As a fan of the light novel, I’ve been eagerly awaiting for this. That said, naturally I’d have my misgiving over the adaptation ^__^”
Mahouka is a story about two sibling, with a larger focus on the older brother Tatsuya. The two are both students of a Magic High School, in this world where magic has largely become scientific and technologically supported.
However, while the little sister Miyuki is an honor student, excelling in both magic theory and practical magic, the same can’t be said about Tatsuya. Simply put, Tatsuya totally sucks when it comes to practical magic even if he can best Miyuki in theory. This is the reason why Miyuki has been enrolled in the school as a “Bloom”, students considered as the cream of the crop, while Tatsuya has been enrolled as a “Weed”, reserve students who got in just to fill in the slots.
And this is largely the premise of the first arc of the story: discrimination. The school itself segregates the students between the Blooms and the Weeds, giving them different curriculum and all that. Worse, even the students themselves practice this discrimination between the magic haves and have-nots.
However, the relationship between the siblings doesn’t suffer the same stigma. In fact, Miyuki adores Tatsuya, for reasons we are not shown yet. In fact, the relationship is quite at the incest level.
The interesting caveat to this setting, though, is that the division between the Blooms and the Weeds is largely dependent on school-metrics on practical magic. Real life situations may not translate well in those metrics, as displayed by some of Tatsuya’s classmates when a fight broke out between the Weeds and the Blooms.
As for Tatsuya? He has some pretty good hand-to-hand combat skills as well as hax magic analysis skills. That is, as far as we know for now. (Hint: He goes way GAR in the future.)
So there, let’s all follow this show and watch Tatsuya and his friends show their mettle as magicians as they get embroiled in various conspiracies and whatnot.
To be honest, the show turned out not as I’d expect it. First, Miyuki’s voice is kind of surprising as I expected something higher. Aside from that, her fangirl mode kind of felt out of character, as her reaction in the novels had no such evident physical manifestations.
Moreover, they cut out quite a bit of Tatsuya’s interactions with the others, especially Mayumi. Man, I even ship that pairing…
The show does manage to deliver on the action part, both on physical combat and the flashy magic part. But I do kind of wish I can see the magic not in slow-motion mode. But it’s fine for now.
So in short, the series still does manage to deliver entertainment, even if as an adaptation I do have my misgivings. However we have really yet to see the elements in Mahouka that really made it famous as a novel, as those parts only begin in bulk in the second arc. So guys, let’s just persevere through the first arc for maximum GAR-ness in the second arc.
Rating: 7.5/10
P.S.: Let me advertise the LN translations here.
1 Comment
thats a great Anime 🙂 Loved the manga