Impression
Well, that’s that! As ever, the action and animation were both pretty great, though I’d be lying if I said the raid was heart-stoppingly exciting. At this point, I think it’s been firmly established that both Tatsuya and Miyuki are extremely talented, and that Tatsuya in particular is all but God incarnate – a petty villain on the level of Tsukasa Hajime can’t begin to hold a candle to him. The speed with which he was introduced and subsequently defeated only helps to confirm that these guys really are just small fry. In fact, forget Tatsuya – even Kirihara was able to slice off his arm effortlessly (a scene which was thankfully uncensored) while I’m sure both Juumonji and Miyuki would have had no problems with taking control of the hideout by themselves if they had to.
In many ways, the aftermath of the raid had more significance than the raid itself – in particular, we’re beginning to uncover a couple of Tatsuya’s well-guarded secrets, including the fact that he’s acquainted with a man named Kazama, a military agent who used to work alongside Sayaka’s father Mibu Yuuzou. As a supposed high school student, you can see why he’d want to keep quiet about the fact that he has military connections – especially if you put two and two together and factor in that opening scene way back during the pilot episode. Yotsuba Maya also made her first appearance, commenting on Tatsuya fulfilling his role as a “Guardian” to Miyuki – this is an anime-original appearance as far as I can remember, although it doesn’t hurt and helps to pile on the foreshadowing even further. And of course, Kirihara and Sayaka have started going out, which prompted quite a reaction from Erika. She’s such a fun character, isn’t she? One small gripe I’m going to make is that Tatsuya’s monologues seem to have disappeared again, and thus we lost any explanation of exactly how Tatsuya was able to defeat the terrorists – he didn’t manage to immediately dismantle those guns just because he’s the second coming of Jesus Christ. Some magicians harbour certain innate magic abilities, and that was in fact Tatsuya’s natural magic, “Decomposition” at work – simply put, it’s the ability to disassemble the “structures” of literally anything from activation sequences to objects, causing them to break down or even disintegrate completely if he wants it to. Actually, maybe he really is the second coming of Jesus Christ…
It might be slightly strange to say this, but to me the most exciting part of the episode was that little post-credits scene, which introduced a couple of new characters and foreshadowed events to come in the Nine Schools Competition arc, which will begin next week. I’m actually surprised they revealed Ichijou Masaki, the magic he used and Kichijouji Shinkurou so soon – although it’s definitely helped to set the scene for the 9SC and the rivalry between First and Third High, after the OP’s tiny excerpt of the showdown between Tatsuya and Ichijou. Although Ichijou and Kichijouji talk of the pre-eminence of the Ten Master Clans in First High through the presence of both Mayumi and Juumonji, note that Ichijou (1) is in the same boat as they are – he’ll be a fearsome opponent for Tatsuya based off hereditary alone. At least, with all the blood he produces with his magic, it’s not surprising he’s known as the Crimson Prince.
So much hype.
It should be noted that the illustrator for Mahouka’s novels, Ishida Kana, is also handling the character designs for the anime as well.
(She’s apparently worked as an animator for prior shows like Aquarion Evol and Oreimo.)
The only other show that got similar treatment to this is the Oreimo anime, which hired Oreimo’s novel illustrator Kanzaki Hiro to handle the show’s designs.
That would explain why many character designs made a smooth transition to the anime – I think they did really well with Ichijou in particular. Although iirc Erika appeared more feminine in the novels…