Impression
At this point, being familiar with the light novels has made it apparent that Madhouse are being quite generous with cutting out material – it’s not the sort of thing that would be absolutely vital to the plot, but it does mean that some things are left confusing. And I really don’t like how they’ve decided to characterize Miyuki, because with how lewd she is at this point it looks like it’s just baseless otaku pandering. I won’t deny that it is, to an extent. But there’s more to her than the standard brocon imouto trope, and if and when that’s revealed everyone will end up missing the forest for the trees. At any rate, it doesn’t seem like they’ll choose to engage in any constructive infodumping, which is understandable but a bit of a shame – in order to maintain entertainment value we’ll have to contend with watching terms like Magic Sequence or Eidos get thrown around. Though saying that Hattori got “wasted” really was a succinct way of describing what Tatsuya did to him – and I’m glad they managed to get Azusa in there, too! Tatsuya’s Silver Horn CAD and the “Loop Cast” system will turn up again later, so it’s good that it was explained to some depth.
As for that incest scene – it’s gonna be controversial, I can tell you that. They definitely overplayed it, especially with Miyuki blushing so heavily – as I was watching it, I was thinking to myself: “Shit, I’ve been saying it’s not incest this entire time. How the hell am I supposed to justify that?” I probably can’t, to be honest – though for what it’s worth, I still don’t think it’s incest in the grand scheme of things, with Tatsuya clearly more alarmed than aroused. Actually, it feels like the incest vibes in the anime are stronger than they were in the light novels… yet another step towards messing up Miyuki’s character, I suppose. Although it’s true that there haven’t been many opportunities for her to show her abilities, I’m really really not liking how she’s been displayed as a yandere imouto completely reliant on Tatsuya – she’s supposed to be strong, and she’s not the first-year Bloom representative for nothing. Admittedly, that scene is important – probably the most important thing in the episode, ironically enough. While I won’t talk about it for fear of spoiling, Tatsuya’s “self-repair” sequence has a lot of significance later on.
Tatsuya’s clearly very good at making new enemies – there was no love lost between him and Morisaki, and after this club recruitment event it doesn’t seem like the Kenjutsu Club will be very happy with him. Like with some other scenes, the little skirmish between Sayaka (impressively voiced by Tomatsu Haruka) and Kirihara suffered from a bit of missing information, though again it was nothing vital. In line with this arc’s theme of discrimination, First High features both a Kendo and a Kenjutsu Club, with the latter applying magic to their bamboo swords. Predictably, that means the Kenjutsu Club will be full of Course 1 students, while Course 2 students will join the Kendo Club. The fact that Sayaka’s skill is above Kirihara’s was just something his pride as a Bloom couldn’t take. Those guys really stood no chance – if Tatsuya was able to beat multiple ninjutsu-users, what can some high school kenjutsu people do?
I have read the first two volumes of the light novels and I do enjoy how fast paced it is in the way that it just gets to the point and to the action whithout going on to explain things in extreme detail like the books do. But I wonder how people who have never read the light novels feel about the show so far and how much they actually understand what is going on… Although I am also not pleased by how Miyuki is being depicted because it takes away from the character’s awesomeness and interesting personnality, fan service is fan service…. and sadly in some shows they need it to keep viewers…. and although I don’t like most shows that use this method…. I just hope these scenes boost sells and recognition for the series so that we can get a decent adaptation of the light novels by yen press.
If they don’t worry about the mechanics of how magic is used and just accept that it somehow works, I think new fans can understand it perfectly well – even in its crudest form, an explanation of how a CAD works would be that it helps a magic technician cast magic, for example. The bigger issue is that the show might come off as generic and pandering with things like Miyuki’s fanservice, which is understandable as you said, but an unhelpful addition to the fact that this first arc is already far weaker than the others. Maybe I might have appreciated how lewd it was a bit more if this was the first time I’d seen it – with LNs, a lot of fanservice is just left to your imagination, and even then Mahouka isn’t really big on fanservice.
As for Tatsuya, at this point he’s badass but seemingly without any justification other than “why not”, and the fact that lots of his internal monologues and thoughts have been left out (in favour of him maintaining stoic silence) isn’t helping. And they seem to have skipped a lot of Mayumi’s characterization in favour of Mari, which is a pity as I really like Mayumi. Though that’s just a personal gripe! Hopefully all this will be corrected over time – at the pace Madhouse are adapting at, they should definitely pass Volumes 3 and 4 and move on to the really good stuff.
Could not agree more about the Tatsuya stuff. His thoughts throughout the books is what really helps the reader understand why and how emotionless he really is, and right now he just looks like an emotionless badass which is isn’t too bad but if it continues people are going to start to hate the series for the lack of personality of its characters.
Tatsuya contributes to a lot of the world building too. It’s him who highlights the importance of lineage for magicians, describing the Ten Master Clans and Hundred Families – which as you know will be important later on. In the anime he’s only made a passing comment on “Saegusa” and “Chiba”.
And I’m worried the lack of character depth will extend to beyond Tatsuya too – this series has a massive cast, and it’s only going to keep on growing and growing. The LNs could take their time with developing them, but the anime doesn’t have that kind of luxury, especially as it feels like they’re going to adapt an enormous amount of content. I’d only thought they would go up to the 9SC!
Yeah I kinda of wish that it was slower because at this rate I might have to stop half way because since I haven’t read all of the light novels I don’t want it spoiled… guess I’ll just somehow have to read the remaining 8 books in a few weeks after my finals are over…
Going up to Volume 8 (Reminiscence) will probably be enough to keep pace with the anime. I’m sure you can do it 😀 They’ll be more exciting than Enrolment at the very least.