Hint: she did nothing. But that won’t stop the Gary Stu from praising the Mary Sue!
— So the episode opens with the Crimson Prince blowing people up with his magic spells. And by blowing people up, I really mean that their bodies violently contort before turning into a billion, tiny chunks of flesh. What I find odd, however, is that Mahouka has never been this violent before. Even when those Chinese gangsters had endangered Miyuki’s well-being in the previous episode, we simply saw the Gary Stu disintegrate people into, well, static. For whatever reason, however, we’ve kicked things up several notches in just the last two episodes along. In the previous episode, we saw Tatsuya literally chop people in half with his magic. Evil foreigners have always been a prominent threat in the story, but judging by the violence, it seems that the latent anger inherent in the story has finally decided to boil over. Mahouka seemingly relishes the way it’s killing these faceless grunts in the most violent, gruesome way possible.
— By the way, this is not what I meant by action. Action has a certain art to it. This is just a gratuitous smattering of gore.
— I’m sorry, but I can’t ever not laugh when these characters do the Narutard running animation. This is what little kids do when they play at the park, but y’see, they’re kids. They get to be silly and dorky. What’s Mahouka‘s excuse?
— Anyway, we just get to see more high school kids beating up fully-armed adults. Yeah, yeah, these kids truly are stronger than the adults. Bloodline means everything. Yo, I’ve heard it a billion times before from a billion Mahouka apologists before. Just because you say it is so doesn’t mean the anime suddenly stops being any less dumb. “That’s just the way it is!” is not a good enough excuse for this anime and its stupid contrivances to exist.
— An accident nearly prevents Azusa’s group of students from reaching the underground shelter. Look! An adult is being useful!
— The same accident does, however, hinder’s Mayuki’s group, so an inadvertently funny scene unfolds.
Mayumi: “I’m going to call for helicopters from my father’s company.”
Shizuka: “I’ll contact my father, too.”
Sweet, who else wants to call their dads? Yo, don’t get me wrong! The elite upper crust works really hard to get where they are! There’s no privilege here!
— Remember how Miyuki removed Tatsuya’s limiter last week, and he’s supposed to be all SSJ now? Well, this is our Gary Stu in his fancy new bodysuit. He looks more like a gimp than a hero.
— Tatsuya waves one hand across his crotch before shooting down an unmanned drone. Uh-huh, what a badass.
— We return to the Crimson Prince and Curious George. The former confesses that it’s his duty to protect the blah blah blah nobody gives a shit. These two characters have had no development whatsoever, so this scene doesn’t mean anything. This is what happens when you have a cast of billions. None of them gets any significant screentime and they all suffer as a result. Hell, even Miyuki, the Mary Sue at the center of this entire story, has hardly had any development. She’s just there to fawn over her brother’s dick. Nothing more, nothing less. So you’ll excuse me if I can’t help rolling my eyes at a “touching” moment between the Crimson Prince and his prepubescent-looking buddy. If Miyuki doesn’t hold up to scrutiny, then you can just forget about the Crimson Prince. Plus, it’s nothing we haven’t heard before. I’m an Ichijo, so I must do so-and-so. So basically, bloodlines, bloodlines, and more bloodlines. Tell me something I don’t know.
— Plus, the whole bloodlines thing is so lazy. It’s just an arbitrary fact of the matter, y’know? Why is this person strong? Oh, well, he comes from a powerful family! Why does he feel the need to take this action as opposed to that action. Well, y’see, he’s from a powerful family, and that’s all the justification you need! In a story where the character development is already flimsy as shit, the bloodlines thing only serves to weaken the characters even more. They have no compelling motivations. They are not interesting people. They’re just a bunch of “chosen ones,” bound by duty due to the prestige arbitrarily attached to their family names. Well, it sure is easy to come up with a billion characters when this is the case, huh?
— As Curious George watches the Crimson Prince walk away, he says to himself, “You come back safely too, Masaki. Because you’re my one and only commander.” Christ, get a room.
— Mechas show up to give our students a hard time, but it’s okay. Miyuki can just freeze some of them in their tracks. Meanwhile, Leo has been training hard just to pull this sweet technique out. Sweet-looking sword, dude. I’m glad I sat through twenty-four episodes of shit to watch these amazing battle scenes unfold. There’s hardly any choreography here. The mechas simply arrive in convenient packs of two, then one-by-one, our heroes throw themselves at the enemy. Did you just see Leo cut one mecha in half? Now watch Erika cut another mecha in half! Don’t stop now! Here’s Erika’s brother cutting a mecha in half (nice animation, by the way)! Fucking sweet! There are so many people chopping up mechas willy-nilly, I can’t even keep track of who they are anymore! Who’s this guy? Wait, don’t answer that question; I don’t really want to know.
— The characters all pay lip service to the idea that they’re in danger, but it sure as fuck doesn’t look like they are. A battle usually has casualties on both sides. I mean, I’m sure the word ‘attrition’ exists in the Japanese dictionary. I just don’t think it exists in Mahouka, this twisted, soulless version of Japan’s future.
— Those dirty foreigners! I knew it all along!
— Those rescue helicopters finally arrive, but wait, what’s that! Uh… a killer swarm of bugs? But yawn, Tatsuya and gang show up and dispel the swarm. Y’know, I thought some true Gary Stu shit would really go down in this week’s episode. I didn’t know Tatsuya farting at Lu Gonghu would end up being the height of his Almighty Overpoweredness. Uguu, he’s really this Hindu god! Yeah, well, that doesn’t magically make this shit interesting. Who the fuck cares if all he does is kill bugs? I mean, what’s even the point of removing Tatsuya’s limiter last week if all we’ve seen him do is take down an unmanned drone, then play pest control with some fucking bugs? Seriously, what a fucking joke.
— Nothing’s going on. The “bad guy” is just this nebulous Chinese threat that we don’t really get to see. Sure, Chen Xiangshan is out there somewhere, but he looks like a golfer on the course than an actual Chinese operative hoping to bring down the glorious motherland. And even though a war is taking place, there’s no palpable sense of danger whatsoever. It’s like fucking whack-a-mole for Tatsuya’s friends. They literally stood in a square and waited for the mechas to show up. Then they kicked the mechas’ asses. I swear, I could play Asteroids and get a bigger thrill out of it than anything this anime could offer up. I don’t think I’ve even seen a single student get hurt. Just kill me, man. That alone is more dramatic than anything Mahouka could come up with. People think I’m being unfair, but this literally the most boring war I’ve ever witnessed. A child playing with toy dinosaurs and superhero action figures could come up with better action than this. A killer swarm of bugs, man. A killer swarm of bugs.
— Oh look, people finally get hurt. Unfortunately, Madhouse doesn’t even bother to animate it, so we just get some still shots with action lines imposed over them. Secondly, none of the students are ever in trouble. Can hurt a single hair on those precious kids’ heads. Fuck the adults, though. Fuck the lot of them. Seriously though, nobody important ever has to break a sweat. The only victims are these faceless idiots we’ll never see again.
— Jumanji then dons this samurai-esque armor, and tells people to defend the motherland against the foreigners. Yeah, you tell them, dude!
— We see the Crimson Prince again, but I’m well over him. Moving on…
— All of a sudden, one of the groups lowers its defenses because they think they’re about to be rescued. As a result, Takeaki and Kei are “fatally wounded” in their attempts to shield their girlfriends from danger. Anyone with common sense would know that the battle isn’t over, so why did the students suddenly become idiots? Oh, I think you know why. We’re near the end of the episode, so it’s finally time for Tatsuya to save the day. Even though his friends have been having no trouble whatsoever with the evil mechas all episode long, they must now act like idiots and thus allow themselves to get shot.
— But what can the Gary Stu even do?! Easy. He’ll just resurrect them. Yes, Tatsuya can literally bring people back to life. This isn’t even a real story anymore. This is just some sad person’s delirious fantasies. Sad thing is, I’m not even shocked or am I even impressed. This show is so bad, even the resurrection of the dead seems boring.
— Oh well, episode’s over! Tune in next week for the exciting conclusion to Mahouka!
Moe Sucks 
I read this blog, about all the Sues and Stus, the godly OP main character with a ridiculous transformation, a useless female lead, and the fact that their opposition can’t even begin to hold a candle to them.
And suddenly, all I can think of is Sonichu.
“I’m a fucking nucleur bomb that can blow up anything in sight with no remores. I also have the ability to bring back people from the dead….”
I’m done…
READING this is making my head hurt. I’m already seeing enough of this bullshit in Naruto, but here?!?!
Madhouse, I’m so sorry. This shit belongs with A-1 Pictures with the rest of the self-insert bullshit.
If I had to see this AND Captain Earth at the same time, it would destroy me. I can only take one trainwreck per season.
Judging by how you comment on both shows, aren’t you watching both this season?
Technically, I am “watching” this show through your reactions, and watching Captain Earth
Wow, awesome stuff happens each day, man! Only not in this show… never!
Hey, something awesome’s going to happen next week: the show’s going to end!
lolol entertaining as usual. Good post! You know the even funnier thing about the anti-foreigner sentiments is the way the bad guys were handled in the first arc. Since they weren’t CHINESEBADMEN their lives get spared! Hell Miyuki even worried over killing them and Tatsuya probably healed them so they didn’t die. However when the CHINESE badmen invade they get sliced in half etc! To be honest I don’t really care about the veiled racism. Heck I’m Chinese myself and I actually like this show. Still it’s funny to point out how lol blatant they are about it. Well on the other hand the Chinese badmen ARE the ones invading and etc, so they should have been better prepared. Everyone knows Japanese Highschoolers are insanely powerful and have all sorts of ridiculous abilities! It’s all over their anime hahahahaha.
Actually there’s a reason behind the increase in violence. Tatsuya was cutting people in half instead of evaporating them because he was pretending to use that Molecular Divider skill Curious George accused him of using. Since he was in a public area and is SUPPOSED to keep his abilities a secrete. Once the mooks were gone and only important people were left he went back to poofing people out of thin air. In the Light Novel Misaki’s special magic was foreshadowed and talked about for ages and ages before it was finally shown in this arc. That’s just the magic he can do. He’s called the Crimson Prince because his ability to make liquids alspod causes his enemies to turn into a bloody mess. It seems out of nowhere in the anime because there was no place to fit random exposition in. Note that I am NOT defending this show or what happens in it. I’m just shedding some light onto why certain things happen.
He’s strong and fast enough to deflect bullets, so I don’t understand why he would suddenly only have two ways to subdue people: gratuitous butchering and instant disintegration. The fact of the matter is, the story wants to butcher people. It could’ve pulled any bullshit out of its ass to avoid this, and it doesn’t want to. Why would it? According to the anime, these “despicable invaders” can hardly be considered humam. The same idea applies to the Crimson Prince. It feels like he’s only included in this arc to blow people up. Other than that, he’s got jack shit to do with anything.
Shrug, I know Chinese people who don’t. It’s all just anecdotal evidence.
Yep. If only “wars” were this boring and meh in real life, how great would that be. Like, there’s so much that appears to be going on here but nothing actually happening. It’s like people who talk a lot but actually say very little.
The finale is going to be mindblowingly stupid. The animators looked up from their work and asked themselves, “What the fuck are we actually animating?”
PS: Yeah, Mahouka. Thanks for ripping off the kick-ass Gantz suits. Fuck, they couldn’t even get the “trying to look cool”-thing right.
With Hunter X Hunter ending and animating this shit, what studio wouldn’t be depressed?
I thought the suit looked like Venom from Spider-man
This episode is so sadly bad.
the scene with Miyuki, in a fit of rage after seeing her comrades hurt, jumping off and killing enemies all around the place in one go is awesome in the book. Here, it’s just looks bland, without any emotion on the girl face.
Instruction:
Slap crotch to fly.
Slap crotch to accelerate, decelerate, ascend, descend, turn left, turn right, make a u-turn, hover, do a barrel roll, etc.
Even a few deaths & mental breakdowns would’ve exponentially improved something about this series. But how dare those Chinese badmen kill Japanese innocent magical children with their worthless guns & mechs?
.
so what shall it be in the next week Mahouka Maha-Episode?
so…. what exactly did the limited limit anyway?
oops, i meant limiter*
Well, it led to the episode’s end credits?
Good chunk of the shity shows you blog about I don’t watch. I just want to read how big of a trainwreck they are. This takes the cake.
“Yes, Tatsuya can literally bring people back to life. This isn’t even a real story anymore. This is just some sad person’s delirious fantasies.”
Anyone remember the time when were were still explorers…. of interesting anime?
Found this gem after I watched this episode.
“For all that don’t read the LN: the restoration magic tatsuya uses – have him suffer intense pain of the damage in a much greater scale as it is; yet tatsuya shows no pain while doing this, making him even more badass!!! ;)”
In summary, the tween’s view on what’s cool.
It gets better, we swear! Just one more episode!
that joke is still funny as usual. it is like peeling an onion.
Just when you think Tatsuya can’t get any more overpowered or more boring…this happens!
Once again, I don’t envy the people who are still watching this, even if it’s just to laugh.
I’d be surprised if the LN-readers weren’t also hating on the show.
But then again, I heard that the LN were pretty high-octane bullshit as well.
So maybe some people who are watching do like it… *shiver*.
Don’t cry for me. I’m already dead.
I just wanted to thank you for this. For watching this shit when I could not.
Day after day I have to deal with Mahouka fanboys acting like this show is god’s gift to humanity. Knowing that there are people like you who can see through such bullshit, that there are people who don’t actually think this fanfic-tier idiocy is good, is making my life a lot easier.
Anybody who’s ever taken a Literature class or have read ONE classic book would know that stories like Mahouka’s are pure schlock.
Wait, I forgot. Nobody reads anymore.
“I have become Shiba, the destroyer of sanity and logic.”
No better way to put it.
I’m embarrassed to say this, but I really learn something from your blog entries and I get a big laugh too. I didn’t notice there was this twisted political ideology behind the show. Funny, I found your blog by chance because I wanted to confirm if other people felt the same way I did about Tatsuya Shiba being marty stu.