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.
