Nine School Competition Arc II
Creative Staff
Story: Tsutomu Sato
Art: Kana Ishida
Translation: Andrew Prowse
What they say
One of the centerpieces of the Nine School Competition, the Rookie Games. With only first years being allowed to take part in these matches, First High School’s top student, Shiba Miyuki steps on the stage to display a beautiful, elegant performance. Her brother, Tatsuya, also participates as an engineer that adjusts the athlete’s CADs and allows himself a moment to relax only when he admires his sister’s appearance in the games.
Though only supposed to be an irregular, a second-rate student, Tatsuya’s skills in adjusting the team’s CADs give them a strong advantage over the other schools. But as everything goes smoothly, an accident occurs that forces Tatsuya to take center stage where he’ll have to face the first year known as the Crimson Prince, a first year ace from Third High School, Masaki Ichijou!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The Nine School Competition is well underway, and Tatsuya, as the lead magical technician for several girls who are taking part, has his hands quite full. Shizuku, Honoka, Miyuki, and several other freshmen girls are under his care. It’s interesting how this particular matter, him being the CAD technician for only a group of freshmen females, feels very much like Tatsuya has gained his own harem. Of course, harems are par for the course in light novels.
Volume 4 of The Irregular at Magic High School is easily the longest one so far. Standing at just a little over 300 pages, it covers the rest of the Nine Schools Competition, which began during the previous volume. Not only did this volume deal with the competition, but it also involved the secret affairs of a terrorist organization known as No-Head Dragon, which is a group that originated out of China. It seems they have a stake in this competition as well.
What immediately stands out within this volume is just how much information is presented, particularly in regards to the backstory of this world and its magic system. If there’s one thing this series does right, it’s creating a highly detailed magic system and giving this world a rich history that allows readers to immerse themselves in an Alternate Universe.
The magic system is highly advanced. Not only does the system work based on principles that are more like a science than magic, but the myriad of spells used during this volume are all explained in easy to understand but interesting details. While these segments explaining the magic are definitely info dumps, I enjoyed reading about how all of the magic worked. It’s a very hard magic system. Spells do a certain thing, have limitations, and no one spell can be used to solve every problem. This means that even though magic is very useful, certain issues can’t be resolved through its use, which keeps the story from becoming boring.
There are several competitions that take place at the Nine Schools Competition: Battle Board, Speed Shooting, Cloudball, Mirage Bat, and Monolith Code. While the competition itself seems rather interesting, with each of these showcasing the different uses for magic in a competitive setting, there were some issues with the overall competition. Namely, everyone from First High—and the freshmen girls under Tatsuya in particular—were able to completely overwhelm their opposition. While I understand that the reason is because Tatsuya is a genius programmer, the fact remains that there wasn’t any tension during these scenes. It was a foregone conclusion that they would win.
Another big issue was the faux attempts at creating tension after the freshmen boys team for Monolith Code suffers from serious injuries and Tatsuya is asked to replace them. The problem, of course, is the same one as the one when the girls faced off against the other schools. Tatsuya is just too strong. He is such an overwhelmingly powerful character that no matter how hard the author tried to stack the odds against him, I didn’t feel the least bit worried, because I knew that he was going to win regardless. This man is all but a god in the series. It would have been even more disappointing if he had lost because it would have meant having to suspend my reality of disbelief.
Mary Sue is a term often heard to describe people like Tatsuya. There’s no denying that from a magical perspective, Tatsuya is an unstoppable, perfect being. I don’t mind this. Mary Sues have their place in literature. I just dislike how the author tried to stack the odds against him by adding lines like: “Tatsuya only had a one in nine chance of winning” or “chances were good that he would lose to Masaki in Monolith Code.” It felt fake, like the author was doing his hardest to make it seem like Tatsuya losing was a foregone conclusion, but he still wanted Tatsuya to seem perfect. When creating a Mary Sue character, you can’t half-ass their perfection like that. It’s better to just revel in their perfection.
While the writing for this volume is generally quite good, and the grammar is almost always on point, there were a few issues with syntax. Several sentences required me to re-read them and re-arrange the words to figure out what the author meant. Even so, while certain parts of the translation was spotty, it was an overall enjoyable read.
In Summary
The Nine Schools Competition has come to an end, but the story itself is definitely set to continue. This volume may have closed the curtains on the competition, but the ending leaves a lot of loose ends, and it even created some new threads that will need to be resolved. I highly enjoyed this story. If there was one thing that I’m still iffy on, it’s the burgeoning non-romantic romance between Tatsuya and his younger sister, Miyuki.
Content Grade: B+
Art Grade: A
Packaging Grade: A
Text/Translation Grade: B
Age Rating: 13 & UP
Released By: Yen Press
Release Date: April 18th, 2017
MSRP: $14.00
