Animefangirl!

Happy New Year! Out with the old, in with the new! Which is why I did my best to finish watching The Irregular at Magic High School before the end of the year. Didn’t want to drag something like that along with me into the new year. Thanks to the regulars at Animesuki Forums, I’ve been given lots of suggestions for good, clean anime to watch this year, so there’s no need to hang on to stuff that’s not working.

So how was the final arc of Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei? Do I need to say it? It was bad. Really bad. The problem with this show, as with many light novel adaptations, is that the writers focused too much on adapting the light novel and not enough on actually creating a good anime. You know how whenever a book is turned into a movie the fans come out of the woodwork screaming about how X was left out and Y was changed, this director is the worst in the world, and so on and so forth? I’ve been guilty of it myself, but that doesn’t mean all changes are necessarily wrong. Sometimes there’s plenty of room for improvement in the original material.

The other problem with the arc was the same one all along: the enemies are really dumb and really weak. It seemed all along that the aim of the evil Great Asia Alliance was the Magic Thesis Competition, but then it turns out that they were actually after the Kanto Magic Headquarters all along.

If that’s the case, why pick a time of the year when security is relatively tight because of the competition? Why pick a date when the most powerful high school students in the country will be gathered a short distance away from your target? And why bother attacking the competition center and other parts of the city instead of throwing your full firepower at your target from the start?

Actually there are a ton of questions left over from that arc. I suspect they wasted far too much time animating unnecessary scenes from the LN (e.g. anything with Honoka, anything with Naotsugu/Shuu, anything with Iso-whatshisname and his girlfriend, the scene with Jiro Marshall, the stuff with the girl that wants revenge, anything with that Zhou-sensei guy since nothing came of it, a hundred other scenes) just to please the fans instead of focusing on telling a logical, coherent story. That’s why the last arc seems so rushed and nonsensical… is the most benign explanation I can come up with.

In the end the day is finally saved by (guess who?) Shiba Tatsuya, dressed to kill in a Venom suit that requires him to thump his crotch repeatedly to fly. Regular watchers of Japanese media might know this already, but the Japanese have funny ideas about what is ‘cool’ and what isn’t. Anyway, Tatsuya eventually blows up the port of Zhenhai and probably the whole city of Ningbo along with it and that’s the end of the evil Chinese invaders, any resemblance to living figures is completely coincidental heh heh heh.

Since Shiba was going to save the day all along and we knew it from the start, why did the writer bother building up the rest of the characters? The cast was entirely too large. If you needed a few students to defend the defenseless, you could have just stuck with Leo, Erika, Saegusa and Watanabe, making room for tighter storytelling and less time-wasting. After all they only really exist to make Tatsuya look good by taking lots of time and effort to do what he can do in a flash. Oh, and to get injured by being stupid just so Tatsuya can show off his l33t healing skills.

The whole thing is muddled even further by the characters lacking any clear, defining attacks. “Everyone can use magic” just makes everyone interchangeable. To the end I still had no clear idea what Saegusa’s magic really was (something about smells?) or what, if anything, glasses girl could do in battle, or what made Kirihara any different from Leo.

…Not that it matters since Tatsuya beats them all anyway, but this was one area where they could have taken a leaf from the better sort of shounen fighting manga. A smaller cast with more clearly-defined roles and abilities would have gone a long way towards making the show easier to enjoy.

Well, that was that. I was warned that The Irregular at Magic High School was rather bad. I refused to listen and I got what I deserved. I’ve seen worse, of course, but I tend to like high-school series and I tend to like fighting series and I tend to like magic series, but when you put them all together and get a complete mess like this? Sad. And this is one area where “the light novel is better!” excuse doesn’t cut it, because the anime did nothing to suggest that or generate any interest in the source material. It didn’t leave any mysteries about what would happen next either (Tatsuya will continue to dominate everyone forever) so I think I’m done here. On to better things!

I kept watching out of sheer inertia, ‘cos I was too lazy to start anything else. That doesn’t mean The Irregular at Magic High School has improved much over the first 6 episodes. The second arc was a slight improvement over the first, but not enough to move the series into “good territory.”

Last time I mentioned that the large number of characters hurts the series, and all the second arc did was add even more inconsequential characters who get a little attention for a few minutes and then vanish into the ether again. Honoka, for example. We get that she has a crush on Tatsuya, but… so? Erika’s brother appears, then disappears. And apparently his name is “Kentsugu” and he’s dating Mari, but didn’t Mari refer to her boyfriend as “Shu” in an early episode? Well, whatever.

In any case, a series about an overpowered hero is only good if he has someone to really show that power against. The more competent the bad guys, the better the main character looks when he overcomes them. When they’re Saturday morning cartoon villains like in this show, then it’s just like shooting fish in a barrel. I even start feeling sorry for the poor suckers.

The first arc was a laughable affair, with some of  the stupidest terrorists I’ve ever seen in my life. So you want to break into the school and steal their secrets? Why do it in broad daylight when nearly all the students are present? Why not go in at night when there’s only security and maybe a few stragglers to dispose of? And once their attack on the school failed, why would they all stay huddled together in one building waiting to be taken out by anyone who cared to do it? Why not disperse and regroup later? Since they were so dumb, Tatsuya gets no points for taking them out.

But that was just the introduction, right? The subs even call it the “Orientation” arc. Then the Nine School Competition begins, which is pretty much the Olympics for magicians. And there’s a shadowy group of triad members plotting to take down our hero’s school, will they succeed? And what is Tatsuya going to do about Suzaku a super-powerful rival by name of Ichijou Masaki?

Yeah, well, he basically kicks everybody’s asses like he always does. That Ichijou guy was an overrated one-trick pony anyway. The only reason we know he’s supposed to be good is because the story says so. All he does is put some magic circles in the air, then Tatsuya jumps around all kung-fu like and stuff and then eventually beats Ichijou by snapping his fingers. …This post contains spoilers, btw.

The “fight” with the triad guys is even more pathetic, so much so it doesn’t deserve a description. He basically shoots them all from 1000 meters away after toying with them for a bit. “Nobody threatens my little sister and lives!” Good for you, Tatsuya, good for you.

So… not much has happened since the series started except the whole world is being forced to recognize just how strong and manly and intelligent and unbeatable and wonderful and [insert 200 other superlative adjectives here] Tatsuya is. Whether you like The Irregular at Magic High School or not will depend largely on how much you like Tatsuya and enjoy watching his bored-looking efforts.

Personally I’m on the fence. I can’t say I like him, but I don’t hate him either. His characterization is a bit inconsistent though. Sometimes he says “I have no emotions except siscon love” but then he goes ahead and shows all kinds of emotions anyway, from amusement to annoyance to embarrassment to shock and surprise, so what exactly does he mean by he has no emotions? Luckily the writers aren’t skilled enough to make me care about getting to the bottom of his personality. I just wish someone strong enough to push him to the limit would show up before the series ended.

I’m going to place my final hopes on the third and last arc. Another 8 episodes and we’ll talk again.