The Irregular at Magic High School

The conception of "perfection" we previously had is going to change, because after watching Shiba Tatsuya (the protagonists show) in action, the word we used to describe the type of character which is sightly too powerful among his peers, overpowered, is going to be "Onii-sama" from now on. With Shiba Tatsuya, better known as Onii-sama, we reach a level of perfection never seen before in the anime industry, characters we reputed as OP, notable recent examples such as Kirigaya Kazuto (Sword Art Online) or Gilgamesh (Fate/Zero), are practically nothing next to our glorious Onii-sama, capable of turning the Impossible into something actually possible. > Is aproblem an OP character as main then? To that question I reply: "not necessary", since an overpowered main character isn't a big iceberg enough to sink an entire ship, we have plot development and side characters after all; and overpowered isn't a synonymous of " Bad", sometimes is good to watch a main character that isn't completely a weakling, but problems comes when the plot's development is nothing more than a series of events made to emphasize the greatness of our main characters, plural, because Onii-sama didn't descended from Heaven alone, there is his sister, the main female protagonist, Shiba Miyuki, another example of absolute perfection, to accompany him in his journeys. > So this is an anime about these perfect couple of siblings and nothing more? We aren't that far to describe this show with that phrase up here, but actually there isn't a better phrase to describe this show neither, since the anime I'll now introduce you is going to be the anime with the most perfect main protagonist I've seen in my whole life, and as you've probably noted, the word 'perfect' isn't used with a positive tone in this review. I'll now claim that I haven't read the LN, this is going to be my judgement from what I've seen in this adaptation. This show is set on the year 2095 d.c, after the conclusion of the Third World War and the introduction of the Magic System, magician isn't a term anymore related to fairy tails, Science and Technology converged into what we now call Magic. Society developed itself around this new form of Science, and this lead the necessity to create new generations of youngsters capable of crafting this new kind of science, so Magic High Schools were born. This show follows a particular brother and sister, fresh enrolled in the First Magic High School (there are only 9 in the country) at the beginning of the first episode. "We're not the same" As everything that isn't "uniform" in the Society, it creates a fracture between the population, racism in few words, and Magic is not the exception. Some individuals are more capable of others, that is a fact, and so is also related to Magic. People who show an incredible magic ability form the Course 1 in the High School, and the others, less capable, form the Course 2. Somehow Onii-sama sucked at the enrollment test score and ended in the Course 2, the so called "Weed" course, meanwhile Miyuki ended in the Course 1, the "Bloom" course. How a perfect being such as Onii-sama ended in the course 2?, that will be explained through the show, something I'll not reveal, let's keep going. Funny fact that actually all Onii-sama's friends, course 2 people, are above the course 1 students in matters of skill combat and magic. This is the classic shounen pattern where all the protagonist's friends are better than everyone else and save the world, with the difference that only Onii-sama is able to save the day here, the rest aren't of any use actually. In this 26 episodes adaptation from the best-seller Light Novel, there are adapted three arcs, each of them, naturally, revolving around Onii-sama and his friends dealing with an unexpected conflict, unnaturally always is Onii-sama the center of everything that happens in this show, leading the viewers to ask themselves a such basic question as: > "If Onii-sama doesn't want his true identity being revealed, why does he keep trying everything to be in the spotlights every time?" Such a million dollar question sadly didnt get an answer, events just keep happening and Onii-sama always saving the day, in the most perfect possible way. And that just seem to be irony, since a characteristic of this show is that of explaining EVERYTHING, well...at least the things related to magic spells, magic sequences and effects. Practically a huge time was spent on explaining things that aren't real and somewhat irrelevant for the development of the story, time that surely could have been spend in a more useful and productive way. The cast of characters was surely wide, we have practically a character for every kind of stereotype. There's the glasses girl, the tomboy, the cute and moe girl, the silent girl, the tusndere, the Student Council President, the best protagonist's friend, the bad guy who didn't accept the protagonist but later he accepts him, the rival, ect ect ect. Actually none of them had an important role in this show, since its all about Onii-sama, but we're able to find something in common between them, possibly the only reason why the author decided to create side characters for this show, and that would be: "to praise Onii-sama and his sister". Actually that may sound like a joke but believe me when I tell you it isn't, every single side character in every single episode, when they aren't wasting time explaining Magic related things, that remaining time is spend on praising Onii-sama for x, y and z reason, a fact that I found overly above the ridiculous level. By the other side there's no need to spend a lot of words for our sibling protagonists, there's only a word capable of containing all their essences, 'Perfect'. Onii-sama is good at everything possible imaginable, every presented female character falls for him but he doesn't have eyes for any of them, because Onii-sama cares a lot about his sister, and that was stated several times through the show. Meanwhile Miyuki is his female counterpart, a beautiful young girl which excels in Magic and in everything she does, I'll just end here to write about them, since my writing skills are way too far of being perfect to describe this pair of siblings in the proper way. When it comes to Animation and Sound, at least, this anime isn't mediocre, animation is made by Madhouse, characteristic trademark of this studio is the high quality animation of its adaptations. The actions scenes were quite fluid and very well done, camera angles and sudden zoom ins and zoom outs were coordinated very well, as well as the OST fitting them, electric-rock oriented, we can't say its perfect as our protagonists but we can say its done quite well, above average for sure. OPs and EDs were quite nice, Rising Hope by LiSA was by far my favorite song from this show. At some point of this show I couldn't take seriously anything that was happening, too much perfection, events emphasized to show how great the Shiba siblings were, too much useless explanations, pathetic side characters, and a lot of details I didn't mention because they're spoilers, overall is a quite interesting anime that shows how would be to have a perfect MC gaining the praise for each side character presented, something completely original I must say, nothing that I've seen come close to what I've seen in this anime but this is not surely something I would feel to recommend to people.

Set in 2095, magic is now a form of technology and science. After the 3rd world war, magic wielders were high in demand in the world to defend their individual countries from further chaos. Mahouka follows two siblings, Tatsuya and Miyuki Shiba, who are enrolled in Fist High School. Based on enrolment test scores, the brother becomes a Weed, a presumed low-achieving magician, while his little sister becomes a Bloom, a presumed high-achiever in magic. However, there's more to these two siblings than as first thought. And school life at First High School will no longer be the same... And thus, the most anticipated, but highlycontroversial, anime of the spring season has reached its conclusion. Controversial in the fact that this series ranged from "Mahouka is the best anime ever!" to "Wow, this series is complete BS." So how did it truly turn out? Was it as good as the die-hard fans claim it was? What about the opinions of the critics who truly despise this series? I find that Mahouka truly fits in between the two; it's neither really good, nor really bad. It was nonetheless a somewhat enjoyable anime series that I didn't regret watching. 

Before I begin, I will say that there's a high chance that you may end up being in either of the aforementioned polarizing sides. To make things a bit easier, for those who really like and would only watch a huge action-packed series with an adventurous plot, non-stop fight scenes, and emotional characters like some shounens have, you probably want to stop reading this review and find another anime series. The relatively slow-paced Mahouka will actually bore you really fast, and would DEFINITELY not be for you. I probably weeded out a few of you, and you'll thank me for it. Now, I can't guarantee that this review will be spoiler free, but let's dwell a bit further into this series, shall we?

 Story Mahouka focuses on two main leads, who are the Shiba siblings, Tatsuya and Miyuki. The series is split into three arcs, each having a specific school event attached to them (enrolment, a school competition, and a thesis competition). The general idea of Mahouka is that conflict arises, usually from a specialized group having ulterior motives for magic, preventing these school events from going as calm and smoothly as planned, and the students from First High School and other acquaintances will have to deal with them. Conflict doesn't happen immediately, however; everything is set up with loads of dialogue and explanations. Unfortunately, the huge amount of set up can turn stale for some viewers. The biggest problem about Mahouka is definitely its pacing. Some would find this series to be incredibly slow due to all the explanations and dialogue used to set up a conflict, especially as a shounen anime. This is highly prominent in the first arc. Later, the events in the story became extremely rushed, which happened most often in the second arc. Most magic was no longer explained in its entirety, and some prior background have been omitted at times. I ended up consulting light novel readers a few times of what I just witnessed. Regardless of your opinion on Mahouka, this is easily the biggest flaw. I like to turn that around and use it as a way to say that this series is unpredictable in nature because of this pacing. You don't know what will Mahouka bring the next episode, but even this can be a relatively frustrating process, especially considering that the plot had very good potential to be great. In all, the story was executed well to a certain extent, but it definitely could of been better. Viewers will have to acknowledge this imminent flaw should they decide to take the plunge to this series. However, each arc does have some pretty interesting perks in the story. There were very well thought out concepts for all the arcs, but the 3rd arc of the series (Episodes 18-26) was easily my favourite. Of course, I won't say what happens then, but for me, the final arc made the series a worthwhile watch. It might be frustrating to have to consult LN readers at times to know some background facts that Madhouse has omitted, as well as a lot of confusing bits here and there, but it's flushed out enough to at least give a small sense of satisfaction at the end to the typical anime watcher such as myself. 6/10 
Art No complaints here. The art style is very typical of shounen anime, and instances where the animation quality gets noticeably bad is extremely rare. Action scenes are fluid and flashy, while the character designs are very cool and slick. Honestly, those are some pretty badass school uniforms. There's nothing about the art and animation that really stands out compared to other series, but it gets the job done, and does the job well. I really give Madhouse credit for the great animation quality of this series. 8/10

 Sound Another one of the better points of this anime. Mahouka has a huge cast of characters (which will be explained later), and Madhouse pretty much recruited the best of the best to voice them. No character sounds awkward or out of place, as most match their individual character's personality very well. I mean, it's like a dream team of all-star seiyuus, including Yuichi Nakamura (Tatsuya), Saori Hayami (Miyuki), and Kana Hanazawa (Mayumi), just to name a few. A job well done to all the voice actors and actresses involved in this series. 
LiSA's “Rising Hope” is arguably one of, if not, THE best opening song of Spring Anime 2014, while GARDiNELiA's “grilletto” stands up as one of the better opening songs for Summer 2014. The ending themes are decent too, but sometimes, the ending scene of an episode does not transition well into the song, especially when suspense was attempted to be made. Mahouka's OST is good in general, and definitely sounds very shounen-like. A good plus side of the series. 9/10 

Characters Now, this is the second category that many individuals critic about Mahouka. The story focuses on Tatsuya Shiba and Miyuki Shiba, two characters that are, for some reason, really hated by a lot of people out there. Do the Shiba siblings make or break the series? For some, there is that chance. So I'll explain the pair to the best of my abilities, alongside the other characters of series, and note the places where some people hate about them. 
Tatsuya is enrolled into the First High School as a weed. This would mean that he's presumably weak in magic, right? Wrong. Rather, this guy is seriously overpowered. We definitely can question how on earth was he determined to be an inferior weed in the first place due to these placement tests. The problem some people have over Tatsuya is that he is claimed to be just another “Gary Stu”. He only seems to get more and more OP as the series progresses, making him pretty much the “perfect” protagonist. I personally don't think he's completely perfect; he comes at the cost that he rarely develops emotionally. Tatsuya in a sense doesn't feel human, which does make it difficult for him to fit with his classmates and live a perfectly normal school life with his little sister. His lack of human emotions is definitely a conflict that he must always go through, and is something that is explored throughout the series. Tatsuya's mysterious nature definitely creates some suspense in Mahouka. We know Tatsuya is great, but just HOW good he is? What skills will be pull off next? The enigma that is Tatsuya really makes viewers wonder just who the hell he really is. How many things he can pull of his sleeve is pretty damn incredible. Heck, his classmates don't really know who he really is as well later. Tatsuya is an enigmatic character, but whether this is an enjoyable trait is definitely up to the viewer. 
Miyuki is the other main character, who is perhaps as controversial as his older brother. Miyuki is your beautiful, smart and kind female character that many look up to. However, her personality and ideals in general, like Tatsuya, are very simple. Some may argue that it's even bland. Oh, and she may have a slight bro-con for Tatsuya. I'm pretty sure all the complaints that Madhouse got over her cries of "Onii-sama" ended up having her get less screen time later in the series. Now, it definitely isn't as black and white as this; however, Madhouse unfortunately does not dwell into this further, which is something that I'll be looking into in the light novels. I do like Miyuki, mostly because of her sincerity and well-mannered demeanour, while getting notable roles in the story as well. However, I'll note that both Tatsuya and Miyuki barely undergo development throughout the series, at least emotionally and a character as a whole. If you get frustrated about characters who really only develop in terms of OPness, then this probably won't be the series for you. For others who don't mind, you're in for a treat. 
The supporting cast is very cool, but they are the supporting cast for a reason. After all, Mahouka centres around Tatsuya and Miyuki the most, who are relatively mysterious but simple individuals in the first place. Some characters appear in episodes to glue some parts of the story together, but they don't get quite enough spotlight to have them fully develop. Again, a lack of character development may be a flaw of this series for some viewers, but that would be way too much to put in a 26-episode series, especially considering that some parts were already feeling rushed. There's at least enough of a blueprint for all the supporting characters to be able to pick a favourite. I personally love the student council president Mayumi myself, but I was slightly disappointed that she didn't get that much time to develop as a character. Overall, this huge cast of characters is nice, but unfortunate sacrifices had to be made in order to prevent these 3 arcs from stretching over 40 episodes. 7/10 


Personal Enjoyment This series is flawed, yes. The pacing of the story is my biggest concern, with a somewhat lack of character development being another. But I did have the motivation to continue and look forward for the next episode. I personally found the series to be quite enlightening, and there was enough substance for me to be intrigued to continue in watching, even if I know there was quite a few things wrong about it. The concept of Mahouka is very nice, although Madhouse may have not brought it out to its full potential. I do look forward to reading the light novels and continue the series from there.

 8/10 

Overall On a completely realistic overview, character and story must be weighed more than the art and sound of an anime series. The former may be the weaker points of the series, but it definitely isn't AS bad as some people say it is, nor you should write if off just because of the flaws I've listed above. This is a series where you really have to see it to give a proper opinion on it. Don't inflate your expectations, or you will be disappointed. If you are interested enough after the first few episodes, I'll say that you'll be on the road to watching a pretty nice series. Will it blow you away? No. Will this be a waste of your time? Mostly likely no as well. All in all, despite some flaws, it has been a pleasure watching Mahouka, and I hope some of you will consider watching this series as well! Final score: 7/10 (First review, feel free to give some feedback!)

What does it mean to be a good main character? Does it mean being weak and growing strong throughout the story? Or could it mean starting strong but learning how to overcome your weaknesses in order to continue growing? How about starting off absolutely perfect at everything other than noticing girls affection for you? Well, if you answered "no" to that last one, you should probably stay away from this show. If you answered "yes," let me show why I believe that is not the right way to create a protagonist. Shiba Tatsuya is a new high school freshman at a prestigious magic academy in near-futureJapan. Magic is being studied like a science and used in order to gain an upper-hand in a long-lasting global conflict. Tatsuya and his twin sister Miyuki happen to be excellent at using magic. Despite that, due to some poorly explained reason, the absolutely-perfect-at-magic-in-every-way-ever-showed Tatsuya somehow ended up in the lower class at the school though Miyuki ended up in the upper class. Most of the students in the upper class look down on the other students as being inferior. Tatsuya soon breaks that boundary and forces his way (and is forced) into the student council by being absolutely perfect. Still, it will take more time than that to fully mend the broken relationship between the upper and lower students. That's just a bit of the stuff that happens at first in MKnR. The story is divided up into several arcs ranging from a few episodes to around ten episodes in length. I'll go over the characters first since that really is the biggest downside to the show. There are way too many them. This show throws characters at you left and right with minimal explanation given for most of them, and almost zero back-stories for anyone, even the main duo. There is nothing to connect to these characters with emotionally (unless you can relate to having a brother complex). They are bland, two-dimensional characters who serve almost no purpose other than to further the plot, though most don't even do that much. Most characters' designs are so similar that they are easily confused with one another and made even more forgettable. Now for the main duo, Tatsuya and Miyuki Shiba. They are twins from a wealthy and powerful family that is shown on a couple occasions but left out of the picture for 99% of the show. Tatsuya and Miyuki are both flawless with the exceptions being that Miyuki has a brother complex she cannot admit, and Tatsuya is terrible at noticing he has about a handful of girls with a crush on him. Tatsuya seemed like an interesting character in the first episode to me. He was looked down upon due to the class he was put in despite actually being quite skilled. However, the main reason (as I have said and will say many times) is his utter lack of any flaws. He doesn't even seem human. Similarly overpowered genius protagonists like Yagami Light from Death Note and Shiro from No Game No Life are far better than him for that reason. Despite being extremely cunning and seeming to win in basically every situation, they have flaws that make them seem like actual people. They have greed, lust, jealousy, emotions, goals, etc. Tatsuya just goes through this story beating everyone in his path without showing hardly any emotion at all. Even in unimportant situations like just hanging out with friends, he is stoic and emotionless and bland. He always says exactly what he needs to say and executes plans without any hitches. I really don't see why any other characters are necessary in this story since it seems like he could have done everything himself. Miyuki is also similarly strong, but ends up playing a damsel in distress role on one or two occasions making her not quite as perfect. She tends to be rather emotionless as well unless she is flustered romantically or embarrassed. She and Tatsuya together are just some of the most boring main characters I've ever seen. The story is not much better. Given the huge character cast and boring main characters, the story tends to be slow paced and takes too long to explain things. 90% of MKnR is spent explaining. Almost every time an action scene occurs or a new magic is shown, the show stops and has the characters indirectly explain to the audience what happened even though I never really cared to know most of the time. There's no letting the viewer piece together events to figure out how things occurred. The information overload often makes you forget things as new info is poured into your brain faster than you can stop and think about anything that's been said. Plus most things that are explained are rather unimportant overall and make it hard to focus on the actual important information. The animation is shoddily done. Created by the same group in Madhouse who did the failure that was Mahou Sensou, the animation really brings down the company's famous name in the anime industry. The characters' faces are devoid of expression throughout the majority of the show and everyone's design is so similar with nearly the same facial structure given to all characters. The backgrounds are not very detailed and the foreground images are sometimes noticeably poorly drawn. On the other hand, the action sequences have good choreography and are well thought out. Most of them involve group battles that involve strategy between fighters. This is also where the animation tends to be the best. The soundtrack is mostly techno music with some rock music thrown in for some of the action scenes. The music does a good job of adding a nice calm, yet mysterious atmosphere to some of the scenes with explanations galore and makes them slightly better. There are many tracks that are used too often though, and many scenes are devoid of any music where some really should have been used. The second OP and ED are excellent despite the first ones not being anything out of the ordinary. This show flops on nearly all aspects. The gigantic character cast with no personality or development was truly the biggest hindrance. Tatsuya is just so flawless that there is absolutely no tension created because you can be sure that he'll wrap everything up easily and move on to the next problem. This show could have been much better which is the most frustrating part. It had potential and an interesting premise but wasted it all on pointless or bad characters, poor animation, and an ending that politely asks for a second season without really offering anything worthy of receiving it.

"Onii-sama", these words are the very heights of the human spirit, they are the essence of a male soul. It is the light that will guide a man during his darkest hour. Make your imouto recite these holy words exactly 167 times over the span of 10 hours and you will be granted what your heart truly desires, my child. Mahouka is like solidifying the shit your dog left on your mattress with liquid nitrogen then dipping it into gold and expecting people to buy it just because it's shiny. And well, people buy it. Apparently. ...Well, actually, that's not quite the case. Mahouka should havebeen just another forgettable fighting magic school themed story adapted from a novel, except for some inexplicable reason, it gets popular. Mahouka is really just boring op-magic-imouto-harem garbage that adopts a not-quite-so-distasteful complexity within it's written dialog. About the only positive thing that I can really say in it's defense is that it somehow manages not to be torture. — Ah, yes! This is proof that the otaku culture is truly a bliss! Every damn magic spell is accompanied by long winded explanations and technobabble. None of which is used for world building, characterization, or whatever else that it could possibly be used for. Zip, zero, nada. The "intelligence" in the script is just there for the author to stroke himself — or I should say Tatsuya Stuba's dick, technically?— Perhaps it's actually an abstract form of fanservice, it follows this sort of mentality of "the more complicated the vocabulary the more depth the character has", uguu! It's similar to the intelligence-fetihization of a loli in the whatever plethora of lolicon tittles I couldn't be bothered to mention. Hey, I would even go as far as to say that the whole series was built around this technobabble. I mean, if you're going for needless complexity in such volumes, why not go all the way and write a pseudo-political thriller a la Code Geass instead? We already have Spinzaku here, and Tatsuya is pretty much scumbag Jesus anyway. At least that would have been more eventful than all of the nothing that happens in the twenty-six episode run of this anime. Something else I should mention, they try to incorporate this idea of discrimination but they don't do anything with it. They had actually tried to justify the puerility of these teenagers pretending to be mature just to rather quickly brush it off with an empty speech. Funny because, this whole issue of "labels" could have stopped Mahouka's script from further plunging itself down the drain. The script is actually pretty terrible whenever you aren't being bombarded by technobabble. It's either harem garbage, hue hue not-really-incest heh heh heh heh, or indirectly stroking Tatsuya's dick. The action scenes can also reach irksome levels, almost as bad as what you see in hollywood movies. The Incompetence displayed by the terrorists can be described as simply sad. You would think that being equipped with sub-machine guns and RPGs one could be able to at the very least kill one person in a considerably populated school. "There's no one who can possibly defeat my brother." - Miyuki. Repeat the above piece of dialog thirty-or-so times with slightly different variations and you can begin to see the quality of writing in Mahouka, if you haven't already. Also, yup, what Tatsuya has isn't just any piece of armor, what he has is reinforced plot armor that's heavier and thicker than a whales hide. Suffering several bone fractures, damaged organs and massive hemorrhaging? Not a problem, he'll just magically restore himself back to perfect health. Getting shot through the heart? Barely so much as tips him off balance a bit. Catching bullets with his bare hands? You betcha~ — There's absolutely no tension when a character is this powerful. And that isn't even the worst of it, the biggest offender of all happens in the last episode. It speaks for itself really. No, better still is his ability to make girls drop their panties faster than you can say "bullshit". He does this in his usual inhumanly calm demeanor without so much as lifting a finger. No, he doesn't even flirt with the girls, the reason for this being because imouto pussy is best pussy. Just about every female subconsciously gravitates towards him and instinctively want to have his babies because they just know that he has superior mating capabilities. No, wait, wait, wait, wait!! Tatsuya is a deconstruction of the Gary Stu archetype as he's actually a pathetic fatass okatu in a show that's actually a clever self parody.— Just an instance of Mahouka's brilliant comedy, when a high-school girl whose been hiding behind a tree gets her position compromised, she escapes her pursuers in the most dramatic way possible: by getting on a cheap looking scooter that actually takes off with two jet engines. You just have to see it for yourself, I'm clearly not writing it down correctly.— Tatsuya may not look like a fatass with an imouto fetish... but that's because you're already under his spell, see? Yeah, it's a spell of his that affects all your senses so you can't tell. When Miyuki asks if she looks weird in the new apron she bought for him to see her in, he replies with "You look lovely. So much so that I want to secretly display you in a glass case just for me." See? This is proof that he's a fatass basement dweller. It simply won't do you any good to deny facts. Oh, wait, how could I forget? Whenever these two say anything incestuous it's just a joke. Final verdict: 0/10 Nowhere near racist enough, needs more propaganda.