Get used to seeing this picture peeps, you'll be seeing it A LOT in this review...
Greetings Ladies and Gents! It is I, The Shaman of Animation back with a brand new review. Before we begin, let me take a few seconds to explain to the ill-informed what a light novel is. A light novel is a type of Japanese novel targeted mainly towards young adults (Thanks Wikipedia). I bring this up because in recent years, these have been the choice for new anime, manga, and live action movie adaptations in Japan. Some of these have been very fun and entertaining
This is the only Light Novel anime I've seen from start to finish...still good though.
Others...have been...
I don't care what the fanboys say, this show's best arc was mediocre at best...
The series I'm talking about today is another light novel adaptation. One that was one of the most talked about and praised anime of the spring season this year. This series is none other than the Irregular at Magic High School. But is the series a Fate Zero level light novel adaptation, or a Sword Art Online level adaptation? Let's dive into this sucker and find out.
Synopsis:
You know, this pic really makes me wonder how a James Bond anime would play out...
The Irregular at Magic High School takes place in a world where magic isn't magic in the traditional sense, but more technology based. It focuses on our two main characters: Brother and Sister Tatsuya and Miyuki Shiba as they're enrolled in the Magic University originally titled First High; a school used to train the best magicians. Those students in the school who excel at the 'technical' magical skills are Course One Students or 'Blooms', as they're called by their peers. Those who are lacking in this department are Course Two students aka 'Weeds'.
Speaking of Weed, you'll need it if you want to finish this snoozefest. Unfortunately, I don't smoke. Nor do I recommend it to anyone...
The Good: The magic. Seeing as its the biggest draw to the show, it HAS to at least leave an impression on viewers. The series succeeds on that front. When a character uses magic in Irregular, it just looks and sounds cool.
Speaking of sound let's talk about the soundtrack. This series in certain scenes such as their "action" sequences, uses electronic like music and it fits pretty well with the series. Undoubtedly, the one thing I took away from watching this show was how nice the music was, it just stood out to me and I found myself bopping my head along with some of the tracks. This, of course, also applies to the show's two openings Rising Hope by Lisa and Grilletto by Garnidelia (If you're into J-Rock/pop/whatever genre these two songs would classify in, listen to them). This was the only thing that I was actually looking forward to with each passing episode, as you're about to read when I dive into...
The Bad:
Oh my god...where do I begin?
First of all, let's go into the designs of the series. The character designs, while fitting the more "realistic" look the show's going for, are very...VERY generic. There aren't a lot of characters that really stand out from a visual standpoint in this series, hell I'd even go as far as to say that a lot of the characters look alike and aren't very distinguishable; and the ones that DO stand out do so only because they COMPLETELY RIP OFF OTHER SERIES!!
Masaki Ichijou from Irregular
Suzaku Kururugi from Code Geass
Speaking of characters (or lack of), let's talk about our two main characters. First, there's our leading man, Tatsuya Shiba. When Tatsuya's introduced, he's seen nuking sh*t. Quite Literally. This is where my first problem comes with Tatsuya: He's Overpowered as all hell. Now admittedly, I don't mind OP characters as long as they're given some sort of challenge or conflict (whether that's internal or external, it's up to the author). Tatsuya is given NEITHER of these. When we see him in high school, we find out he's a course 2 student because he lacks practical magic skills to be a course one student. Now with this, you would assume that the story would be about him having to overcome his handicap and prove himself to the Course One students.
In this series, Tatsuya doesn't have to overcome anything; as a matter of fact, I'd go as far as to say in this series: HE.IS.GOD; The show even goes out of the way to say it!! Why would I say something as ridiculous as that? Well for one, we never...NEVER see Tatsuya in a situation he could lose. Every fight we see him in, he's curbstomping his opponents. Whenever it seems like the opponent has the upper hand, a minute later, we see them on the ground because of Tatsuya. The prime example of this is with Masaki, the guy in the picture I showed above when speaking of character designs. In the end of the first opening, we see him with his gun pointing at Tatsuya and the two are ready to shoot one another down.
You have to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well do ya, punk?
When he's properly introduced into the series, he's talked about and presented as someone who could be a threat to Tatsuya. This lasted for two to three episodes. When they finally face off? Tatsuya had a counter for Masaki's ENTIRE strategy. No-sells what would have been a fatal blow and beats him with one move...
When you watch the Irregular at Magic High School, you will continuously see the story bend over backwards just so we can see an "Awesome" moment from Tatsuya that makes him look "cool". Changing the rules of a tournament at the last minute so he could be included? No problem. Have almost EVERY character praise him and talk about how his tech surpasses everyone else's? Absolutely! Having him repeatedly bend the rules of magic (like him inventing flying magic and bringing the dead back to life)? On a motherf**kin' whim!! The worst part is people see all this happening and they see it as badass. This, a flat, stale character who is ALWAYS right, NEVER struggles, is considered badass? HELL NO!!
THIS GUY is a Badass
THIS GUY is a badass
THIS GUY is a Badass (It don't matter if he's a video game character!!)
Tatsuya Shiba has no personality, and no: being calm all the time and protecting Miyuki doesn't count. Having a personality means you can make more than one facial expression all the time. Every time I see that emotionless look on his face, it just takes me out of the story. He is nothing more than a self-insert Gary-Stu. Plain wish fulfillment. Fans of this character overlook the blandness of his character and all the bullshit that he pulls and only pay attention to how great he looks, his intellect, the way he beats everyone no problem. The way he garners attention from everyone, and all the praise that's showered at him and they say:
Tatsuya fans: Why can't WE be like the one true god Tatsuya?!?!
I know anime fans are tired of the young, naive and sometimes stupid male characters who get beaten a majority of the time, but are characters like Tatsuya Shiba, and Kirito from sword art online better substitutes? Short answer: No. They're not. They're invincible characters who in-story never have to work hard for ANYTHING. You don't have the thought that maybe they might lose 'cause you know for a fact that THEY WON'T. It just makes you want to cheer for the bad guy to win.
Anyways, I'm done talking about Tatsuya. Let's talk about his younger sister, our main female protagonist, Miyuki. Miyuki...well...she loves her brother...no you guys don't get it, she LOVES her brother. How much?
So what, if we have the same Motheeeer? Tonight, I'm gonna fuck my brotheeeeeeerrrrr!
Okay, this scene isn't what people think it is. But you can bet that every night before she goes to bed that Miyuki wished, and then probably dreamed about, her "ONII-SAMA!!" becoming her daddy for one night. I know Japan has no problem with showing incest in their anime, but that doesn't make it any less uncomfortable for me to see how excited this girl gets whenever her brother touches her or even looks her way...
You guys are probably wondering why I'm spending so much time talking about Miyuki's love for her brother and not about her other character traits. Well that's because she DOESN'T HAVE any character traits outside of her love for her brother. I dare anyone reading this to go watch any two episodes of this show and pick out ANY line of dialogue Miyuki had that didn't in SOME way revolve around Tatsuya. Seriously, Diddy hyping up Biggie Smalls doesn't even compare to how much Miyuki goes around and says "How great her brother is" or how "No one could beat him". And that's not even going into the fact that she's as much of a sue as Tatsuya is a Stu...As for our secondary characters? Well we have everyone's favorite high school anime character archetypes:
The muscle-headed comedy relief
The Red Head
The Big tittied shy girl
The beautiful upperclassman that teases the main character
The Emotionless Girl
And I'm not even sure I got them all. Now let's tackle the story shall we? The series opens up with a narration of how magic became a technology that was used as a tool to bring an end to World War Three. This is where my first problem with the series (which admittedly might be more of a personal nitpick) comes from: The Irregular at Magic High School completely glances over the fact that A THIRD WORLD WAR HAPPENED!! Seriously, that's not something you can just sum up in thirty seconds. If you ask me, the events that led up to WWIII then seeing magic being discovered and weaponized to win the war would've made for a more interesting story to tell. Then, if you want, you can have the next seasons be about how people find uses for magic after the war THEN you go the high school route.
Although, one of my biggest issues with this show is its handling of magic. The Irregular at Magic High School somehow manages to both Over Complicate and not explain magic at the same time. There are a lot of different types of magic in this series, and because of that, the show takes time to tediously explain how these spell works. Meanwhile, as these explanations are going on, I'm sitting in front of my laptop like:
The phrase 'It's Magic' in fiction is frowned upon by people as a lot of the time, it's used as a cop out answer so that an author or a show doesn't have to explain itself when certain events happen. This is a method I feel Irregular could have GREATLY benefited from when it comes to their version of magic. When it comes to certain aspects of storytelling, I'm a straight forward guy. In a show about Magic, I don't need a third of an episode to go into detail about how a spell depends on the inertia of an object or crap like that. All I need is two sentences that sums a type of magic, then proceed to see characters blow shit up.
But fine, we have this techno babble of a magic system. Here comes my second problem with it, the show doesn't explain the things that SHOULD be elaborated on. If you're going to do your own thing with Magic show, take the time to explain the basic concepts and terminologies. I don't need a two to three minute explanation of what a flying spell or a sorcery boost is; those are self explanatory. What I need to know is what's a CAD? I can assume it's a tool you summon using your magic, but then what are the requirements of summoning CAD? If a CAD is something that can be calibrated, can it be built from scratch? What's a Psion? I can assume its the energy used to perform magic, but then what are the drawbacks of using too many psions? Can they be transferred to other magicians?
But the show's version of magic is just a small part of a much larger problem of the series: Expositions and info dumps. There are WAY too many scenes where the characters are just sitting around and explaining something; it got to the point where when it happened, my mind just blanked out and wandered to other things. It feels less like world building and story progression and more like padding out an episode cause 'hey, we need twenty minute episodes.'. Too many times, I've finished an episode of this series and asked myself: 'Did anything happen that moved the story forward?'
Conclusion: The Irregular at Magic High School is BORING! Mind numbingly so. When it isn't using the same old tired tropes in high school anime, it's having its head up its own ass with its convoluted yet vague magic system that either takes too much time explaining things or not taking enough time to explain things! I made it to episode twenty before I finally couldn't take it anymore and bailed out. The plot's generic, the main characters, when they're not being perfect living gods among us, are just walking, talking pieces of wood; and the side characters are painfully one note. Now when it comes to this series, the common defense I hear is: 'This make more sense in the light novel' or 'The light novel did it better'. To which I respond with: This is an adaptation of the light novel! The point of an adaptation is to take the source material and successfully transfer it to whatever it is its being adapted into. I shouldn't have to go read a novel to get the full story in the animation, that's just a job badly done. This is an uninteresting, uninspiring, un...some third word with the 'un' prefix that means boring, that people should avoid like the freaking plague!!!
That's all I have to say about this "series". Till next time, I'm the Shaman of Animation saying:
Take Care...
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