2021

I often wonder with stories, such as Mahouka Koukou no Yuutousei whether there ever really was enough ‘untold’ story in the original series (in this case The Irregular at Magic High School) to justify the spin-off. As episode 13 of Mahouka Koukou no Yuutousei comes to a close with a few reveals about the bloom/weed system and a minor flashback for the Shiba siblings really the only take-aways, I’m kind of left thinking that there wasn’t in this case. Though that didn’t stop this final episode being pretty.

Mahouka Koukou no Yuutousei never really found its own identity.

When the best part of the nine schools arc really was the ending with Tatsuya single-handedly taking out the terrorist organisation that threatened his sister, I always wondered what Miyuki would offer up as a finishing act. While we get a brief glimpse of the massacre that closed out this arc in Irregular, the focus here does remain firmly with the girls but mostly that just makes me wish I was watching Irregular instead.

Which isn’t to say this was a bad episode.

Airi, the blonde girl from third high who set herself up as Miyuki’s rival in this arc, puts in a promising performance in Mirage Bat. As a mid-season episode or even background to the events in Irregular, this was a pretty decent showing.

The two girls dominated the final of Mirage Bat and both were emotionally invested in the competition which really helped draw the audience in for this final event in the competition. Unfortunately, it didn’t engage me as emotionally as Eimi’s dramatic battle during Pillar’s Break and it didn’t come close to Shizuku taking on Miyuki.

Ultimately, Mahouka Koukou no Yuutousei was a victim of earlier successes with characters we liked a lot more making it so much harder for a Miyuki/Airi match-off to really be a show closing event.

It also didn’t help that Miyuki’s only driving force here is to promote her brother. She brings nothing new to the equation and finds no other goal. Meanwhile, Airi’s motivation is reiterated and enhanced through the flashback of her conversation with her mother.

While Airi has been a character who I’ve had mixed feelings about she definitely got the best moments of this final episode and it would have been great to have seen her right at the end and find out what is next for her and the other girls of third high. After all the effort this spin-off seems to have put in to me investing in these characters, seeing them after the competition and their next steps would have really consolidated them whereas it kind of feels like they just disappear here.

All that aside, a chunk of this episode is given to a bath sequence. While it is good that Airi and Miyuki finally actually have a conversation, not sure why it is set in the bath with the other girls playing with water magic and ripping robes off each other (actually I know exactly why – fan-service – but I’m just not sure which audience this scene is trying to appeal to given I’m sure people who would really appreciate this scene probably checked out from watching this anime half-a-season ago).

We then have the dance party tying up loose ends and we finally find out why first high has two different uniforms and course one and course 2 students. I’m just not sure that Mahouka Koukou no Yuutousei needs to exist in order to get this explanation. Still, if you have to do a spin-off at least give me some information that I missed out on in the original.

Anyway, that’s all for Mahouka Koukou no Yuutsouei. I’ll get to a full series review soon and I kind of hope we get more stories set in this universe but honestly I’ll happily go back to Tatusya as the main character.

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Karandi James

Okay, there’s not a lot learned this week in terms of plot with Mahouka Koukou no Yuutousei. Sure the shadowy bad-guys discuss a plot to kill like a hundred people in the audience and shut down the competition after their sabotage attempts were thwarted by a brother with a sister complex but largely this episode wants to celebrate pretty outfits and Miyuki’s magical flying feat in the qualifying match for Mirage Bat.

It is definitely pretty and Miyuki’s genuine joy at utlilising her brother’s magic is a joy to see. Though I think this might be the first episode of the Irregular at Magic High School Spin-Off that has actually mentioned Silver and his engineering (I could be wrong but I don’t recall it coming up previously in this season), which means perhaps some viewers might have been left in the dark on this one.

Mahouka Koukou no Yuutousei lets Miyuki fly.

Miyuki’s magical feats, made possible by her brother’s excellent engineering, in the original series were more a by-product rather than the focus. However Mahouka Koukou no Yuutsousei makes her flying the actual point. The how and why are just kind of thinly sketched in and we spend most of this episode admiring the outfits of contestants and watching the girls jump for shiny balls of light.

Which actually is kind of rewarding in its own way and has its own charm. I’m just not entirely sold on this series as a whole and it doesn’t surprise me that this is all the tension, drama, or even spectacle it can must for a penultimate episode.

Sure we’re heading toward a showdown between blonde girl from third high and Miyuki, though the outcome would be a foregone conclusion even if we hadn’t already seen this match up. There’s just nothing else that has been given any kind of substance here so if they suddenly decide to focus on the terrorist plot that would feel like a weird way to go in a final episode.

On that note, blonde girl (whose name I swear I will learn by the final episode) finally grew on me this week. Her acceptance that she’s about to be outclassed was pretty decent and yet she won’t just give up. Even knowing she’s probably going to lose, she’s going to give it her all.

Meanwhile, if Mahouka Koukou no Yuutousei wanted to make Miyuki endearing it has kind of missed the mark. I don’t dislike her, but this season hasn’t exactly made her any clearer as a character or made me more interested in her. If anything, I kind of feel there’s even less to her than I suspected while watching Irregular. Which is a shame because when they let her cut loose with her magic she is actually pretty fun.

Right, we have one episode to go and some more pretty flying to be had, one hopes. I wonder if the rest of the episode will be filled with celebration of First High’s victory? Otherwise I am just not sure what they are going to fill the episode with.

I am sure we’ll get some more Tatsuya and Miyuki closeness and I’m equally sure the President will mock them for it.

And food. There should definitely be food.

But all this speculation is just sugar-coating that I have very little to say about episode 12 of Mahouka Koukou no Yuutousei. It was there. It did its thing. If you wanted some great outfits to cosplay, there are plenty of cute anime girls here. Also, Mirage Bat is way more entertaining to watch than Quidditch. Just saying.

Images from: Mahouka Koukou no Yuutousei. Dir. Hideki Tachibana. Connect. 2021

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Karandi James

When I said in my episode 10 impressions of Mahouka Koukou no Yuutousei that it was unlikely that the boys will get much screen time, I didn’t know just how true that was despite a chunk of this episode did deal with the final of the Monolith Code event. But we’ll get back to that.

Mahouka Koukou no Yuutousei just keeps charging forward.

Perhaps the most egregious issues I’ve found the whole way through this Irregular at Magic High School spin-off is the pace at which it tackles each narrative arc. There’s no time to set things up or establish characters. No time to really understand how people are feeling or are responding to what is going on. Half the time it feels like the main plot line is actually just background noise.

However, even assuming the idea was to shift the focus on to Miyuki and her friends, the girls in the rookie competition for Mirage Bat really got the short end of the stick this week.

First we see a group of shadowy business men being shadowy as they openly discuss their sabotage plan, which had a lot more impact in the original story because we’d actually seen the bus-crash play out and the acts of sabotage were very much what Tatsuya was dealing with. It was the main plot line whereas here its been mentioned once or twice, we did see the accident for Battle Board but really there’s been nothing overt until the boys got blown up last week.

Almost instantly we cut away and instead of actually seeing much of the match with the rookie girls, we instead see the girls in the stands congratulating Tatsuya for being amazing. Sure we get to see the celebration the girls have on placing first and second, but even then they are waving to Tatsuya and then the event is done. We saw maybe one animated leap from both girls.

The short cuts in animation aren’t limited to the events this episode of Mahouka Koukou no Yuutousei. It was actually fairly obvious throughout that this one didn’t have the polish of previous episodes. The magic when Miyuki was casting it lacked its usual brilliance and pretty much everything felt a bit flat.

I guess then they realise that they needed to give us some different take on this whole sabotage plot, so instead of seeing Tatusya actually getting to the bottom of things, the girls group up to play amateur detective and do manage to shut down one ploy in a series of scenes that have minimal movement and even the one decent action sequence ended up going to the girls of third high and the animation was pretty stilted.

Honestly, the trouble here is you can’t help but compare Mahouka Koukou no Yuutousei to Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei, and this arc is coming up very much a sad second because they haven’t given us enough to make the girls competing the focus (outside of the pillar break match up) and the way they’ve delivered the sabotage plot is just not satisfying. Even if there was no original take on this arc, this episode really butchered both potential plot focuses.

And then we get to the boys in Monolith Code. They don’t bother to re-establish who the other two boys are helping Tatsuya as the reserves or what their abilities are. They barely get any lines at all. Then when you see the boys walking together both to the even and after it is over, they are so badly drawn you can barely recognise which one Tatsuya is (and I’m sure their heights changed at one point).

Add in that we barely get stills of arguably one of the best match ups of the Nine Schools competition before the whole thing is over and really there was little to cling on to in this episode that is satisfying.

Unless of course you really like Eimi running meetings for wannabe girl detectives.

Anyway, Mahouka Koukou no Yuutousei has 2 episodes left, we still need to see Miyuki compete in Mirage Bat and I guess that will be where this series ends? I’ve tried to remain optimistic but really this isn’t must watch additional material for fans of Irregular. It’s added too little and with the quality definitely taking a dive in this episode a lot of the charm has pretty much worn off of it.

Images from: Mahouka Koukou no Yuutousei. Dir. Hideki Tachibana. Connect. 2021

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Karandi James

It is finally time for the match between Shizuku and Miyuki in Mahouka Koukou no Yuutousei.

When Shizuku said she wanted to take on Miyuki in the Pillar Break final for some that must have seemed crazy. Eimi, still a bit shaky after her match with Shiori last week, certainly wondered why she wanted to take Miyuki head on early in episode 10.

However, maybe that’s all just a sign of how determined Shizuku really is. This episode saw her pull out some impressive works of magic including specialised attacks and using more than one CAD simultaneously. Though, as usual I’m left wondering if the significance of that would be lost on some viewers given we really haven’t had as much world building in this spin-off.

Are crowd reactions enough for Mahouka Koukou no Yuutousei to get the idea across?

It seems Mahouka Koukou no Yuutousei was aware that some of the audience at least wouldn’t quite get how impressive Shizuku was being when she pulled out the gun shaped CAD as they pulled out a whole slew of audience members to react and comment on the action.

And while this approach would have gotten people up to speed that what they were seeing was both unusual and impressive, it came at the cost of slowing the match down. See Shizuku pulled out the CAD and then stood there while everyone reacted before she finally launched her attack. While one could argue there was the calculation time as well as building up the spell, all it effectively did was give her opponent time to react as well and make the contest feel large in scale but slow.

That said, I won’t take anything away from Shizuku. Given Tatsuya had only started training her in using two CADs 15 days prior, she put up an impressive fight and pulled off something adult magicians in this world would have had difficulty doing. That she was always outclassed by Miyuki doesn’t reduce how amazing Shizuku is.

Equally, at the end of the match, when Honoka goes to comfort Shizuku, Mahouka Koukou no Yuutousei managed to land a rare truly emotional moment. While everyone who had watched The Irregular at Magic High School new this outcome, seeing it from Shizuku’s perspective and really feeling her frustration at her loss, was actually well played and the scene worked very well.

What about Miyuki?

You can kind of tell Miyuki has never had the chance to really have friends before coming to first high. Certainly she never had any kind of friendly rivalry. It was interesting to see her reaction to learning Shizuku wanted to go head-to-head with her and was contemplating beating her.

Though one does have to wonder what Miyuki thought would happen when students from the same school competed in the same event? Or did the protagonist of Mahouka Koukou no Yuutousei just assume that the other students acknowledged she was better and would step aside? Given her personality, that seems unlikely.

It seems far more likely she just never considered it until Tatsuya made her face the possibility that a friend of hers wanted to test their powers against her.

And so the match concluded with the expected outcome.

What next for Mahouka Koukou no Yuutousei?

The next event in the Nine Schools Competition was Mirage Bat and that has gotten off to a flying start (pun intended) with the rookie event launching here.

However, I was surprised when we saw the rookie boys team being taken out in their comp. While this was a major development in Irregular, given that plot focuses on Tatsuya, I wasn’t sure if it would get any screen time here or how it would really fit. Now I’m curious as to what they intend to do with this.

With only 3 episodes left, Mahouka Koukou no Yuutousei has mirage bat to conclude and now this potential story line for the boys (and it seems unlikely they’ll get much screen time given the two others that Tatsuya recruits have barely appeared in the spin-off). I can’t help but feel this will be a rushed conclusion but I guess we’ll see.

Images from: Mahouka Koukou no Yuutousei. Dir. Hideki Tachibana. Connect. 2021

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Karandi James

I really wasn’t expecting much from Eimi’s match against Shiori from Third High this week on Mahouka Koukou no Yuutousei. Given the conclusion was inevitable, I expected it to be relatively fun to watch but unmoving. I mean, Eimi’s last match was fun but this isn’t a character I am particularly invested in.

How happy I am to be wrong. For perhaps the first time this season The Honour Student at Magic High managed to get me fully emotionally invested in a scene and as Eimi delivered her tired ‘Yippee Ki-Yay’ at the end of the match I both had a tear in my eye and a smile on my face.

Eimi stole the show this week in Mahouka Koukou no Yuutousei

This was just a masterfully put together match with two characters they’ve tried to build up during the tournament so we’ve seen them enough and new their names and they’ve really worked at giving us a reason to care for them (even if it hasn’t always been effective). Both entered this round of Pillar’s Break determined to win and with strong engineers behind them. So the real question came down to whether a controlled and planned tactic could overcome Eimi’s raw talent for destruction.

Right from the opening buzzer, Eimi went on the attack with her usual cavalier attitude that the one who strikes first, wins.

There might be something in that claims, because to be honest, I’m pretty sure if Shiori had attacked faster in the second half of the match she’d have left Eimi without any moves but let’s not rewrite the match.

Mahouka Koukou no Yuutousei gave both of these girls screen time as we watched them attack and counter and moved between them, the audience who were reacting to each move and making predictions about who had the upper hand, and even cut to the two engineers behind the players once or twice.

This really helped feel the impact of each attack and the building tension both for the contestants and those who were supporting them. If we took out these comments and commentaries basically we have one girl hurling ice pillars and another blocking attacks and a lot of the excitement of this sequence would have just disappeared.

That the battle ended with both girls collapsing on their podiums more or less said it all. While Eimi emerged the ‘victor’ both had put up a worthy fight and honestly deserve props for a fantastic effort.

On the back of such a strong first half, Mahouka Koukou no Yuutousei tried to deliver an equally emotionally second half but just couldn’t do it.

First we had Shizuku choosing to face Miyuki in the final round of Pillar Break even though she could have just taken the three way tie. While I know this sets up a cool face-off between the two, we already know the outcome so the build up here is not doing a great job at making me anticipate the next episode. Then we cut to Honoka’s final in battle board.

Now Honoka has had some great moments in this spin-off series. Mahouka Koukou no Yuutousei has really allowed this timid girl to have some shining sequences and honestly she’s had the most character development of any of the cast across the nine episodes. Therefore, this match should have been one that naturally drew us in.

I’m not entirely sure why it didn’t given we had a solid rivalry between the two characters, some solid magical shenanigans on the water, but it all felt a little by the numbers.

Still, I did really enjoy the first half of this episode and the second half works well enough even if it isn’t quite as moving. I’ll look forward to Shizuku’s match against Miyuki because maybe they’ll really manage to show-case the best of those two characters the way they did with Eimi and Shiori this week.

Images from: Mahouka Koukou no Yuutousei. Dir. Hideki Tachibana. Connect. 2021

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Karandi James