I hate Miyuki just as much, but for mostly different reasons. True, there was the whole "that move is difficult to pull off even for experts" thing, and the "she's so overwhelmingly powerful that she made the EMOTIONLESS GIRL, the RUNNER-UP in the competition, CRY" thing, which are bad enough, but mostly, it's her creepy incestuous obsession. I'd take Suguha's love for Kirito over this any day. It was still an eye-roller, but it didn't feel nearly as... revolting as Miyuki's. I'm usually a huge sucker for protective older brothers and cute younger sisters, but this pair honestly makes me want to retch every time they make eye contact. Miyuki is one of the most one-dimensional characters I've ever seen in an anime. Everything about her is just "Onii-sama" this and "Onii-sama" that, with no hint of any motivation beyond making life easier for her precious Onii-sama.
Then there's the rest of the characters. First off is Takeaki Kirihara, probably the only character I started off not liking, then liked more as the series went on. After episode 5, he becomes a sympathetic, capable and pretty cool guy, but his transformation, to put it bluntly, was bull. He attacked a girl with lethal magic and force under the pretext of showing her that magic would forever be superior to non-magic, then later states that he did it to bring out the best in the girl he attacked. His excuse is pathetic and tacked-on, resembling something I wrote when I was making my own manga at the ripe old age of 13. And even THEN, I realized what a bad move that was. He would have been one of my favorite characters if he had just been introduced for the first time in episode 6, but as he stands now, I only like him a bit.
Pretty much the entirety of the female cast is uniform in my eyes. I liked them a lot to begin with, each with their own charms and quirks, even if a lot of them were just re-applications of old Tropes (Rei expies are always good, though). As the story went along, however, almost every one of them followed Miss Yandere in falling in love with precious, wonderful, perfect Onii-sama. Being near that man is enough to make any female cast member blush. EVEN THE EMOTIONLESS SHIZUKU! THAT'S RIGHT, EVEN THE REI AYANAMI CLONE! Her and Mibu falling for him were the last straw for me. The whole reason why people love Rei clones is entirely because of their stoicism! Having one blush and smile when alone in a room with the perfect main character whom everybody loves just shows how blatantly the creators don't understand the archetype! If a character that previously never uttered sentences longer than six words in length is suddenly talking in full paragraphs to praise almighty Onii-sama, then there is clearly something wrong with this picture! Honestly, at that point I was convinced they were just doing it on purpose.
The male cast members, at least, are alright, because they can't be attracted to him. Still, all of them (except Katsuto Jyumonji and people that hate sweet, precious Onii-sama) seem to rely on him to solve every single problem. I would go so far as to say that the majority of all of the characters exist SOLELY to provide means by which Onii-sama can prove that he is the very best like no one ever was.
However, amid this sea of Onii-sama-worshipping zombies (and I'm not talking about the fanbase) there are still a few good characters. Mizuki Shibata and Erika Chiba are so far, two of the maybe three female characters that have gotten any focus to not show any romantic interest in him. Erika is very much a standard tsundere, but I think both of these girls have potential, and I wish they could have been the female leads instead of Miyuki. Katsuto Jumonji is probably my favorite character overall, as he's powerful but holds back quietly, leading well but not stealing the show like someone else. His quiet nature makes every time he opens his mouth to give a command its own small moment of awesome. In my opinion, anime could use many more characters like him. (To be fair, he reminds me of Onua, one of my favorite characters of all time, so I'm biased here.)
Looking at the male characters unobjectively, Mikihiko Yoshida is probably the best. His magic is genuinely difficult to use but has much potential, is much more mysterious than the other forms, and he as a character has seen more growth than any other by the point I stopped at. I think he could have had IMMENSE potential as a main character, and I would certainly watch a spin-off show about only him.
Moving on, in the inter-school competition, their student council seems so confident of their superiority that they're dissatisfied just having someone with half as many points as them. On top of that, it seems like only the girls get any focus while the guys are apparently only performing moderately well, which shows a thinly concealed (if even that) excuse to just focus on the pretty girls. Oh, except for Tatsuya, of course.
To reiterate: Why don't we see any of the male competitors? Because the viewers want to watch their waifus dominate. Why are the male competitors doing so poorly? Because we need Tatsuya to fix everything so that the girls make up for them.
At this point, the show is unwatchable for anyone with common story writing sense and self-respect. No dedicated author who knows his stuff could watch this show and not come out of it feeling dirty by the time they've gotten to around episode 9.
As an added thought, a lot of people praise the ingenuity of the magic system in the show, but I feel it is over-hyped, and not really all that spectacular. It's original, and I by no means dislike it, but I feel like people put this aspect up on a pedestal, and some even give the show a perfect rating purely due to it, which, with an anime this horrible, is a crime of the highest degree.
A part of its mediocrity is the fact that, to this point, the magic battles are hardly spectacular. You don't get the sort of trading of magic attacks that could be found in, say, Fullmetal Alchemist or Fairy Tail. I wouldn't attribute this purely to the magic itself, of course, it's simply that the most spectacular aspect of the battles is the physical part, while the magic either just adds a sparkly, mystical side to it, or otherwise provides a simple and easy way to just end the battle before a real exchange of blows has begun. This aspect alone, I would rate 7/10 at MOST. Intriguing, but nothing to write home about.
And now we come to Suzaku. Or whatever his name was. I liked this guy, and even though I didn't think for a minute that he could pull it off, I still hoped he could pull Onii-sama down a notch. True to my expectations, he failed, despite getting close. Some might argue it was good that he technically beat Tatsuya, but the moment was so short it took away all of the potential. Tatsuya immediately heals himself and unleashes a sonic boom, ending the match. I lost interest after the student council finished discussing it and stopped watching there entiely, deciding to pretend Tatsuya stayed dead and everyone lived happily ever after.
"But it gets better later!" some say. To which I say "Later is TOO late!" If you want a good series, you need to start off well and keep it there, something this show failed spectacularly at. Onii-sama sucks any sense of danger out of the story, and Miyuki layers a load of revolting incest on top of the show's desiccated remains, resulting in a mess of utter garbage. Now, I am by no means an expert, and the pool of anime I've watched is shallow, but as far as my experience goes, this anime is the worst I have ever watched, and I would give it a solid 0, it is just that bad.
There IS one way to salvage the show, though. First off, kill Tatsuya, then make Miyuki commit suicide. With the two of them gone, the rest of the characters should become capable of standing up without Tatsuya designing new legs for them. Of course, we all know this is never going to happen, so with that I'll end my rant here by saying this show is a cesspool of everything that can go wrong with a good idea, and that I can't understand how anybody could possibly give it a rating of more than 5/10 after watching past episode nine.
