Forum - View topicREVIEW: The Irregular at Magic High School Sub.Blu-Ray 1
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hatguy12
Posts: 36 |
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Just a note, the review swaps "Course 1" and "Course 2." Course 1 is for "elites" with better scores, and Course 2 is comprised of the poorer performing students. |
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Constantine-
Posts: 1 |
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Oh poor Rebecca, you have no idea how wrong you'll be, I am looking forward to your review of the next Blu-Ray episodes. It will be a nice rant from you. I almost killed myself while watching episodes 8-20 of Mahouka Koukou from how bored I got. |
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thekingsdinner
 Posts: 1109 Location: Geertruidenberg, Netherlands |
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I haven't actually watched this series as of yet, but I do have to say the music is marvelously awesome. To be expected of Taku Iwasaki of course.
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Princess_Irene
ANN Associate Editor
 Posts: 2672 Location: The castle beyond the Goblin City |
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 Learning differences: you grow up, but somehow they never go away...
@thekingsdinner I especially liked the sort of driving fighting music, although some of the goofier background songs didn't quite work as well. @Constantine- ...but...but...I was so looking forward to having been terribly wrong about it in the preview guide! 
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SquadmemberRitsu
 Posts: 1391 |
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I could go on for ages about the countless clichés that make up Mahouka's foundations, the unsettling way in which the show tackles 'brother-sister relationships', the fact that it does all of that without the slightest hint of self awareness, the pointless half episode long monologues about magic that do nothing to serve the themes, Tatsuya's personality or lack thereof and all sorts of things.
But I can't talk about Mahouka without mentioning the one fatal flaw which undermines basically the entire series. It's a series about discrimination written by a racist. Not that I found the specific themes that Mahouka deals with all that interesting in the first place, but the casual xenophobia that occurs later on in the series was the nail in Mahouka's coffin for me. |
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Vaisaga
 Posts: 13243 |
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I came in expecting a negative review, but I was happily wrong.
Mahouka is definitely one of those series where things that get revealed later on address issues one might find early in. It's hard to defend the show without getting into spoilers (what's up with Tatsuya, what caused Miyuki to be the way she is, etc). For this arc I enjoyed seeing Tatsuya destroy the egos of all those arrogant pricks and being a general badass.
It's no more racist than any given Hollywood action movie. The series takes place in a World that's heavily divided in order to the prevent defection of powerful magicians. Every country in this world is very us vs them. But at the same time you have plenty of mixed raced characters like Leo and Erika and they're never portrayed as being lesser for it. |
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Yuki Imouto
 Posts: 33 |
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It's not our fault it has no dub, it's Aniplex's. They were idiots anyway.
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Sahmbahdeh
Posts: 713 |
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My biggest issue with Mahouka as a whole is that everything the show has going for it eventually becomes a flaw down the line. Tatsuya's a stoic, independent, forward-looking MC? Too bad his stoicism becomes his only defining characteristic and he has basically no personality or development. He's a really powerful magician who sticks it to the system? Sucks that he's revealed to be overpowered well past the point of BS. The magic-as-science angle is really thoroughly explored? Unfortunately, they focus on it so much that it becomes mind-numbingly boring mumbo-jumbo that does nothing to further the plot or themes.
And that's not even counting the other problems with the show that aren't a result of a good thing becoming bad. The theme of class discrimination, which was the most well-handled and promising part of the show is dropped after the first arc. All of the other side characters are so much more interesting than Tatsuya and Miyuki, the incest angle is uncomfortable and the "ending" is a typical read-the-LNs cliffhanger. I only finished it because the side characters and their relationships are interesting, the production values are good throughout and I wanted desperately for it to become like the beginning again. Good luck, Rebecca. |
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Tuor_of_Gondolin
 Posts: 3524 Location: Bellevue, WA |
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What the review fails to state strongly enough (because it is impossible to state it strongly enough), is just how awesome Tatsuya is. I mean, every time we think we've got a handle on just how incredibly awesome he is, he does something that is EVEN MORE AWESOME! This cycle pretty much covers the entirety of the show, and in the end we are left with the sad fact that even the word "awesome" just falls short of properly describing Tatsuya, but it is still the only word we have for him.
Really, everyone should watch this show, and then live the rest of your lives knowing you will never possess a fraction of the awesomeness that Tatsuya does just going about his daily routine. |
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AksaraKishou
Posts: 1415 Location: End of the World |
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I can see where people are coming...BUT let me say a few things to people who have, in previous comments, stated a few of the "flaws" of the show.
I don't think that what follows is spoilers but i will put like it just in case. spoiler[ 1st- Tatsuya doesn't have personality.... a few of you have used wuite a few adjectives to describe him, so you can't say he a card board MC. Also he won't get all that much developmente emotional spectrum wise because of a few things that happened in his childhood (i think kyoko mentioned this agains the No Head Dragons). 2th - Miyuki- she too doesn't have that much development because...she has already had it... is she overl reliant on her brother... a bit...is she weak?...no?... because it was stated that she was one of the best magicians(why?-Vol.16  ) of the decade or something like that.
3th- the racism- why? is it because of the lack of ethnic diversity?... the series is based in the future where magic is very important. Because of that the countries don't want their magicians running around, so they confine them to their borders... why is Erika and Leo in Japan then? Because they have family in japan. <.< 4th- the thing about the Blooms and Weeds problem having been droped...it wasn't droped or disregarded... it will be adressed and a few surprises will come out of it... Because of this "flaws" and a few other more, i think the series should have 1 more season... Only 4 volumes were adapted ... to 24 episodes... The LN is going to the 17th Volume in October, and on the same month the official eng translation will be out... coupled with the high volume of sales... i think it is possible that the series might have a new season ( even if only 12 ep's) ] |
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Shiroi Hane
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 7585 Location: Wales |
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I have to say I really like this series. I know full well there are many and varied problems with it but, on the whole, for me it just works.
For whatever reason it is just the term they use to translate the "rettousei" of the title and is, IIRC, mentioned once in the opening episode narration as referring to the second course students in general.
There is a habit of using CG models for crowds and the like. The "highlight"of this was ballroom dancing later the series which I can only hope they improved on for the discs. |
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SquadmemberRitsu
Posts: 1391 |
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Even less that also carried themselves around with an air of sophistication as if to say 'I'm not like those other Hollywood action movies. I'm better than that' while simultaneously succumbing to the exact same problems to an even worse degree. Although I'm not going to completely rule out the possibility that a movie like that exists because it probably does. |
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Raebo101
 Posts: 818 |
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Then I don't wanna watch it! YOU CAN'T MAKE ME! 
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EighteenSky
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Wasn't expecting a review of this since no one gave a positive first impression in the Preview Guide for it way back when (at least I don't recall anyone doing so) so was pleasantly surprised when the review turns out to be positive.
To be honest no series is.
Read most of the volumes and don't recall it ever being mentioned what it's purpose is for but I like it, a lot. Actually the whole uniform is stylish, one of the best I've seen in a series.
Seen someone mention this on MAL but never saw their reasons for this. Care to clarify? Nothing I've read nor watched seem to suggest this in the slightest. |
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T.Silver
Posts: 163 |
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One thing as a major Light Novel fan of this series that I was disappointed with the anime adaption is how they cut or neglected parts of Tatsuya's character.
spoiler[First off they completely left out for how he was initially hesitant to be friendly with anyone. See Tatsuya has a inferiority complex when it comes to dealing with ordinary and mundane things and often has a hard time with excepting goodwill from other people, because he can't understand why anyone could see him in a positive light. He's only really adept at sensing hostility, because growing up he was born a hostile environment where his entire family(with the exception of a handful of family members) degraded him and shunned him. Hell even Miyuki treated him poorly until a certain incident 3 years prior to where to the story begins. For example. when he initially met Mayumi, he was expecting to be unfriendly degraded as Weed, but he instead received words of praise and admiration with a friendly smile. Even after that he was afraid and hesitant to be friendly with her, because in his heart he couldn't trust her. However through more interactions he finally warms up to her and they become close friends.] spoiler[Another is that Tatsuya is not emotionless. When he was 6 years old, his aunt and mother conducted a experiment to create a artificial magic calculation area, so Tatsuya can use other magic besides his innate abilities(Decomposition, Regrowth, Elemental sight) and to erase most of his strong emotions, so he doesn't run into a situation where he is overcome by emotion and lets his power run wild. The one strong emotion they left was sibling love for his little sister Miyuki, the primary reason they did this was so Tatsuya would always be chained to the Yotsuba clan. Like I said earlier, they only erased his strong emotions, so he is still able to feel emotions(otherwise he wouldn't be able to make care for other people , such as his friends) its just that he can't feel the extremes like hatred, Jealousy, Love, etc. ] It wasn't just Tatsuya, but other characters like Erika and Mayumi had development and dynamics cut from the anime, which irritates me as a major fan of the series. Even as I say this, I still enjoyed the anime, but if adapted properly it could have went from good to great easily. The complaints about incest: As of 16 Light Novel volumes, there has been no acts of incest. Tatsuya still only see's Miyuki as his younger sister and he doesn't see her as a woman so far in the story. Tatsuya has also shown attraction to other females in the story such as Mayumi, Erika, and Lina. spoiler[Miyuki is in fact Tatsuya's blood related Sister, however the Yotsuba clan genetically modified her to an extent that they can't even be considered cousins, so she was esentially created to be Tatsuya's bride]. Now I understand that these points are all from the light novel and the anime didn't cover these properly(the spoiler is Light Novel only), but this is just to clear up misconceptions from anime only viewers and to counter the point that this is a incest story, which that has yet to be determined and could very well not follow that route. The complaints about this story being racist: I still don't understand where this is coming from. Is it how Magican's are being treated differently from regular humans or is it how the Great Asian Alliance is made out to be the villains? Or is it something else? Please elaborate on this if you have this viewpoint. |
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