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Short review: Who would I actually recommend Shoujo-tachi to?

If I had to say, then I might go with someone that is really into visual novels, but honestly, I’d be hard pressed to actually want to recommend this show just because it does so many things wrong in my opinion.

In a little nutshell, this thing is just outright boring, and with that I’ll go into my longer review.

Long review: (Contains light spoilers)

I went into Shoujo-tachi like with most of my series not knowing anything (I didn’t even bother to read the plot synopsis with it just because others were getting more hype), but the first ... episode gave me quite a bit of hope. The characters appeared pretty interesting and quirky, most of the jokes paid off and it even seemed like there was going to be a nice disjointed romance thrown into the mix for good measure. It wasn’t a masterpiece of a first episode but it kept me very interested… until the end of the first episode when the actual plot was revealed to be about game development. It didn’t affect me too much though to be honest – as I said, the first episode was pretty good and I was more than willing to watch another episode, especially because I enjoyed Saekano whose overall plot was about games as well… but then it just kind of went wrong from there.

The main problem I found with this whole series was that by the third or fourth episode, you tend to realise that this stuff gets extremely repetitive. Those fun little quirks that endeared you to a particular character early on quickly become their sole defining characteristic which either serves to remind you that they still exist in this world or to forcibly cause a drama in order to make you feel like there might be some progress coming along. If it hadn’t been so obvious then I wouldn’t have really minded, but it is pretty clear what is happening.

This brings me onto my next point. There’s just no tension to the anime for nearly all the episodes. This is partly because it is quite a predictable series the more you progress so you can tell what is going to happen, but perhaps what is even worse than this is that there seems to be no attempt to even pretend that there’s a serious emotional conflict going on – they are pretty much all resolved within an episode (or 2 at the most), and there’s no real intensity for the most part to any of them. It just means that after watching this happen once or twice, you just don’t care because it’s clear what’s going to happen anyway. In addition to this, there’s no real sense of hardships that these characters have to go through to make their game – it’s all just done conveniently because the plot said it could. This just means that there’s no sense that anything is really being ‘done’, rather than things just conveniently happening for the characters.

So ok, clearly it has it’s downfalls at being a serious dramatic type anime, but maybe its comedy moments make up for it right? No they really don’t seem to. Pretty much all of the jokes that seem to be in the anime revolve around the idea that since the characters in bishoujo games do things (such as going to the beach or having training camps etc.) the characters in this anime also have to do this because it’s for ‘research’ on these games. It just ends up being that the anime becomes what it is making fun out of. Apart from that, the other comedy focus just seems to be the characters performing the trope they have been assigned, which gets dull fast.

To be fair to the series, the art style is different if that matters and there are 3 (yes I went back and counted) episodes I found alright and 1 which was really relatable and funny. The series could have been pretty decent really, it just seems to cut down most of its ideas before they really do anything. Yuuka was a pretty enjoyable character but between all the drama her character feels kind of restrained. The development between the writers of different companies and the fun that they poke at each other is a pretty nice idea but it’s thrown in a bit too late and only really is used when the plot is forced to progress. Even the core idea of the game being produced by a group of friends could have been heartwarming, but it never really builds up those bonds between the characters beyond them commenting one by one in turn on certain things (this really began to annoy me) and them exclaiming later on in the series a sort of ‘look how far we’ve come’ type thing. These would have all been really good, had I actually believed any of it, which just makes me kind of disappointed with the few moments of flair it shows.

To sum this series up, I’ll say this – I’m sure that if you’re fine with clichés in anime, you’ll probably find this more enjoyable than me, especially if you’re invested in the whole game making concept. However, for me I’ve just found this to be one of the more uninspired and more importantly, one of the most actively boring animes that I’ve watched. It wasn’t awful enough that I could even find some real fun it what it did wrong, because for me it’s just been a collection of already overdone things rarely intertwined with some pretty decent stuff which makes you annoyed at the rest of the series even more. I watched this series in the hope that it could at least evoke something like the charm it had in its first episode or two, and instead I’ve just been left disappointed and bored.

Going into this anime, I was expecting a borderline average plot about some school that does magic and a character that has to prove themselves despite their position. What I found was something unexpected, with quite a few things worse than my initial assumptions, but somehow made up for with a few absolutely brilliant things.

Character (5/10): This is the worst area for a reason, it simply didn't develop enough.

+ Tatsuya (The main character) is a total badass. Although little about who he actually is and why is shown by the end, small things manage to build up piece by piece parts of who he is. ... While it appears that his only emotions are related to his sisters wellbeing, over time this just doesn't appear to be wholly true.
+ The student president as a counterweight to Tatsuya and her own ideals was pretty interesting.

- Tatsuya really wasn't developed on enough.
- The student president was generally sidelined, and her relation to Tatsuya grows to be just like the others over time.
- Every other character (I'll give credit to Erika now for being one other who has some other defining characteristics) seems to be built on their relation to Tatsuya; Some characters would follow him even if he was a lemming jumping off a cliff, some only revolve around a rivalry or desire to destroy him. There is no in between for some reason and this kind of destroys and nuance between characters apart from their magical powers.
- There is a really overplayed and in your face thing between Tatsuya and his sister. From Episode 1 it goes on and while it seems to be some unrequited romance, it is kind of unnecessary, and the time could have gone into other characters development.

Story (6/10): The story seems to be more focused on power building than anything else.

+ A positive of not knowing a lot about Tatsuya for a lot of this is that anything which reveals more is actually genuinely interesting. In this sense, the pacing of the story is actually decent.
+ While not integral to the main plot, the story does at times tackle some interesting questions such as whether people just go after their perception of equality for their own position, or if they actually believe in going into it for merits sake.
+ While few moments actually make it in, some of the comedy here was pretty good.

- There really wasn't enough development of the main antagonist(s) going into the next season. They did something to Tatsuya and seem evil is about as far as it goes.
- The story is kind of let down by the characters. A lot of the plot seems to be taken up with keeping characters relevant whenever Tatsuya gains power himself.
- The characters though are also let down by the story. The story essentially reverts them to deus ex machina devices who advance the plot in various ways. Additionally, some arcs appeared rushed, leading to underdeveloped antagonising characters who were a disappointment compared what they were expected to be.

Art (9/10): This goes along with the sound to make the absolute highlights of the anime.

+ The battle scenes are amazing.
+ The battle scenes last a long time and are amazing.
+ Did I mention that my God the battle scenes are amazing?
+ There is some awesome art at the second ending which just somehow makes Tatsuya seem even more badass than he already is.

- I'm only going to begrudge them a very small amount for not being Ufotable Fate Zero level of style in the fights.

Sound (9/10): While it doesn't have a real negative, it's not a 10 because I've heard better.

+ This goes brilliantly with the fight scenes.
+ I really found the second opening to have quite good music.

Enjoyment (9/10): You should have guessed it: The fight scenes make this anime.

+ The fight scenes. Yes i'll mention it multiple times because every time I saw one in an episode I remembered why I was watching one after another.
+ The pacing of this wasn't fast enough to confuse me, but neither was it slow enough to bore me.

- The brother sister thing really wasn't needed in this and kinda threw me off at points.

Overall (8/10): Main points of both good and bad:

+ Yep the fight scenes will keep you coming back. I'm not sure if that's more just because you learn more about Tatsuya or more because they are actually brilliant, so I'll go 50/50 on both.
+ The soundtrack on this one is actually pretty good.
+ It didn't give away enough that I did want to watch more episodes.

- The brother sister thing again. It kind of puts a dent in an otherwise completely different story.
- The characters are seriously lacking in some respects. A couple are pretty good, but most are too generalised.
- The story essentially feels like a set-up to a bigger season. While I don't mind that terribly, it does feel like some things were intentionally not developed on in order to make this the case.

Overall while Mahouka appears for the time being to be lacking in the overarching plot, and has deficient characters, it's good enough overall to retain interest throughout the whole series.