So let’s make him stronger. Yeah, that’s our Gary Stu blocking a hail of bullets with just his right hand. After weeks and weeks of buildup, the bad guys have finally decided to attack. Unfortunately, this is Tatsuya’s world, so he just karate chops the guy’s arms clean off. No, really. Not only that, Tatsuya seems proud of his handiwork. Yeah, yeah… everyone was like, “Oh, you haven’t seen anything yet,” but I have. I have, man, I have. This is nothing we haven’t seen before. This is the same overpowered-as-fuck Gary Stu that we’ve been watching since the first episode. And same as it was in the first episode, the action is still as boring and uninspired than ever. Tatsuya turns and looks in someone’s direction, then they die. Yawn. Anyway, let’s do what I’ve always done with Mahouka posts…
— Does Miyuki even care that her brother has just killed someone before her very eyes? Even if this someone is just a bad guy — even if you try to claim that the bad guy hasn’t actually been killed — watching someone lose an arm is, uh, not pleasant. But Miyuki is just as robotic as her brother! Hell, maybe even worse! Do you want to know the first thing that comes out of that girl’s mouth? It’s this: “Brother, let me remove those bloodstains.” Holy shit, at least make her human. Yeah, she wants to bang her brother. Yeah, she hasn’t been a well-developed character. Yeah, she has nothing to contribute to the story. But man, she’s even less human than the Gary Stu himself. Let me remove those bloodstains? Let me remove those bloodstains?! Someone just lost their fucking arm!
— So Miyuki presses a button, Tatsuya shimmers for a bit, and now his uniform is all clean again. What. Is. This?
— Somehow, Miyuki’s sudden need to do her brother’s laundry distracts the bad guys enough for the rest of the students to safely fight back against these men with assault rifles. Yeah man, the evil Chinese badmen may have been planning this attack for months and months, making sure that everything goes smoothly. But it’s okay! Just relax! They’re foreigners with puny brains, so they’ll be easily confused by our women’s superior washing skills!
— Next thing I see, the Chinese badmen are all in cuffs. Cuffs! A bunch of trained soldiers with assault rifles have lost this battle, and the good guys didn’t even incur a single casualty! We can thank Miyuki’s domestic prowess for that!
— Tatsuya’s harem immediately rushes to his side, wondering whether or not those bullets had hurt him. Yo, you’re gazing upon a golden god. Pay some damn respect! These bullets obviously symbolize the foreigners’ tiny dicks, and all the tiny dicks in the world can’t dent this Gary Stu’s masculine superiority!
— Our Gary Stu and his friends were just about to leave and kick some terrorist ass when Curious George suddenly pipes up. He thinks Tatsuya had just use some super top-secret ability, but of course, if it’s so top-secret, then how come Curious George even knows anything about it? It turns out Curious George doesn’t know what he’s talking about, so Tatsuya’s technique is even more top-secret! The Gary Stu then storms out of the place. Gosh darn, we don’t get a dry and boring explanation of his magical abilities? Why? What’s wrong, Mahouka? What’s gotten into you?
— Outside, explosions rock the streets, but the streets are empty anyway, so who cares? We eventually cut to some people running away from the Chinese badmen with their assault rifles, but c’mon! Just send high school kids after them, and the Chinese badmen will be subdued. Easy peasy! Elsewhere, we see that the highways are magically are clogged even though every other time we’ve seen highways in this damn anime, they’ve been empty as fuck.
— Azusa apparently has the power to calm everyone down. This basically involves her summoning a green bow of energy and plucking the drawstring. In doing so, waves of green light washes over the room, then everyone just calms down just like that. Funny thing is, Mayumi claimed she would take responsibility for Azusa’s actions, implying that the lattter was about to do something totally forbidden and unethical. But like everything else in Mahouka, even the forbidden is boring as fuck.
— The city is under attack from an unidentified ship! The Chinese badmen have come over on a boat to fuck us! Not only that, they’ve been living amongst us this entire time! I told you guys we should’ve built a giant fence around the island!
— Why does Mayumi even need to make this speech? Why not just show us shots of the students evacuating from the convention hall? That would’ve been enough. I don’t need to know that there’s a rescue ship in so-and-so pier. I don’t need to know that some underground shelter might not withstand an assault from the enemy. This is all superfluous details that the audience can just fill in for themselves. Stick to the action, man. Let the action speak for itself. You don’t need to spell everything out as a writer, especially when certain things are just fucking obvious.
— Elsewhere, the Shiba siblings continue to be OP as all hell. All Miyuki does is close her eyes, and she somehow freezes all of the enemies’ bullets around her. This shit isn’t even fun to watch. But my question is, if Miyuki can do this, why didn’t anyone else think to do the same thing? Why haven’t the actual professionals, i.e. the people actually trained and hired to fight back against the terrorists, even come close to doing anything remotely as useful as instantly freezing all the fucking bullets in the invading army’s arsenal? And if your defense is that Miyuki is stronger than these “professionals,” then why is she even attending high school? What’s even the point!
— Tatsuya proceeds to run through the enemy… literally. Yeah, your eyes aren’t fooling you. The Gary Stu is karate chopping the bad guys in half. All of a sudden, Mahouka is just as violent and gratuitous as Akame ga Kill! We’re just missing the latter’s penchant for raping women.
— The rest of the students proceed to kick terrorist ass too. And by kick terrorist ass, I really mean that they’re killing people. Just high schoolers killing people like it’s no big deal. Sure, Mizuki and Honoka look all concerned and shit, but Erika acts like she’s a battle-hardened veteran. I mean, it makes some sense at least that our Gary Stu wouldn’t bat an eyelash at all this bloodshed. After all, he’s a robot, he has no emotions, blah blah blah. But what’s the deal with the likes of Erika and Mikihiko? How can they just kill people and act like it’s no big deal? Are they robots like the Gary Stu too? Or is this just shit writing? Leo even has the gall to complain that he didn’t get the chance to participate, i.e. he didn’t get the chance to kill people. Gosh darn, I wanted to chop those foreigners in half too! Why did you guys have to hog all the kills?!
— Shizuku brings her friends to the convention hall’s VIP room, where they’ll magically be able to get all sorts of invaluable information about the bad guys and what they’re up to. Just like that, you guys, just like that. She even knows the access code to the room. It’s so convenient!
— For the next few minutes, the characters just stand around and talk. Well, what else is new, right? Madhouse even passes up a prime opportunity to show us some action. For instance, remember how everyone was being evacuated through an underground passage? Well, Tatsuya is concerned that they’ll run into the enemy forces down there. A few minutes later, one of the girls tells us that Tatsuya was right, but it’s okay! Hattori is also doing down there, and the small enemy force will be taken care of soon enough. That’s it. Madhouse could have shown us a battle that doesn’t involve the Gary Stu, but nah. Apparently, a couple sentences on the matter will suffice. Since the anime doesn’t even want to bother animating a potential battle, let’s just skip ahead in the episode.
— Everyone’s busy talking about what they should do next, but Tatsuya somehow senses that a truck is headed right for them! The truck is not even close, but ah, that’s right! The Gary Stu is omniscient! But don’t forget that he’s omnipotent too, because by merely staring in the direction of the truck with his gun-shaped CAD extended, the entire vehicle literally vanishes into thin air, leaving behind just a single Chinese badman. Magic!
— JUMANJI ON THE MOVE!
— He finds that a bunch of missiles are headed the convention’s way! But that’s okay! If there’s anyone out there as beastly as the Gary Stu himself, it’s none other than Jumanji-kun! And just like that, the missiles explode in the air all thanks to yet another high schooler. It’s like one big contest to see who can be the most boring person at this school? Oh yeah? You can vaporize an entire truck? Well, look at me! I’m vaporizing missiles!
— More assholes meet up in the conference room to discuss troop movements and shit. Pass.
— Eventually, Tatsuya’s classmates learn that he’s actually an officer in the JSDF, so they gasp in shock and shit. Not Jumanji, though. Nothing shakes this man!
— As a soldier, Tatsuya must mobilize in defense as well. But right before he leaves, Miyuki calls out to him. He then takes a knee before her, so that she can lean down and kiss his forehead. By doing so, the entire room is awash in light and… wind? That’s right! Tatsuya’s limiter has just been removed! You thought the Gary Stu was overpowered before? Well gosh, he was just being held in check. But thanks to the power of incest, Tatsuya will now beast it up. Get ready, Chinese badmen!
SSJ Gary Stu has just been unleashed!
Moe Sucks 
Release the kraken!
Next episode, mobile suit. I pity the vilains, really.
They are the heroes Mahouka needed all along. Mahouka is actually a grim-derp story about a dystopian society, in which unless you bow to the strong, you’ll branded as a traitor or be forever condemned to the underclass.
So we are going to see the infamous God level OP-ness of Tatsuya. I expected Tatsuya to be cleanier in his decapitations. I don’t know why famboys support Tatsuya, in the long run, the characters technically hate us (foreigners reading the story)… and maybe the Japanese themselves.
The Jumanji guy looks cool though. Maybe because he shares his name with a game, a book, a movie, etc.
OMFG Mahouka has really become hilarious! Great post as usually too, it really clicked well with me. I couldn’t suppress my laughter as I read this and thought back to this episode. It’s just great how ridiculous Tatsuya is getting. That whole OMFG I STAND THERE AND CALM CATCH DA BULLETS LIKE A BADASS combined with “Onii-sama let me clean those bloodstains!” was just too much. AND that’s not even the start of it! HE’S BEEN UNDER A LIMITER ALL THIS TIME! BUHAHAHAHA Goddamit I can’t wait for next episode. It’s always a blast for me to see how stupidly overpowered Tatsuya is.
Still, Mahouka could REALLY do with some actual antagonists. All of the current antagonists so far have just been like everything else in this story, conduits to show TAT-STU-YA’s OVERWHELMING GODLIKE POWER. Antagonists with a bit of power or threat to them would serve the objective of deifying Tatsuya even more than nameless mooks though.
@Akumaten lmao I hope you’re not serious about the whole “political” aspects to Mahouka. Taking any kind of politics presented in Mahouka seriously is the height of folly. It’s just ridiculous and conveniently contrived random shit put there to show off Tatsuya as the second coming. Trying to read into it as some kind of “message” the author is trying to send is just lol. I mean who gives a shit?
I skipped your Mahouka’s posts all this time, since I have dropped the anime since episode 1, but the animated gif manages to make me read. And I really laughed a lot. I have heard that some people said that he’s the most Gary Stu character of all times, and it seems that they are correct.
Not only he’s omnipotent, he’s also omniscient. I wonder if he’s omnipresent too?
All hail God Tatsuya!
Yes he is. He’s literally involved in everything and anything that happens in the story and is always the first to appear whenever the day needs to be saved.
Haha~ another funny review :D These always cracked me up~
well, let’s just correct few things :
– Tatsuya was using his right hand
– Miyuki’s precision freezing was only possible because data relayed through Tatsuya’s Elemental Sight
– It wasn’t Jumonji who destroyed the missiles, he only deployed barriers but before the missiles hit, Sanada destroyed them
Anyway, DESTROY ALL CHINESE BADMEN! :D
I can’t really decide which “heroine” is the most puke-worthy of this season: pathetic tsun~ Sinon or boring-as-fuck robo bro-con Miyuki. I’m leaning to the latter, everything about her in last week and this week’s episode were mind-blowingly stupid.
It’s an incredible feat of making something fantastical like magic into something so boring. At least that’s one thing the writer unintentionally achieved. Needless to say, absolutely failed at everything else.
I still can’t believe something like Mahouka got green-lit for animation. What kind of requisites are needed nowadays for an anime? Apparently it’s just throwing words on a page and having it sell well (God knows how). It doesn’t need to make any type of sense or excitement. It’s just embarrassing to think about what anime’s going to be like five years from now.
I think Sinon is much worse! Miyuki might be robot-like, but at least she’s not straight up annoying. Sinon’s “trauma” is so contrived and unrealistic it makes me want to avert my eyes. Then she turns into a bawling damsel in distress melting in Kirito’s arms when she was presented as a badass sniper. Mahouka at least has consistency. Tatsuya is a THE TERMINATOR and has played it straight the whole season.
lol as for the quality of anime… entertainment value and popularity DOES NOT equal high quality or well written. Mahouka’s LN is liked by many for various reasons, and the anime is highly entertaining (Well for me and others at least) despite being pretty stupid and full of bullshit. Stuff makes money for a reason after all. You CAN conclude that everyone else’ tastes are shit and you + some small core of ELITES are ENLIGHTENED but it makes much more sense to see why people like what looks like dumb shit to you and roll with it. You don’t have to conform though.
The magic in Mahouka actually isn’t that bad. At least when they aren’t boring the hell out of people with long techno babbles of pesudo-scientific magic bullshit. God those parts suck, but when they’re straight up showing the magic it’s not much different from any other show.
But if there’s one truth of life we can take away from the show is that the Chinese are the shittiest scum of the Earth and deserve to be wiped out or at least ruled by the superior NIPPON-JIN.
Oh, too real? “Geopolitics” my ass. It’s thinly veiled racism through and through.
1. The source material is popular.
2. Go back to the first point.
the light novel is boring, the anime is snorefest and E Minor’s post is strangely more entertaining (even more than the SAO one).
i guess i should not complain too much because i get what is good for me at least. oh well… i rather watch Devon kev Dev Mahadev now than this arse anime.
Mahouka is he show that shows you genocide can be fun, kids! How educational!
The writer must’ve gotten a chub after reading about Nanjing. Just saying.
Part of me really just wants the animators to rebel against this shit and have the last episode be about a normal guy realizing he is in a created world by Tatstuya, who has crafted fake robot people to love and adore him.
“Your insane Tatstuya! None of this is real! Your playing god and killing people for your own sick fantasy! Your a lunatic-!” *Gets chopped in half by Tatstuya, his sister looks at him with her cold dead fish eyes*
“I love you”
The person who makes this show needs counseling. Some one who writes murder this gratuitous towards another race can not be mentally healthy. At least in akami the people being chopped to bits usually are murdering scum bags. These people have family’s and crap. Here we have high schoolers making sport of killing people with out even batting a eye I don’t even. Hey that guys arm is chopped off bro let me wipe that blood off.
3edgy5me
In conjunction with Madhouse
When I see Alluka give Killua a kiss on the cheek, “Aww….that’s so sweet”
When I see Miyuki kissing Tatsuya, “uhhhggg…disusting. Whatever, they should fuck already”
Also
Did Azusa use Senritsu/Melody’s Nen ability?
okay… so why does he needs to have his “limiter” removed? Isnt he OP enough? or does that mean that the next enemies are strong enough to touch him? Which is why he needs to power up?
‘Cause Mahouka needs to finish out on a high, and I guess the only other way for Tatsuya to be even more OP is to pretend as though he’s had a limiter on him the entire time.
It’s funny you mentioned rape, because there is, in one arc they explain that their aunt was raped when she was a teenager (by foreigners no less), so it is like Akame ga Kill!.
Hellsing Ultimate premiered last night and it was much, much more entertaining than this.
Tatsuya would get pulverized by Alucard in ten seconds flat. At least it’s genuinely interesting to see Alucard curb stomp everything.
Alucard is the OG. There’s so much established mythos and material about him.
Tatsuya? Cram as much “overpowered” in these episodes as we can.
Maheśvara as Hindu deity is far more relevant than OG, he is destroyer an creator of worlds after all.
Sir, you only sees Mahadev’s aspect in Rudra form. you dismissed his aspect as the Bole Nath (Kind God who is easily pleased and generous), Nataraj (Cosmic Dancer and Art Lover with damaru in his Trishul), Nilanthak (he who sacrifice his body and swallow the most poisonous toxic of Samudra Mantham to neutralize it), Pashupath (The Protector of Dharma).
Tatsuya in Mahouka is a character filled with many inconsistency just for the rule of cool (which in the end only make him suck). even Alucard from Hellsing and Ryo Saeba from City Hunter are more consistent and realistic than him
No.. I hate to admit it but Alucard would just get vaporized into nothingness from 1200 meters away, that’s how stupidly overpowered Tatsuya is.
Alucard has much more STYLE than Tatsuya though. It’s fun to watch Alucard pull his crazy shenanigans. But yeah Alucard does have a valid reason to be as powerful as he is.
I know Tatsuya is supposed to be some Shiva expy or some shit like that, but he’s crammed full of powers. Having a special ability or two is fine (Just look at Touma and his FIST OF FURY) but you need some weaknesses to balance them out. Nothing short of exploding his brain completely will kill Tatsuya, and even then it’s almost impossible to take him by surprise thanks to his nigh-omniscient Elemental Sight ability. The ironic thing is that Tatsuya is supposed to be limited and unable to use normal magician’s spells. He has decomposition/regrowth, but with that and basic spell he can pretty much do anything combat wise haha.
@Caustic
Well actually Tatsuya could at least get a tie with him or win, but he wouldn’t lose against Alucard, you’ll come to know why in the next two episodes.
As for the review, the truth is Madhouse kind of ruined the series, yes the LN is FULL of explanations of magics and many other things, but it’s a freaking novel it’s all text, it’s the job of the studio to choose what to animate and what to leave out, they’ve just been animating the wrong things and not summarizing ANYTHING that could be. Especially with episode 24 it could’ve been brilliant, but they had to completely suck all the tension from the events, make them talk for an entire minute to say something that could either be ignored entirely or explained in 10 seconds.
“Does Miyuki even care that her brother has just killed someone before her very eyes”
This might seem like bad writing, but the author was trying to convey that to Tatsuya and Miyuki, it is a trivial thing to kill someone for the sake of self defense, it really is to them.
“Yeah man, the evil Chinese badmen may have been planning this attack for months and months, making sure that everything goes smoothly. But it’s okay! Just relax! They’re foreigners with puny brains, so they’ll be easily confused by our women’s superior washing skills!”
They were shocked by what Tatsuya did rather than Miyuki, yes they planned this for months but the guys that barged in are just low level soldiers and they did not expect to find a dude who can decompose bullets with his hands, so they were out of it for a bit.
“Funny thing is, Mayumi claimed she would take responsibility for Azusa’s actions, implying that the lattter was about to do something totally forbidden and unethical”
In mahouka it is unethical to use magic that interferes with a person’s mind, that is why Mayumi said she would take responsability.
” Elsewhere, the Shiba siblings continue to be OP as all hell. All Miyuki does is close her eyes, and she somehow freezes all of the enemies’ bullets around her. This shit isn’t even fun to watch. But my question is, if Miyuki can do this, why didn’t anyone else think to do the same thing? Why haven’t the actual professionals, i.e. the people actually trained and hired to fight back against the terrorists, even come close to doing anything remotely as useful as instantly freezing all the fucking bullets in the invading army’s arsenal? And if your defense is that Miyuki is stronger than these “professionals,” then why is she even attending high school? What’s even the point!”
No one else is doing it because they can’t. And yes the teachers and all ARE less skilled than some of the top students. Magic talent in mahouka is hereditary, you can spend decades training something and if someone else’s talent in the field is higher than you he’ll surpass you, it’s just how it is. Miyuki happens to have one of the highest magical powers in the world so of course the teachers can’t do these things. Now as to why the students are coming to school if they’re so good, first of all this kind of skill that can surpass the teachers is only displayed by a select few prodigies and second, being good at the practical applications of something doesn’t mean you have complete understanding of its inner workings and theories, plus magic has many categories(mental, freezing, ice, fire, plasma, decomposition, etc) so no one is all knowing and there is always more to learn. Also the school has useful tools to train your magic and create important relationships other future magicians.
“The rest of the students proceed to kick terrorist ass too. And by kick terrorist ass, I really mean that they’re killing people. Just high schoolers killing people like it’s no big deal. Sure, Mizuki and Honoka look all concerned and shit, but Erika acts like she’s a battle-hardened veteran. I mean, it makes some sense at least that our Gary Stu wouldn’t bat an eyelash at all this bloodshed. After all, he’s a robot, he has no emotions, blah blah blah. But what’s the deal with the likes of Erika and Mikihiko? How can they just kill people and act like it’s no big deal? Are they robots like the Gary Stu too? ”
The problem here is that when you think of high schoolers you immediately think of the ones in our world and the ones in the mahouka verse that attend ordinary schools, they’re completely different. In mahouka the absolute majority of high schoolers who attend magic high schools have plans to join the military or something that involves combat, they’ve been training for this for years and years and disciplining themselves. Erika and Miki’s case is even more special since both of them belong to important magic clans of japan, they’ve already killed people in the past because that’s what magic clans do, they’re not regular teenagers, FAR from it.
“– Everyone’s busy talking about what they should do next, but Tatsuya somehow senses that a truck is headed right for them! The truck is not even close, but ah, that’s right! The Gary Stu is omniscient! But don’t forget that he’s omnipotent too, because by merely staring in the direction of the truck with his gun-shaped CAD extended, the entire vehicle literally vanishes into thin air, leaving behind just a single Chinese badman. Magic!”
Tatsua is a master martial artist/fighter/assasin, he has a decade of experience in the field and his sixth sense is honed to the limit so he was able to sense that something is wrong but didn’t know exactly what it is. This is something that wasn’t explained in the anime but his Elemental Sight ability gives Tatsuya the ability to not only detect and read magic activation sequences, it also allows him to “scan” the area around him to find out what’s in it and if he sees anything through this type of sight it’s just as good as seeing it with his eyes and so he can aim at it.
Literally all of Tatsuya’s powers have an explanation and aren’t just random power ups, in fact they all belongs to either Elemental Sight/Decomposition/Restoration/Flash Cast, anything you see is an extension of this.
You keep saying over and over that so-and-so wasn’t explained in the anime, and, honestly, that’s all that matters. I’m not talking about the light novels; I’m talking about the anime. No offense, but if your defense relies upon the source material, I don’t really care. Maybe everything makes more sense in the light novels. Cool. But that’s not my concern.
I do agree that the adaptation could’ve done much better this. I just had the impression that you were also talking about the LN, I must’ve misunderstood.
I almost never talk about a show’s source material. If I ever refer to a show’s writer, it’s often in reference to the screenwriter, the person whose job is to adapt the source material to the new medium. Plus, I have never nor will I ever read Mahouka’s LNs so I can’t comment on them anyway.
I wonder, what makes you, a non-Japanese, a fan of this show. As mentioned by Akumaten, the portrayal of foreign folk here is war propaganda-tier.
To be honest, I can’t take the credit. Before the beginning of the season, this claim was stated by Enginering Student on ANN, one of the translators of the Mahouka light novel. As well seeing Tatsuya’s utter lack of sympathy, empathy, holier than thou selfishness through his actions backs it up.
Believe it or not, there are people who approve of this right winged bullshit. They think it’s OK if you assume China to be similar to something like Mordor or since the event doesn’t takes place in current world. And there is another group who thinks that adding any kinds of politics (forgetting how much it portrays heoes as stupid bigots) makes the story well researched, mature & better than one of those “save the world from evil” stories. I’ve seen some rather negative portrayal of foreign nations in Stand Alone Complex, but Japan was much worse there. Here it is bigger mary suetopia than even the most idealistic version or Arthurian court.
Well, no offense here but after reading your explanation,I have to say that the source material for this shitty animation is just bad writing…pure bad writing,wow.
And here I think this Gary Stu story is just another bad novel but it appear to be much worse, urgghh
Anyways,thanks you very much your post is very helpful.
I know you said you don’t care for the LNs but had to quote something on here taken directly from the last volume 13:
“The morning of the fourth day of competition. In the girls’ Ice Pillars Break solo, Miyuki won both matches of the finals in under one minute.
Her victories were so decisive there was some worry that she might have traumatized her opponents, however, Miyuki did not seem worried over that. And the spectators could not even pay heed to the losers. So charming was Miyuki’s smile that even though they saw that she had forgotten to offer a handshake to her opponents, they became even more entranced with her.”
It’s not even trying to hide how much of a Mary Sue perfect little Miyuki is. How can anyone stomach such a character and call her interesting? She’s more robotic than Tatsuya.