Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei Review

Today marks the 25^th episode since Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei anime started airing, a good time for a review of the series.

Frankly, I must say that I am pretty disappointed. After all, I love this series as much as I enjoy SAO Light Novel, and I was really looking forward to the anime adaptation. Unfortunately, in my opinion, the Mahouka anime was poorly done.

Why do I say so? Well, for me, it’s primarily because they pretty much fucked up the most basic “Show, Don’t Tell” of story telling.

In an earlier post, I compared SAO and Mahouka, stating my reasons for believing that Mahouka doesn’t lend itself so well to an anime adaptation, because of the heavy content. In summary, Mahouka explores a new world, where Magic is studied as science, and thus necessarily has lots of technical jargon. Too much dialogue would throw people off, but too little would result in inadequate understanding of what’s happening. Unfortunately, Mahouka leaned too far into the too little, and in my opinion, failed to capture what truly made the series special.

Case in point, how many people has an idea how the Ichijou’s special technique, Rupture works?

Ichijou Masaki's Clan technique Rupture..

Rupture sets the target of the magic as the liquid inside the human’s body, resulting in the target’s body being completely torn apart as the liquid escapes. Thus, it earned the name “Rupture”.

How about Mayumi’s rapid fire technique? By converting the heat energy in each molecule into kinetic energy, she creates “Ice bullets” firing hundreds per second.

Mayumi's technique

What was Honoka doing, that required Mayumi to show concern?

They didn't say. Those who read the novel would have known that Honoka was using an optical magic to make the helicopter invisible. These are some examples of the touch-and-go nature of this anime, that really fails to highlight what's happening. How are viewers suppose to appreciate what's going on if you just make cursory mentions of such scenes??

In today’s episode, we see Tatsuya restoring Kirihara and Isori, after they "died". The total time spent was.... 2 minutes, involving around 50 seconds of ...

SHIT LIKE THIS.

The actual process took less than 25 seconds. Here.

Yeah exactly, WHY THE FUCK IS TATSUYA POINTING HIS GUN TOWARDS ME???

And Isori is suddenly revived.

All this under 2 minutes. Miraculously bringing someone back after being shot, how could something so convenient exist?? In the novel, the author, Satou Tsutomu,  goes on to explain how Tatsuya, in reading the Eidos of the people he restores, takes on all their pain himself. All that shock and awe from Kanon, and the others, and then the anguish Miyuki felt. All of it was dropped. Could someone explain why??

I have a possible explanation. Due to the budget constraints, and the schedule, the producers had to rush the scenes to make it fit within the number of episodes allocated. This, along with the idea of not making it too wordy, resulted in the botched up job of a show.

To make matters worse, the entire show has no action, little excitement, or suspense. This is no doubt due to the overpowered main character, with no emotions. Admittedly, it is hard to create an engaging shonen story when you can't show your main character trying his hardest, or thinking of creative ways to overcome obstacles. However, what you can do then is bring attention to the techniques and power he has, partly through explanations, and through showing the reactions from the other supporting characters.

This was done in the light novel, pretty well in fact, that Tatsuya's OP-ness doesn't destroy the story, but becomes an integral part of the story. Readers in fact look forward to Tatsuya's next display of power, and ingenuity, which the author adequately answers in the Light Novel. Of course, this is also due to the novels having unlimited time to develop all of this, while the anime could have really been facing constraints on the time and budget.

Stop spending time on Tatsuya and Miyuki's shitty sibling love. If the producer cared to explain the bonds between Tatsuya and Miyuki, maybe we could have appreciated that a little more, like that kissing scene in episode 24.

Half of Tatsuya's powers are sealed by Miyuki's power, and that kiss was to release the power. Was it shown? I wouldn't say so... what we saw was this.

Doesn't really cut it now does it?

Meh.

Mahouka had a really novel setting, magic as science, using the most advanced technologies. Who would have thought of that??

Unfortunately, everything amazing in the Light Novel was negated in the anime. While I strongly believe that anime needs to take a different approach, with more focus on the action, excitement, and mood, the essence of the story cannot be discarded. Different stories need to be handled differently, e.g. deep stories like Psycho-pass needs to be slowly explained and developed to shine, but still not ignoring the action, while action-driven stories like SAO, Akame ga Kill, has to be fast paced, and show off the "Coolness" of the characters, by simply letting them look cool. Looking cool simply won't cut it for Tatsuya, genius isn't shown by a stone face.

Story: 9/10 BUT Only for the light novel. The anime would probably deserve an 7, for the novelty. Unfortunately, most of the plot lines weren't developed sufficiently in my opinion, all of them were just "big bad organisations" (without even the who-are-a-threat-to-Miyuki part).

Characters: 7/10. I'm not sure why this happened...

It sounds like they're just playing a fool there. Or maybe it's just a few people who are dissatisfied with the anime's handling of Tatsuya. For the common folk, maybe just having a cool character, such a superficial appreciation is enough. Who knows. The other characters were quite likeable, and I would have really appreciated if Honoka and Shizuku, and other characters were given some screen time (they were in fact, in the light novel, but as it didn't contribute significantly to the action, it was apparently dropped). From the light novel, my feelings towards Miyuki was 50-50, or in fact, leaning more towards "like". However, the anime reminded me how much I hate bro-con incest. 

As OreimoKawaii kindly counted for us,

Art: 7/10... Not too sure how to judge this one. The art isn't shabby, and a lot of attention was given to the magic designs, definitely. Most of the magic effects had very intricate designs, and in fact, that was one thing I was looking forward to in the anime adaptation. Unfortunately, the rest of the scenes were pretty standard, nothing fascinating. Furthermore, a lot of scene designs were too flowery and overwhelming, which became a little too distracting. Overall, it resulted in a rather mild impact.

Music: 7/10. Loved Millenario, by Elisa. That song was the ending for the first half of the series, and I quite enjoyed it. Rising Hope, by Lisa was okay too. The openings and endings in the second half though, were a little disappointing. Nothing really captured any attention. The music, overall, didn't contribute much to the mood either, so really, without the great ending and opening song, I might have given it a 6 even.

Enjoyment: 5/10. Barely passed. Well, I guess what saved it was the Nine Schools Competition arc. That arc was pretty much the most exciting arc, with all sorts of magic clashing, and Tatsuya unveiling new tactics and tricks. Not only was there at least, some sort of decent explanation, the competition setting  also helped to create some intensity, which was sorely lacking throughout most of the episodes. Mahouka started off slow, with some interesting scenes here and there in the first few episodes, but compared to other anime running at that time, especially No Game No Life, it was prettttttty dull. After the Nine Schools Competition arc, the series pretty much went downhill IMO. 

Overall: 7/10 by average, by feeling, 6/10.

However, I must admit that perhaps my expectations from reading the Light novel have been set rather high, and thus, I may have been more critical in my judgement than normal. Still, I maintain my stance that this anime was pretty poorly handled, falling into various pitfalls such as: too skimpy explanations, resulting in no depth; over-powered main character, not handled well (resulted also in the lack of excitement, as everyone knew Tatsuya was gonna just blast all the enemies away anyway); and lack of music and art support (Maybe also partly because they had to rush almost every scene, so no time to have scenes to just create mood. Still, a really poor excuse if you ask me).

Even without my bias, I would probably have been able to give it a 7 at most.