Impression
Even though the Nine Schools Competition has officially begun, it doesn’t really feel like it has – as is customary for Mahouka, we were treated to lots of little scenes mashed together, which detracted from the overall intensity of things. From what I remember, the action should have jumped up a notch, and it should have been an exciting episode – but in the end I think the novels were more exciting, which is a bit worrying. Casually skipping out pretty much all the explanation surrounding the events didn’t help that, either. Even though most are admittedly self-explanatory, it would have been nice to mention that, for example, Ice Pillar Break has two main objectives: making your opponent’s pillars crumble while reinforcing the stability of your own pillars – it would have given a bit of background to how the ever-headstrong Kanon decided to ignore the second objective and focus purely on offense. I suppose they at least managed to make her “Mine Genesis” look cool. Though that was mostly because something huge was actually being destroyed. For all anime-only viewers know, Mayumi could have been playing Magic Space Invaders and Magic Tennis instead of competing in Speed Shooting and Crowd Ball – both events (and others, like Monolith Code) weren’t even mentioned to have existed before this episode.
Many character interactions were omitted or cut down too, the most obvious of these being Mayumi’s scene with Tatsuya at her Crowd Ball match. Leaving aside the fact that a large chunk of the conversation was removed, both Mayumi’s fanservice and her teasing senpai antics were toned down. The directors must really hate Mayumi or something. Or maybe just onee-san type characters in general – they seem to have no problem sticking in large helpings of imouto every episode. As a Mayumi fan, I am once again sorely disappointed. Actually, speaking of Mayumi, this leads me on to the second thing I wanted to mention this week – there was a blatant message sent across throughout the episode that First High are incredibly OP. Not just Tatsuya, but also Mari, Mayumi, Kanon – all of them won effortlessly. The results in the Newcomers Division events are important? Well that’s okay. This year’s freshmen are going to be the best you’ve ever seen. All this is part of the reason why it wasn’t as exciting. Narrow victories and the threat posed by rivals are what really brings intensity to competitions like these – maybe that happened in the Men’s Division, but the girls all won easily. I almost started believing that Mahouka was not only right-wing but also feminist – and then I remembered Miyuki.
Sorry, I think I’ve been sounding pretty negative so far – let’s just chalk it down to my annoyance over Mayumi’s botched scenes. There were some nice moments during the episode – as ever, they’re hinting at Honoka’s crush on Tatsuya and Erika’s dislike of Mari pretty heavily. And during teatime with Tatsuya’s army buddies, they finally introduced Fujibayashi – who hilariously suggested that Tatsuya should use Material Burst and Mist Dispersion in a school competition. Somehow, I sorta expected her to have purple hair… maybe it’s because of my preconceptions from Clannad or her character design in the LNs. Never mind. At least the scene wasn’t cut out, right?