Alternate Titles: Mahouka, Mahouka Koko no Rettosei
Light Novel Adaptation by Madhouse
Simulcast on Crunchyroll
Premise
In the future, magic high school is split into two social rungs, keeping our borderline-incestuous brother and sister protagonists apart.
Iro’s Verdict: Boring as Sin
Mahouka was plain painful to watch. The episode was 60% infodumping, 40% small talk between flat characters, and 100% onii-sama. After the massive block of emotionless exposition to start us off, the rest of the episode was essentially a cavalcade of character introductions. While this isn’t necessarily a problem in itself, we’re given absolutely no reason to care about any of them, or about the protagonists for that matter. They’re just names and faces, and we’re apparently supposed to be cheering for them simply because every other student at that school is apparently an entitled asshole. Not exactly the most compelling characterization, that is.
However, I’m being a little unfair. There are bare hints that something is going on with the two siblings, but I’m willing to bet it boils down to our emotionless protagonist actually being super powerful instead of a slacker (sorry, “irregular”) as the title implies. The concept of a future world where magitek is ubiquitous has some potential to be interesting (or would if they hadn’t blown their load in the first two minutes), but the incredibly overdone high-school setting is a huge missed opportunity. Skip it.
Lifesong’s Verdict: Nuanced and Interesting
I expected Mahouka to be clichéd and so imagine my surprise when it dodged that bullet. Even the “forbidden relationship” angle was smart enough to keep me from wanting to gag or feeling like it dragged the rest of the show down. There is a sense of seriousness and intent that makes the exposition fall into place in an interesting way. The brocon antics, while creepy, help to establish how close the two siblings are. That becomes important when we see just how bad class discrimination is in this universe. The relationship between siblings plays off the way class separates them. Their closeness is creepy, but not unintelligent in the way I’ve come to expect from anime.
“Magic as science” is a neat concept, and I want to spend more time exploring this world. The world war these characters face feeds the tensions at school. Their discrimination against class carries a sense of desperation. Our protagonist is hiding secrets that give us something to ponder. He is a capable warrior, but has some secret he refuses to give up. The cast of characters again dodge the cliché bullet and manage to be likeable and well-nuanced for such a large crowd. The bits of action in the episode were gorgeous and well-animated. I half expect Mahouka to crash and burn around its forbidden love premise, but this first episode was enough to get my interest. I am looking forward to seeing how this will develop.
Marlin’s Verdict: Trite and Boring
I cannot disagree with Life more. Every single one of the named characters are walking stereotypes. The brocon trope was already played to death when it was new, so having another perfect doting brocon sister did nothing but sour my mood, not that that is even the worst of it. This show fails spectacularly at the concept of “show, don’t tell”. There’s no reason why we need to have someone explain to us why the main character is different when it could just as easily been shown in a magic fight. They already had the scene at the dojo, so it’s not like having them show us his competency there would have been outrageous.
The magic system itself has some potential, but it would have been much better suited to an actual battlefield setting rather than another bland high school setting. The stupid false dichotomy between Blooms and Weeds was also just plain annoying. It would have been way more exciting to see them duke it out with the weird magic pistols than just watch the twins run fast and get blocked by school rules of all things. Why even bother to tell us about the world war that backdrops this if we’re spending all of our time in this school? I also am not a fan of every other territory in the world being redrawn except for Japan. Even American media these days has America split up in post-catastrophe futures, but in anime Japan is almost always unchanged.
The Glorio Blog 
Interesting that you should mention the lack of actual change in Japan’s future in anime, Marlin. It’s something I never noticed until you pointed it out, but you’re right. Life largely just trunks on as usual, even in most so-called post-apocalyptic shows (the fact the Japan’s traditions and cultural makeup is also very slow to change might be connected to that strange idea that “our country will never change.” Hard to say). Code Geass may have had a Japan that wasn’t called “Japan” anymore, but we still got an average school and didn’t really see much about day-to-day changes for everyday citizens. Shangri-la probably had some of the most changes to daily life in Japan, but that’s a rarity.
And it’s sad because animation is a wonderful storytelling tool and is capable of so much more than many companies actually shell out. It’s a loss of good potential.
I quite like the magical system idea that they’ve got going here. I also think the animation is stunning, and that the school uniforms are (for a change) interesting enough without being flat-out ridiculous. The characters… well, I’ll give it another episode or two, but if things annoy me enough, all the pretty in the world probably won’t be enough to keep me watching. As a side-note, I’m hoping Random Ninja Dude is only a very minor character in this, because he’s already one of the most annoying things about the show despite how little screen-time he got.