I hope you’re ready to learn some very important things about the plot. ‘Cause I didn’t. I didn’t learn a goddamn thing.

Episode summary: Ah, why bother?

Notes:

• These spell names never make any sense. When Mui casts “Melt Projection,” her gun grows bigger and shoots out one giant shot of… uh, magic, I hope:

Naturally, her foe dodges the attack with ease. In response to this, Mui casts “Full Meteor,” which looks like this instead:

Maybe a better name would’ve been “Golden Shower.”

• Three ugly witches then show up out of nowhere to save Mui’s ass. Maybe they’re rejects from the other crappy show this season about witches. Anyway, I guess the tenth episode is the perfect time to start introducing new characters. Like Mui, they also cast random spells that you’re just now hearing about for the very first time. Honestly, the only spell that has ever stuck around for any significant length of time is “Liberate.”

• What the hell is wrong with the one on the right:

Camelot? And marshmallows from Telmar? Where exactly are these exotic locations? I thought the Ruined World was falling apart, and all that remains in it was Japan.

• Oh, the head witch used to be Tsuganashi’s ex-girlfriend. I’m not sure why this is an important bit of information for us to know, but it’s apparently important enough that Mui just has to bring it up! Not only that, she looks so annoyed too at the sight of her brother’s ex-girlfriend! I guess somebody’s jealous.

• Really?

Did she really have to cosplay as a nurse in order to visit Takeshi in the infirmary? Oh right, she didn’t have a spare set of clothes to change into, and this was all they had in Camelot. In fact, this is Camelot:

Again, where on earth in the Ruined World are these places? Well, it turns out that Camelot is in the Living World. Yep. At this point, you have to really wonder why the show even bothered to have a Ruined World to begin with.

• But before our two lovebirds can get too intimate with each other, Kazumi shows up outta nowhere to whine about his missing imouto. Hey man, it was your fault she acquired magic in the first place. But that wasn’t enough. Oh no… He had to go and enroll his sister at Subaru Academy, which is practically a deathtrap from what I can tell.

• In any case, the show realizes that last week’s episode was just too exciting! If you don’t believe me, you can read all about how exciting it was in the post I wrote on it! But yeah, last week’s episode was too exciting, so this week’s episode is going to have to slow down and feed us delicious, fulfilling exposition instead. We’ve already seen what happened to Futaba, Kazumi’s dear imouto. Now, let’s sit around, drink tea, and talk about all the other riveting subjects that I’m sure you’re just dying to hear all about.

• Like… what ever happened to the headmistress of the school? Nobody knows!

• Where did all the students go? Somewhere else, but not you guys! You guys just stay here in Camelot!

• What about Kurumi? Shrug, it’s hard to find her. So we’ll just… we’ll just, uh…

…sit here and do nothing. Yay, three cheers for exposition!

• Wait, we’re not done with the exposition just yet. Apparently, Camelot is a safe haven for women and women only. A ‘Community’ with a capital ‘C,’ mister:

That means this is Serious. As such, Takeshi needs to get his male privilege outta there as quick as he can.

• Meanwhile, the bad guys are gathering for some super important rally in a… medieval castle?

W…where are we again? Is this still the Ruined World? Ah man, who really cares anymore…?

• C’mon, you’re standing in broad daylight:

So why is the lighting so goddamn poor? Shit, this is an anime. As such, there isn’t even a reason to worry about the “lighting conditions.” What is this amateurish bullshit, Madhouse?

• Elsewhere, we see Kippei travel to an unknown location…

…to murder an unknown old man.

Oh right, he’s the “O Great Wiseman.” How could I have not realized this? All this exposition and I still have no clue what’s happening with the plot. Well then, you know what this calls for! More exposition!

Kippei: “No, no. In order to achieve Kazuma’s goal, we can’t have your little Gift impeding us in this world. That’s why we’ll need you to die as well. His wish is really simple. He just wants to eliminate Wizard Brace and the Seven Communities and remake everything again from the start. He’ll rebuild the world from the ground up. Yes, it will be a revolution.
O Great Wiseman: “Foolish…”

Kippei: “Is it? It seems very simple to me. A world made for magicians. A world where there is no one trying to hide the truth. In such a world, we’d have no need to fight wars, and no other magicians would have to be wounded or killed in battle. You see?”
O Great Wiseman: “Do you really believe such foolish fantasies could possibly…”
Kippei: “Probably not. That’s why our wars continue.”

Huh… oh, that’s right, I was writing a post. Yaaaaaawwwwn, just gimme a minute…

Kippei: “Both the Ruined World and Living World will run red with the blood of magicians.”

Makes sense. We’ll kill all the magicians so that the magicians will no longer have to go to war with each other. Perfect!

• Kippei might be done, but now it’s Takeshi’s turn to feed us more exposition! Strap yourselves in, guys!

• Apparently, the “O Great Wiseman” was solely responsible for keeping magicians from engaging in full-scale warfare with each other in the Living World. So if it was so fucking easy for Kippei to murder the guy in this week’s episode, why didn’t he do this before? Why did the Trailers have to wait until Kazuma had awaken before Kippei could single-handedly assassinate the one person that was holding these two fragile worlds from completely falling apart?

• So Takeshi leaves the infirmary early to pay a visit to his eternally pissed-off mother. Why? Because she’s going to now train him in the ways of magic. God, this show is incestuous. Seriously though, she’s always pissed off:

• It doesn’t take long for our heroes to convince Takeshi’s mother to take up his training. All they had to do is to present her with some ring.

• His mom then questions his resolve, so our hero rambles on and on with what basically amounts to a statement of purpose. Yeah, it’s about as interesting as reading a resume. But despite this, there’s an insert song in the background, so you just know this is supposed to be a powerful, poignant scene!

• Training montage! We also learn that Takeshi’s mother is training him at the cost of her own life. Dun dun dun. Takeshi doesn’t know this, however, so he’s busy yuk’ing it up with his girlfriend:

• So all episode long, Mui’s been holding onto to some stupid jewel-like thing. It turns out that the object can be used to teleport directly to the Trailers’ hideout. She even knows this, and yet she decided to say nothing until now. Why? Because she didn’t want Takeshi to go after the Trailers in his current state. Uh, but you could’ve told other people… Like your brother. It’s not like Takeshi’s the biggest, baddest magician on the Wizard Brace side. It’s not like no one else can go on a mission to save Kurumi. So why did Mui keep it all to herself? It’s not like Kurumi isn’t her friend. They’re roommates, for Christ’s sakes. But despite this, Mui’s been holding onto that damn object for God only knows how long. I mean, she picked it up at the very start of the episode. We know Takeshi was out cold from his injuries for three whole days. Then he had to train with his mother for some unspecified amount of days as well. In other words, Mui basically had the key to saving Kurumi on her for at least a week or so, and she never felt the need to tell anybody about it. I can understand not wanting to burden Takeshi with the knowledge, but she told nobody!

• Mui apologizes to Takeshi for getting him involved in this mess. Our hero then consoles her. Blah blah blah. This is what it feels like to try to make Mahou Sensou sound interesting:

• We briefly visit Kurumi before the episode ends. Apparently, she’s still stuck looking like Takeshi:

Hey, her mother always warn that her face would get stuck like that if she didn’t stop doing it.