ignore her for the rest of the run save for one tiny moment later, and make Tatsuya the underdog in a laughably bad display. Just another missed opportunity by Mahouka...

No one else is even worth talking about. All of the other girls do is look cute, stick to an archtype and talk about how cool Tatsuya is. Heck, one girl terrorist literally tries to hack into the First High School system JUST to get Tatsuya to notice her. All the other guys do is make you wish any one of them was the protagonist instead of Tatsuya. The villains are absolutely pathetic, being nothing more than the most one dimensional terrorists and gang leaders and leaving NO impression.

In short, a horribly unmemorable and generic cast of characters, and those who are memorable aren't exactly well known for good reason.

After 26 episodes of watching Mahouka, the payoff was nothing more than a sigh of relief that it was finally over and I could add another series to my Completed list. So in conclusion,

+Overall smooth animation and polished character designs
+First OP and second ED (which aren't even because of the show itself)
+Cool Techno Sequences
+Some decent ideas for Magic Games
+Ends with a bang...courtesy of God Almighty
+Erika is passable but...

-AWFUL main characters: Tatsuya is invulnerable emotionless GOD and Miyuki has less character than a rock
-Horribly generic and unmemorable side characters with absolutely no development
-Fails at the underdog theme so hard that it's laughable
-All important information is given through info dumps
-Villains are the most generic terrorists possible
-Fanservice so pointless you wonder why it exists
-Incest for no reason besides Incest.
-Animation has very little to work with
-Side character plots that literally exist just to fill time
-Manages to be boring and frustrating at the same time
-Stupidly overcomplicated Magic System
-Wastes every good idea it has
-Completely tensionless at every point

SCREW THIS SHOW.

EDIT: Reposted after being taken down by MAL for technical reasons.

From TheFreeDictionary.com:
"Wish Fulfillment
n.
1. Gratification of a desire.
2. In psychoanalytic theory, the satisfaction of a desire, need, or impulse through a dream, fantasy, or other exercise of the imagination."


I've never written a review before, so I hope this proves helpful to ya'll! For this review, I'm going to be talking about an anime that I watched for quite a different reason than probably most other people. To explore this, I'm gonna go over all the major categories - hopefully, by the end of this review, you'll have a helpful understanding of the pros and cons of ... this anime! Please keep in mind that I've watched the anime up to it's most recent episode (14), and I've not read the LN, although I have looked up some info on the wiki to clarify some points. I'll do my best to keep this spoiler free.


Story: 4
By itself, the story isn't bad. In fact, if you were to remove the male and female MCs, the story would probably shine. However, story and character are inevitablely inseparable, and thus must be judged in light of each other.

I personally found the story to be engaging. The first arc flowed well enough, and the second one is also doing a fair job of keeping my attention. People have said there are pacing issues, but I haven't really found this to be the case. Worldbuilding (especially the magic system) has been done really well - it's very obvious that a lot of care and detail went into the world to make it work so logically and tacitly. The lore is very interesting, and I genuinely want to know more about the world of Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei as the show goes on. Then again, there are a HUGE number of plot holes as well. A lot of the show seems to have been made up for the purpose of plot and convenience, and so a lot of things don't make sense. Here's a short list:
1) Why does First High have a First and Second Course program? Only the Firsts get magic trainers, but to enroll at the magic-oriented university in the first place, you have to be exceptionally good at magic. That's like saying a typical university takes only people who get 35s and 36s on the ACT, but only provides classes and instructors to those who got the 36s, and everyone else gets to take Shop classes forever.
2) Why is the Bloom and Weed discrimination only perpetuated by a few of the cardboard cutout characters (which is discussed below)? I thought it was supposed to be a school-wide problem?
3) Why even HAVE a Nine Schools Competition when First High has the absolute best magicians? Like, this isn't a matter of subjective opinion - First High only accepts the absolute best. This competition is desperately trying to mimic the Tri-Wizard Tournament from Harry Potter, but in HP, it made sense. After all, the British magic people went to the British school, the French magic people went to the French school, etc. In Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei, this is not the case. And indeed, as we see, First High can only lose due to repeated (um, where are the referees?) sabotage due to hostile third parties.

Furthermore, a HUGE problem is that there is nothing at stake in the story. Since both the male and female MCs are so insanely good at pretty much everything they do (with a few exceptions), nothing is being risked at any point. There's no uncertainty over what'll happen, there's no fear for the MCs' safety, and more unfortunately, there's no unpredictability. Everything is painfully obvious from the get-go. While other animes with OP MCs will at least throw them into some peril, this is absolutely not the case in Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei. Fights are over in under ten seconds each (which isn't bad, but there's no emotional involvement as a result, especially since the MCs always win), and dangerous situations happen to others or are also resolved in under ten seconds.

Suspension of disbelief is one thing, but when I know what's gonna go down even before the episode happens, then there's no reason to care much for what's going to happen. This is due to the MCs, which I'll discuss in a little bit.


Art: 10
This, honestly, is one of the show's two strongest points. Everything is gorgeous, the magic looks fantastic, and the animation never dips even when action is scarce. A lot of love went into making this world look and feel fantastic, and the vibrancy of the world is truly a pleasure to behold.


Sound: 10
Many people seem to judge a show on the OP and ED, but I personally skip OPs and EDs to avoid spoilers, so I'll be judging Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei by the actual sound. Which is fantastic as well. All of the effects are crisp and visceral - the pops pop deliciously, the crackles crackle with fervor, and overall, the sound does a phenomenal job of bringing the world to life.


Character: 1
This brings me to the biggest problem of the anime, and the reason for my original dictionary quote at the beginning of this review. Every. Single. Character. Is flatter than a sheet of paper. And while the male MC does have an intricate backstory, his overwhelming ability annihilates any interest I might have in him. But even worse than this is the way everyone treats him. As a writer myself, it's very hard to avoid making a Gary Stu; due to the fact that we as writers want to write what is most natural to us (ourselves), and we want to live adventures that are only possible for our characters. So writing yourself into a super awesome character is very easy to do.

This does not make it excusable.

EVERY. SINGLE. PERSON. In the anime absolutely ADORES the male MC (except for his rivals, of course). And they take EVERY. SINGLE. OPPORTUNITY. To tell him how awesome he is. I'm not exaggerating on this. The MC gets complimented (and I don't mean a "good job" kind of compliment, but a "you are so amazing I wish I were dating you or better friends with you or more like you" type of compliment) OVER and OVER and OVER and OVER and OVER. At least 2-5 times per episode. And yes, the male MC is superpowered, but that doesn't justify the kind of foot-worshiping we see in this anime.

On a base level, this becomes aggravating and wearying very, very quickly. But on a deeper level, it takes an unfortunate chunk out of the story. Without giving away too much, there's one point in the anime where the male MC does something absolutely extraordinary by completely revolutionizing a concept previously thought impossible. In any other anime, this would be grounds for the MC to be amazing and for your admiration of that MC to grow. However, due to the constant barrage of incredible feats the male MC consistently performs in Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei, this major revolution comes across as flat. Stale. Uninteresting. There's no room for significant praise when such praise has been unendingly heaped on the male MC from episode 1. This is a very clear example of severe wish fulfillment.

Moving on to the female MC, she's about as deep a character as a puddle of water. And she has about the same amount of charm too. Her main purpose, aside from PWNING N00BS, is to ceaselessly praise and talk up to the male MC. Like, ALL the time. In the second episode, she is given a great honor, but instead of accepting it graciously, she throws a fit that the male MC isn't being recognized for his awesomeness instead. And actually, she does that in episode 1 too. And in other episodes. This female MC only backs down when given a commanding nod from the male MC, which clearly means he is her superior in every regard. This is also a very bad case of wish fulfillment.

This wouldn't be so bad if she was a servant or indebted to the male MC somehow, but the kicker is that she's... his sister. His younger sister. I get that sibling relationships are supposed to be good, but the male MC is clearly the female MC's idol. I'm not even gonna talk about the incest between them, which this anime clearly is in favor of. Such incest is a design choice, and so I'm willing to accept it as part of the story. But the female MC's foot-licking toward her older brother comes off as possessive and creepy.

People relate to characters who have flaws, and despite the desperate assertions of Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei, neither of the MCs have any real flaws. The male MC's absolute lack of emotions could be considered a flaw, but the fact that everyone still loves him regardless means that it really isn't a flaw. The male MC's lack of skill in a certain area of magic could be considered a flaw, but the fact that he still is insanely OP means that it really isn't a flaw. The male MC's social aloofness could be considered a flaw, but the fact that he's described as absurdly handsome and a chick-magnet means that it really isn't a flaw. Etc.

As for every other character, I genuinely can't remember a single name of anybody else. And I'm usually pretty good with names. The only exception would be Ririka (or something like that - I could look it up, but then again, this is a great example of how underdeveloped the other characters are) - she actually comes off as interesting and slightly multifaceted compared to the other characters. Then again, that's not saying much in this anime, but regardless, she serves as a breath of fresh air in an otherwise lifeless and stale list of cardboard cutout characters whose only purpose is to populate the much more interesting world of Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei.

Oh, and the villains are overwhelmingly under-established. They have poor motivations, awful direction, and almost no planning. What were the villains up to in the first section of this anime? Something about magic and equality? Something relating to terrorism? I'm not quite sure. And as for the villains in the second part? That hasn't been revealed yet, so I honestly can't comment. But it seems like a persona vendetta against the MCs' school, which also doesn't make sense.

But I've gone on this for long enough.


Enjoyment: 2
I really, really wanted to like this. I very much did. The magic system is remarkable and impressive, and the world itself is interesting and engaging. But absolutely abysmal characters, non-existent character development, and a mundanely routine plot served to detract sharply from any charm the world might have had on its own. What truly sinks the ship, however, is the flattery of the male MC. While this might seem as nitpicking, it happens on such an exaggerated and persistent level that it honestly causes me to literally moan aloud every time the male MC is worshiped by his fans (which happens multiple times per episode). It's so forced and jarring that it kills any immersive qualities Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei might otherwise have, and it causes me to constantly look to see how much more of the episode is left to go. If the ridiculous and never-ending compliments were removed, as well as the obsessive sister MC, this show would be much, much, much, much, much more enjoyable.


Overall: 3
The art is awesome, and the sound is phenomenal. But the awful and wooden characters, the lack of any character development whatsoever, and the completely predictable story serve to tank what could have otherwise been an impressive and fun anime. Overall, all the ingredients for success are found here, but absolutely nothing good is done with them. Instead, negative elements are thrown in - meaning that in the end, like with an uncooked cake, all you have left to eat is a soppy, flower and sugar and egg goop that has been further poisoned with toxic nuclear waste. An extreme statement, I know, but hey - at least it's on par with the compliments given to the male MC, albeit in a negative manner instead of a worshipful one.

Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei (translated as The Irregular at Magic High School) isn’t entirely what I see as irregular. Nothing too irrational happens throughout the course of the show and the majority of the cast doesn’t have that “it” factor. Rather, Mahouka does have something we won’t see regularly because of there is magic at high school, or more specifically the Private Magic University Affiliated High School. It’s here where we meet the main characters and siblings - Tatsuya Shiba and his sister Miyuki Shiba. And with their enrollment sets forth this story at an irregular high school where regular things happen and sometimes does ... not.

Adapted from the light novel of the same name written by Tsutomu Sato, the series takes place in a more advanced future in the year of 2095. In this world, magic exists as a sort of technology for both utility and weapons of war. Essentially, the series depicts the setup of the prequel with the aftermath of a world war. And now, magic reigns as dominant source of power. In fact, its concept is held so high in regard that students are separated into classes based on their scores, performances, and skills based on their magic. But hey, it’s a school so students still attend it regularly but with magic as an additional element. Yet, Mahouka has an irrational pacing when adapting its story. By irrational, I don’t mean it as inconsistency but rather by execution. It doesn’t fully come to life when it tells the story and unfortunately lacks a bite to take in what people may expect.

The first episode doesn’t blast off well. It lacks any sort of wow factor and feels lifeless at hand. Instead, what you get is a mass amount of info dumping regarding the setting and some basic concepts of the series. Rather than telling though, the series explains it in packages. This first arc (known as the Enrollment Part 1 adapted from volume 1 of the light novel) is more like a genre mashup with an overly emphasis that almost forces the viewers to understand every piece of the premise. And to do it that way, they also introduce the majority of the main characters. Besides the Shiba siblings, a host of other characters including ones from the student council make their debut. We don’t know much about them besides their position, some bits of their personality, and in essence a weak general perspective of how we might be interested in them. Then, there’s the weak world building in the first arc with a mass amount of exposition of the mechanics involving the series’ generics. While generic is fine, the show fails to deliver this with comedy. It could have been humorous or at least tried with some attempt at jokes. Even fan service could’ve helped here in some respect. Instead, what you get is pseudo-incest undertones between the siblings. Actually, looking at it from a more perspective angle, it’s often Miyuki that takes the initiative to please her “oniisama”.

I wouldn’t say the show is about a cast of characters learning magic. In fact, the series’ story arcs adapt them and give each character some sort of role. However on many occasions, their roles chokes up the plot with their gimmicks. Besides Miyuki’s borderline obsession with her beloved brother, she literally has little to no personality. We don’t learn much about her past either as characterization is fairly weak throughout the entire series. And since the show doesn’t adapt a specific volume from the light novel, we don’t see much else about her from a personal perspective. Regardless, the siblings’ relationship is polarizing as they lack chemistry. Their personalities aren’t compatible and it’s hard to relate to them by any term of realism. In fact, a viewer could easily dictate the duo as a couple. It’s indirectly implied that Miyuki does have forbidden feelings for her brother. Not to mention the fact, many characters makes jokes about their couple-like status. And when that happens, Miyuki’s cliché denial and Tatsuya’s indifference obliterates any sort of humor from itself. As for Tatusya though, he has a strict personality with sometimes an authoritative tone when he speaks to others. His commanding presence feels unwelcoming on occasions and can be seen as a man of few words. The way he behaves around others suggests that he lacks an ability to feel strong emotions towards others. (this is in fact true as revealed) However, all of these factors aren’t what’s noticeable about Tatsuya. What Tatsuya brings into the show is in fact his overpowered abilities and skills as a student. Despite failing a practical exam and his inability to use unconventional magic, he has several traits that makes him stand out on a technical basis. The show reveals this during certain situations that becomes obvious as he shows more and more of his skills. Unfortunately, his lack of characterization makes Tatsuya as more of a stale character. There’s little development or focus on him as a person rather than his roles during each arc. In retrospect, Tatsuya is a character that some people might admire for his abilities but hard to appreciate or understand.

Based on a light novel, there’s a certain incentive to adapt everything that fans will be eager to see. As a light novel reader, I can only say that it barely reaches moderate levels when it comes to adaptation. It does adapt some of its main concepts well but fails to reach entertainment levels. The prominent “Nine Schools Competition Arc” (NSC) stretches over 10 episodes and introduces many new concepts and characters. While it explores the concepts in their world quite well by actually showing on occasions, it doesn’t do well when it comes with more of its dynamic moments. Most of the games feels relatively fast with the basics and predictable outcomes. Only certain characters stand out despite their already established reputations. Of course, Miyuki and Tatsuya are key players. Other characters that earned a spotlight includes Erika Chiba, Mizuki Shibata, Shizuku Kitayama, and Katsuto Jyumonji. However, their spotlights doesn’t last enough and some are easily forgettable. In essence, their lack of characterization makes them look flat and 1-dimesional with little hope of development. At the same time, don’t forget competition. When it comes to competition, Tatsuya is the epitome of power that only seems to rivaled by a member of another school by the name of Masaki Ichijo. Unfortunately, it’s hard to appreciate their rivalry since the buildup is weak with poorly constructed tropes such as Masaki’s crush on Tatusya’s sister. (no, it’s not even a love triangle since none of the three has any sort of chemistry). It’s just probably best to take it to face value with what the competition as to offer when it focuses on the games themselves. The positive is that there are various games that are offered with interesting concepts during this NSC arc. Not only that but there is also bits of outside jeopardy that becomes intertwined with events of this arc in which viewers might be interested. Similarly, the final arc of the series also has more mature themes with a serious feeling. This should be taken for granted though since the show does take itself seriously. There’s little room for jokes whether it tries die-hardly or not on most occasions.

One thing to praise Mahouka is perhaps the amount of mechanics are explored. The basis of the CAD (Casting Assistant Device) is presented with great depth throughout the course of the show in various ways. The Nine School Competitions Arc focuses more on its show’s mechanics with new forms of magic such as flight. At its core, Mahouka deals fairly well with its technical aspects. The info dump answers many of the series’ questions whether it relates to spells, classification of magic, Japanese change in culture, and various political topics. There is also a distinctive form of rivalry when it comes to the “blooms” and “weeds. The blooms are the top 50% of the class while the weeds makes up the latter half. The sense of rivalry reaches to antagonistic levels on most times that may keep viewers at their seats to see what to expect. Finally, while the show has oddly placed comedy, there are moments to laud for when it embraces on its subcultural context. This could be expanded upon its mechanics throughout the show that can be creatively intriguing.

Animation production falls into the hands of Madhouse. For most parts, the visuals makes sense with the general setting and its tropes. Despite being generic, characters does stand out especially for characters of the student council. Miyuki can also be presented as an ice beauty of sorts. The female characters of the series also wear veils to add a bit of cosmetic design to their outfits. On the other hand, most of the characters’ uniforms looks stale and nothing really memorable. There’s also nothing memorable about Tatsuya’s character design for his stoicism. Beyond that, the school’s design itself is fairly regular despite the series’ title. The only other exceptions includes some of the more detailed and enhanced technology later on throughout the show. Background visuals fills its purpose though when it comes to credibility for its setting. Otherwise, there’s nothing praising about the visuals besides the fact that it makes sense on most parts.

Soundtrack stands out as a more noticeable feature. Just be aware that the voices can be a sting for the ears when you hear ONIISAMA being said over 10 or 15 times during some episodes. However, certain characters has a well-balanced voice that fits his or her personality. The OP and ED songs of the series is also catchy with some foreshadowing and gags. The OST also has a pleasant tone with what is to offer despite some of it being overused or placed at awkward moments. However, the dialogues of the series is cheesy during the majority course of the show. Not even magic can salvage that.

After over prioritizing the mechanics of its setting and magic shenanigans, Mahouka will in the end be an average series vacuumed with its even more mediocre cast of characters. What the show has is this interesting premise but it decides to add toppings on toppings of gimmicks until becomes insufferable. Not that the show is entirely terrible though since a few of the arcs has moments that outshines itself with the competition. But with a lack of appreciable comedy and pseudo-incest tendencies, one has to wonder what the purpose of this show is really about. Maybe it’s not trying to communicate that message since some of the episodes are mindless entertainment with the usual gags. If Michael Bay was to direct this series, the entertainment level would skyrocket through the roofs. In the end, Mahouka wastes a promising premise and cast of characters for what it may be worth.

Ah Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei (hereafter Mahouka). I'm going to start off this review by saying this is the worst anime ever created - this is THE worst anime ever created. Don't worry though, while the review will be largely negative, I'll hopefully be able to convey why I think this is the case with as little bias as possible.

Mahouka's story follows Tatsuya Shiba and his sister Miyuki. They're in their first year of First High, which is the top school in the country for magicians. This is it. There isn't really much of a story, but rather several story arcs which don't really connect ... in any way. This lack of overarching story isn't technically an issue. Some of my favourite shows also lack an overarching story - Lupin III, SoreMachi and so on. The problem with Mahouka is that none of the story arcs really contribute to anything. They kinda just tell a story (albeit very slowly) and finish. The first story arc was introduced us to discriminatory practices within the school. It was just extremely silly considering all students that go to First High are the top 1% in Japan, yet the top half discriminates against the bottom half. They don't provide much characterisation beyond what we know already about the characters nor do they end with anything that'd help us learn more about the world our characters inhabit.

Which leads me to the characters. In a word: boring. In a few more: none of them really develop. Again, not developing characters is totally fine, but in this case, your characters need to be interesting. Unfortunately none of Mahouka's characters are particularly compelling. Tatsuya is a Gary Stu - he's the strongest character in the show by far and puts no effort into achieving anything. He's the smartest and strongest character in the show. If another character dares to achieve something in world of Mahouka, they will attribute their success to Tatsuya helping them out as seen about a dozen times in the second story arc when some girls in the school win some sporting events. Even in shows like No Game No Life or Sword Art Online, the Gary Stu still looks like he has to put effort into achieving their goals - Tatsuya never breaks a sweat, even against enemies that are hyped up to be extremely powerful. To be fair, Tatsuya is so perfect that he was pretty fun to watch in the first episode - his ability to flirt with girls and his overall charming personality. But this got old fast and it was never really as good as how it was done in episode 1. The rest of the characters are just there to tell us how awesome Tatsuya is. Seriously, I'm not exaggerating. Every single episode has at least one mention of how good Tatsuya is at something. The character who does this the most is his sister Miyuki, who I should mention, is in love with him. Therefore I don't believe any of the other characters are really worth mentioning. There's a whole heap of them, but none of them are really distinguishable from each other.

Which leads us to the visual side of things. The character designs are rather generic. I think Tatsuya looks kinda cool despite that, but the rest of the characters look like they could've been lifted from any other magic school show. The art isn't too bad, but there's nothing very standout about it. Animation is where we have problems. This show is made by Studio Madhouse who are well known for their great animation. We're given glimpses of this animation quality early on in the show with some decent fight choreography in episode 1. It's disappointing then, that this all goes downhill. The animation has no personality in it. For example, when we're shown the school bus driving down the road, there are no other cars on the road. It's just an empty road. Or when our characters are out on the streets, there are no people hanging around. There is very little action in the show, but even when there is, it has very little animation, but rather is an amalgamation of still shots, flashes, close ups and looped animation. The animation gets progressively worse as the show goes on. Even the cinematography is rather weak. In a dialogue heavy show, cinematography is somewhat important so we don't get bored. The new iteration of Fate/Stay Night understands this to some extent, but Mahouka doesn't. The majority of the show is thus a head talking to the camera.

Still with me? So let's get to why this is the worst show ever created despite already looking pretty bad with the above. The show is all talking. Now now, talking again is not inherently a bad thing. If the characters are talking about interesting things (like philosophy, or details about the world), or giving us background information to set things up for later, that's totally fine (in most cases). However, the characters in this show talk non-stop about magic. When magic is cast, one of the characters needs to explain how the magic works in full detail. This can take anywhere from 1 to 5 minutes or even longer, depending on how complicated the magic being used is. This is incredibly poor storytelling. Not only does our knowledge of how this magic works not important to the story, it's incredibly boring to sit through a mini lecture on things that don't really exist. Boring is one thing, but if it doesn't contribute to anything later on, what is the point of telling us how the magic works? If the explanation for why Tatsuya can run super fast is because he can strengthen his legs with magic, I'm sure no one would complain - that's a satisfying enough explanation. However, an explanation the show gives us would include talking about the absolute fundamentals of what Tatsuya does - creating psion waves which are the basic forms of magical energy and shifting them to the feet where waves of energy are released upon the foot's contact with the ground at a 45 degree angle - I'm sure you understand by now. The explanations are just too long and unnecessary, especially when they're not crucial for our enjoyment of the show.

Despite wanting to be taken seriously, the show can't help but have it's fair share of generic high school hijinks. Mahouka is a harem. None of the male characters get any significant screen time except for Tatsuya, and all other female characters are either in love, or appear to be in love with Tatsuya. As a result, you get silly little moments like walking into a girl changing clothes, girls being embarrassed when they themselves wear skimpy outfits (skimpy used in the loosest sense of the word), inability to convey feelings and so on and so forth. These moments aren't even done as well as other series that have them. If you're looking for fanservice, you're not even going to get that, unless you think close ups clothed boobs are better than close ups half naked ones. One interesting point does derive from this however and that is some of Miyuki and Tatsuya's flirting. I personally found some of it pretty funny because of how sarcastic the flirting was. Apart from this, all other attempts at humour fall so short, it never passes the starting line.

As a general rule, I would urge everyone to stay away from this show. I've seen my fair share of bad anime and Mahouka takes the cake. Why then did I finish the show? It was a morbid curiosity with how bad an anime really can be. This is the sort of show that isn't so bad it's funny. This is the sort of show that is so bad it's boring. If you have 26 episodes worth of time to waste, I'd recommend giving this a shot. If you'd rather not waste that time, I'd give another anime a go because Mahouka is not satisfying in any way whatsoever.

Mahouka is the worst anime I've ever watched. I finished it just to be able to say this with no doubts.

The story... well there's no story. There's Tatsuya killing everyone and being flattered by his blind followers. If there's any plot there, you just don't care. The slow pace and flat characters make you forget that there's somethign actually happening.

The art was the only reason I started to watch this bomb, it looked good... But in the end it wasn't. Repetitive school uniforms, all the students have the same faces, there's little to no facial expressions in any character, the scenery looks always the same ... place. There's also a lot of fanservice boobs.

The music is some horrible random electronic pop everytime. OPs and EDs completely forgettable. The voices are emotionless and drowsy.

The characters are the worst thing I've ever seen in a work of fiction. There's the Mary Sue & Gary Stu couple of perfect protagonists who don't suffer anything bad in the whole series, to the point I wanted to throw a brick on the screen. Or maybe an entire wall of bricks. The others students are a bunch of clones of one another. No importance, little to no personal traits and personality, no backstory, no desires. The only thing they do is to flatter and love Tatsuya onii-sama just because he breathes. The women are the worse: they're all in love with Tatsuya for no reason. And they show it by rubbing their boobs on him. Miyuki is a ridiculously flat and conservative younger sister whose only function is to repeat 'oniiiiii-samaaa' infinitely and then blush. And there's the incest thing, ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww. Also, Mahouka has a very conservative morality, especially for its women, what is ridiculous when you see their boobs popping on the screen. That's just sexism.

There's no enjoyment. The pace is so slow you can skip 3 or 4 episodes and see that you haven't lost anything important (as if there was something important in Mahouka at all). The whole series could be made in a movie. It would be less painful. 5 anime episodes would be enough to tell the whole thing. I. Am. Not. Kidding. The fights are just random pop playing in the background, extremely boring explanations on magic execution and some guys flying when Tatsuya sneezes at them. When you get to episode 8 or 9 and see this for the 54th time, congratulations! You've seen all of Mahouka. No point getting to the end, that's it.

Mahouka wins a lot of trophies: Is the worst anime I've ever watched. Tatsuya is the worst character I've ever seen, and his sister is the second in the list. The soundtrack is also in my list of the most boring ones. See? It's a very prized anime! C'mon, lose your time and watch it!

Mehouker Review:

MINDSET:
Light novels are a shift media, as they mass produce the same tasteless product for the mass appeal, as we anime critics just sit there, and are forced with casual opinions into the face.

SYNOPSIS:
21XX it is the magical century, a century in which magic has been advanced into extreme levels of power has become the Earths main source of power, research, finances, health (etc.) and because its a Light Novel Adaptation, highchools. We centre around two siblings, Tetsuya and Miyuki in a near incest relationship who are dealing with such current affairs, trying to adapt to the changes of there world and have Your ... typical high school light novel adaptation “Fun”.

REVIEW:
Lets start of with one of the most obnoxiously large crowds of cloned opinions in the Anime Comunity, “Tetsuya” he is this amazing magician who can utterly achieve anything without looking like a downfall, and is the one most OP character in the series. My problem?

The show tries to have mysterious situations, foreshadowings and plot holes to keep You invested from the bigger picture in which is trying to build tension, but Tetsuya is so OP and so omnicient, and always looks like he too barely to no effort takes so much away of the tension and what the Anime is trying to pull.

At least the writers were clearly having fun with how OP Sora was in No Game No Life, or how the JoJo's did it with style, and how Loenghram had a very sensitive emotional double-edge and not just being one of the smartest fleet admiral in history. But in Tetsuya's case, he is near to emotionless and drops all sense of tension, mystery because he is so OP that he can almost do anything like its the back of his hand!

Every time the writers finally decided to give the probability of Tetsy losing a battle, its like the writers all of sudden pull out plot armor out of there buttocks! (as if he isn't OP enough, even the director had to make him more OP to milk the fans) Like how Tetsuya gotten shot from the chest by a sniper, he turns back time when before he was shot and it clearly looked like Tetsuya was dead since the bullet shot through he's heart!

Tetsuya even lack the character appeal of having barely to know personality as a pseudo three dimensional character, being this completely empty persona and whose only existent emotion was he's sister.

If there was anything that I truly hate between the differences of a lightnovel and an Anime, its when they use there conventions WAY too often, we have the quiet girl, the tsundere, the tomboy, the kind spirit, the cool president, used about a 100 times in an Anime, and a 1000 times in a Light Novel. There are a few male characters, but pffft who care about them? Its not like they have there very own fan club or fan base!

All what the audience truly cares about is this pseudo three dimensional character beating all competition as the most predictable outcome ever. No need for such horror to be placed under the plot if such character has powers on par with an alternative and superior being!

The plot is just being pretensous by having all of these small details of how the powers work, and a very super in-depth explanation about them to somehow make them look cooler since this is magic and science being combined and jazz, though it may sound cool on paper it can become rather tiresome for a while as the explanations start to feel more boring, more confusing and convoluted as it feels more like a boring science lesson that seems to draaag. Even if You somehow managed to like it, You may still feel the fact that You may have forgotten of such knowledge and when they revisit other pieces of science, it can become even more confusing as they leave plot holes feel unanswered, like whats with the CAD? Whats with these psion waves? And why the hell is pushing ever became so flipping complicated?! I see it, then forget it.

By this point, I don't even care about the show since it was so horrible to begin with, I don't care if Tatsuya dies permanently, I don't care if there school gets destroyed and I definitely do not care if Miyuki gets raped by main villain.

Ever since Death Note, it became a true demonstration on what Mad House can really do with there computers. And Mahouka seems no different, though time for this kind of Animation no longer feels as impact full or as strong as it is back then. It feels like an upgraded version of Your regular animation which I commend around a 5 or a 6 for, it has better lighting, shading, models, backgrounds, colour schemes, action scenes etc. Character designs feel pretty generic, but its super easy to tell who is which.

The only gripe I can give for such a style, would be that it feels a little too reliant on its CGI to make quality backgrounds, and it can sometimes feel rather artificial at times. There were moments when it really stood out, like how they made ice to be so threatening, and cool at close ups. Though moments like these are far from between, the budget feels very consistent!

There's nothing too special about the music, all what I really remember was a nice piece of dubstep whenever Tatsuya does something super cool. The first opening gets me super hype every time, (despite the show being so bad) and screw the second Opening! First and second ED were pretty boring for the most part, so just skip it actually.

LEGACY:
This is like every Light Novel Adaptation, the only difference is the occasional emotionless OP protagonist to spice things up, when in reality its failing. If You ask any similar Anime or light novel for Mahouka, then its every single 21st century Light Novels that have ever been made.

SCORES:
3/10- For mass cloned characters, and badly written protagonist
2.5/10- Uses basic techniques, but explanations become far too convoluted and tension? There is no tension.
7.510- Mad House is simply MAGICAL.
6.5/10- Above average with an awesome first Opening.

FINALE: 3.5/10

I've sat here thinking about a good way to start this review for at least 5 minutes... and the best way I can start it off is this... it's bad, very, very bad. Why I even started watching this was because one of my friends recommended it to me, he's watched more anime than I have and we enjoy some of the same shows so I thought I would give it a chance... I should have stopped at the synopsis. If you're reading this and haven't started this show, good for you and, here is why.

Story - 3
I gave it a three. Honestly it should ... be a 1 but I didn't want to put everything I had a problem with as a 1 so I didn't. The story is very slow and features tons of exposition about the magic featured in the world. These were huge problems for me but I could overlook them. The real problem I had with the story were the themes. Discrimination is a big one in the episodes I watched but, I didn't really understand why it was a problem. The show opens by saying that even getting in to the school is extremely prestigious and gives us a scenario in which the better students or blooms treat the "bad" students or weeds pretty terribly. That doesn't make sense, if we go by the introduction in the very first episode every student there is better than the average person, even the weeds. There are other horrible messages this show puts forth and, it also tries to politically indoctrinate it's viewers by shoving meritocracy and capitalism in their faces everywhere but, I don't really want to write a book about how horrible the themes of this show are so, I'll move on.

Art - 6

This is probably the only thing that this show does well. The magic looks cool and the school uniforms are unique compared to other high school shows. How the characters looks apart from the uniforms is pretty standard though.

Sound - 4

Honestly, I don't remember the soundtrack being good or bad. I gave it a four because it seemed like the appropriate rank for neither adding or detracting from the show, which is all I can say about it.

Characters - 1

Characters are the weakest point for this show. Yes, the main characters are OP... we've all seen it before and, we even have another show from this season that featured OP characters (NGNL), why is this show's OP main characters worse than all of the rest of them? That's because Tatsuya isn't interested in having meaningful interactions with any other character in the show (besides his sister, I guess) and, Miyuki is only interested in her brother. See the problem? Why even have other characters? I don't know, because it's a school and, it would be weird if they supposedly went to a school and, were the only people there. As you can guess all other characters really aren't important and are only there to show you how much better than everyone else the two MCs are. I could stand them if they were your standard OP main characters but, they aren't. Miyuki is an annoying character whose only point in the episodes I've seen is to fawn over her brother so there isn't really much to talk about besides the fact she's annoying. Tatsuya on the other hand is a truly awful character. What really made me hate him completely was his speech about the equality "terrorists" in episode 4 (maybe 3, i don't remember). Basically, he says that equality is a farce and, the only people who wish for it are the people who didn't try hard enough to succeed. That message coming from Tatsuya, who is born with power and ability that far surpasses everyone else in the entire world completely disgusted me. Miyuki and Tatsuya explain that magician deserve their higher economic standing because of the "hard work" they put in to develop their talents which is a complete joke because you have to be born with an affinity for magic. Essentially these characters are just terrible people who justify the power given to them by their family by saying that it was their hard work that got them to where they are while dismissing everyone else by saying "You just didn't try hard enough."

Enjoyment - 1

If you couldn't tell, I detest this show and, did not enjoy it. Usually, I can see why someone might enjoy something but this... I just can't see anything redeeming about this show.

Overall - 1

A terrible story with terrible themes, standard art, a sound track that does nothing for the show, and awful characters add up to a horrible experience.

LIGHT NOVELS ARE GARBAGE

Mahouka (short version of the title) was the next in line to be considered the best LN ever made, claims made by the same type of fans who two years ago were saying the exact same things for Sword Art Online (SAO for short). And once again it is proven how the anime fandom refuses to accept light novels as the garbage they are, and on top of that keeps hyping them as masterpieces.

TROLL PREMISE

The first failure comes from the premise itself, which keeps telling you it’s about discrimination. For a society that runs on meritocracy, all mages are rare and gifted. ... There is little reason for the Weeds to feel bad, if they have powers that place them above every other mundane person. And even the most gifted of them, the Blooms, are acting like they are constantly threatened by the Weeds, as if their position can be snatched away if the errant boys try really hard and surpass them. If they really are superior, they shouldn’t feel threatened. And if hard work can indeed make Weeds surpass Blooms, then they shouldn’t have casts to begin with.

TROLL PROTAGONIST

The same thing happens with the main character, who is considered to be weak and useless, thus disliked by everybody… only to contradict this statement a hundred times throughout the show by making him OVERPOWERED AS HELL! They try to make him seem like his magic potential is low and thus belongs in the lower caste, because magic evaluations are not done properly. We are supposed to feel sorry for the guy, and cheer for him as he tries his best to improve and gain everybody’s respect. And then we find out he has mastered so many types of martial arts and magical combinations that he can LITERALLY defeat anyone in half a second, while LITERALLY resurrecting and rebuilding anything he likes. He doesn’t even gradually learn most of these powers; he begins right away by having mastered everything. The sympathy we are supposed to show for the underdog is a troll.

EMPOWERMENT FANTASY

This is explained as Tatsuya being essentially wish fulfillment for introverts. The audience is supposed to feel something like this: “We are special and awesome, but our society doesn’t appreciate us, and everybody is against us. So we will show them what we can do, and win all the time, and have all the girls call us awesome.” The problem with this concept, is that there is no build up to the conflicts. If the threats are so easy to overcome, then there is no tension, and no reason to praise the protagonist. He doesn’t achieve something, as much as simply doing it without trying. His opponents never stand a chance, and thus you feel they are the victims, and Tatsuya is the bully. And yet I have seen thousands of people praising such a terrible thing, because it is basically swapping the roles of the bully with that of the bullied, and passes like a twisted type of empowerment fantasy, where you are punishing the bullies with their own medicine.

BORING PROTAGONIST

Even if you try to see it that way, it is still very hard to like the whole thing, since it is boring to have an OP character that wins all the time. Other stories will try to make it seem like the MC can die, or at least not make it seem like it’s all too easy. But not here. Here it is all about Tatsuya doing everything effortlessly and everybody being amazed with him. So no matter what the plot is about, there is no emotional investment, since you know exactly what will happen, and you are simply waiting to see how it will happen.

Even though the notorious SAO shares the same bad writing, bad exposition, bad characterization, and bad EVERYTHING when it comes to light novels, it at least fools you for awhile to think there is danger in its setting. The characters there were average people trapped in a deadly environment, cut off from their house and family, having to fight monsters in order to survive. Mahouka doesn’t have that; it is just a school where pampered high school kids with super magical skills gather and act like jerks to each other, while teachers and parents pay for their rent and luxury. So the only thing you get in this show is a guy effortlessly brushing off a few school bullies, under the surveillance of the teachers. There is literally nothing to feel excited about.

School settings in general are sapping away all tension and ruin the atmosphere. They are supposed to be there to offer a haven and familiarity for teenagers but at the same time raise endless questions of the sort “Why does everything happen the way it does, and why the adults don't do anything to stop it?” And the answer is a simple “because adults are terrible people who create unjust societies, and only we, the hormone-crazy teenagers, can do the right thing by smacking the crap out of everything.”

The first arc is about terrorists who want equality attacking the school. Because equality is evil all of a sudden. After the super awesome protagonist wipes them all out without even bothering to smirk, the police arrives, arrests everybody, and he returns to his normal school life like nothing much has happened. We can’t have him being rewarded, that would end the story. So what is the second arc about? A school contest! We literally moved from a terrorist attack to teenagers playing sports where they of course need to be explaining every little thing they make. That is plain insufferable. So what happens there? They do games for honor and bullshit, and again the awesome protagonist wipes them all out without even bothering to smirk. Third arc, evil China invades good Japan for liberty or some bullshit. The awesome protagonist wipes them all out without even bothering to smirk. Do you see a pattern here?

UNRELATABLE PROTAGONIST

It is also impossible to get to like him. He has no emotions whatsoever, and the only time he has fun, is when he wants to make incest jokes about his sister. What kind of a madman would like that sort of a character? And apparently the anime community is full of madmen because there are thousands who love this unbeatable incestuous robot.

TECHNOBABBLING NONESENSE

But wait, there is more to it. This show is supposed to appeal to pretentious overthinkers as well, since there is a lot of technobabble about the magic system used in the show. They have a lot of terminology that is supposed to be making sense of what never makes sense, because it’s magic. And even if you find cool all the pseudo scientific stuff they say regarding that, there are still two major problems.

DON’T TALK, SHOW IT

First, explanations take up a ridiculous amount of time and bore you to death. For a setting that is all about mages and battles, there is very little actual fighting going on in it. Every battle is essentially a few seconds long, followed by half an hour of people standing still and infodumping stuff about what happened. Where is the fun in that? I understand that it works much better in text form, since time stands still when you read something. This doesn't work in the adaptation because we can tell how much time it takes to say something.

TROLL LIMITATIONS

And second, even if you manage to stay awake through the explanations, you will just have Tatsuya breaking the rules and doing stuff nobody else can. Why do you think he is unbeatable? Because he uses strategy? No, it’s because he cheats the very system they waste hours explaining. There is nothing strategic or smart about whatever he is doing.

OVERSHADOWED CAST

These issues expand like a plague and damage other aspects of the show. Since half of what you see is people explaining stuff, only to be broken ten minutes later by Tatsuya, and the other half is Tatsuya casually wiping out anybody who stands in his way, there is no time left for fleshing out any of the other characters, and there sure is nothing they can do that Tatsuya can’t do himself, faster and better. The only moments a character other than Tatsuya is able to speak or fight, are the only moments Tatsuya is bored, or not around.

INCESTUOUS SISTER

The only other character that gets some spotlight other than Tatsuya, is his sister, and only because she is constantly next to him, making incest jokes that are not meant to be taken seriously, but we all end up imagining hentai out of them regardless. She is TOTALLY obsessed with him, repeating the word “onii-sama” at least a dozen times per episode. She doesn’t want any other girl near to him, and attacks other boys who antagonize him. She is also constantly presented as the perfect girl every male would want as his girlfriend. Meaning, she becomes waifu bait, and exists to fuel the empowerment fantasies even further.

MEANINGLESS DRAMA

Holy shit light novel authors, you are making people who are not into that crap to cringe, you know? I understand that you want your protagonists to be a perfect self insert all girls want to bang. But their sisters as well? And no, throwing in some drama about the magic families treating badly their children doesn’t fix the problem; because down to it we are here to see Tatsuya kicking ass, and his sister stalking him before she eventually seduces him and they have lots of deformed demigod babies.

IN CONCLUSION

The saddest part is that the budget is actually very high. Madhouse is the king of anime studios, and yet not even that could save the show from being bad. If you want to watch it just for the pretty colors and the teen empowerment, it is satisfactory on a very superficial level. But if you watch it for any sort of depth or good characterization, you will be greatly disappointed. There is nothing particularly good in Mahouka, and only manages to further prove how pre-airing hype only exists to mutate the reputation of what could have been a forgettable mediocre title, into an abomination we will always be using as an example of what a bad anime is all about.

P.S.

Hello Mahouka, how are you? Here, sit next to your best friend, SAO. Feeling comfortable enough? Yes? Ok… GUYS GAG THEM! GRAB THEIR FEET! WATCH OUT, HE IS TRYING TO GET AWAY! WHERE IS THE ROPE? BRING THE TAR!