The Irregular at Magic High School Episode #08 Anime Review

We enter a new story arc…but the show doesn’t so easily change the way that it operates.

What They Say:
Episode 08: “Nine Schools Competition Part I”

Nine Magic University Affiliated High Schools around the country are preparing for the upcoming Nine Schools Competition. The Student Council needs to select engineers. Since Tatsuya knows how to fine-tune CADs, will he take on the role of an engineer?

The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
So, now we learn the reason why Ms. Ono knows so much about what is going on: she is a Public Safety investigator for the police. She also happens to be a student of Master Kokonoe’s, so she has some decent stealth skills, but isn’t capable of hiding her presence from Gary Stu…I mean Tatsuya.

I’m sorry, but I am afraid that I’m getting a little bored of every single character being some super-secret agent or hidden master in disguise. It’s a rather shallow and immature approach to character creation in fiction. To borrow from a movie I once saw, if everyone is special then…no one is special.

Then we have soccer for losers…I mean, seriously, it’s much harder to keep the ball in bounds and not be able to bounce it off the walls and the ceiling, but I guess it would take too much thought to come up with a completely new game. After the class match, we are introduced to Mikihiro, a childhood friend of Erika’s who apparently has the hots for her. The girl herself makes an appearance wearing bloomers. Bloomers? Otaku-pandering much are we? Though at least Leo makes a funny little attack (playing up the fetish aspect), though he later probably regretted saying it in front of Erika.

Fun time over, boring info-dumping must follow. While this is no longer the Enrollment arc (thank the lords of anime), this franchise being what it is, there is sure to be boring exposition in unnecessary detail to come. It comes at lunch time as Mayumi lays out for Miyuki what the Nine Schools Competition is. During the summer, the nine high schools affiliated with the national magic university hold magic athletic competitions. The athletes are already chosen, but they need an engineer to maintain and fine tune the CADs that they will be using in the competition. Cue Gary Stu, since obviously he can’t be left out.

We get exposition under the cover of cuteness as Tatsuya brings in his special magic guns again, the ones made by the legendary engineer Taurus Silver, which makes the loli Nakajo go nuts and gives us more verbal squeeing over him. During the conversation, Miyuki apparently gets distracted when talk turns to who Taurus Silver really is. Could it secretly be…Gary Stu?

If this were a video review, I would be shaking my head right now.

All of the problems that plagued the Enrollment arc continue here. For example, there is a long part during that lunch meeting at the student council where they spend an inordinate amount of time discussing the intricacies of flying magic. I couldn’t follow half of it because…let’s face it: magic should be…magical. When you turn it into technobabble, you destroy much of the mystery and mystique. And that’s what the author of The Irregular at Magic High School seems to do best: destroy the beauty of mystery with the blandness of detailed explanation. The only reason it is here is so that we can learn how utterly impossible it is to make flying magic work well. We learn that it is impossible only so that we can see Tatsuya do it by the end of the episode, since he’s MacGuyver Stu.

And we also have the regular Tatsuya Must Be Tested portion, where a group of haughty elite students question his abilities. When Mayumi and friends nominate Tatsuya to be the team’s engineer for the competition, many of the competitors, the elite of the Course 1 students, are skeptical, to say the least, of the idea of a first-year Course 2 student serving as their technician. So, a demonstration must be held. At it, Tatsuya shows himself to be irregular in his methods, but that’s only because he’s so much more special than normal people. He can fine-tune CADs manually! He can look at meaningless screens full of numbers and do something!

Of course he wins over the doubters, because he’s Gary Stu. Was there ever even the slightest doubt?

Oh, and now we find out that Tatsuya really is Super Secret Agent Gary Stu, as he gets a secret call from his boss, the Major, who calls him “Special Officer.” It seems that an international crime syndicate may be targeting the Nine Schools Competition. So, first we have a terrorist outfit target the school. Now we have an international criminal gang target the competition. Repetition, anyone?

This episode was very important, at least for my reviewing of the show. It has confirmed that it was not just the Enrollment arc that had problems. It’s the entire franchise. While I could well be wrong having only two arcs to base this on, I’m willing to guess that there is a basic formula to every arc in this light novel series: a shadowy, evil organization (terrorists, criminals, whatever) will threaten Tatsuya and his friends. Tatsuya will use his Gary Stu powers to defeat them. That’s it. I’m sorry, but there is absolutely zero dramatic tension in this. As no one can match Tatsuya in his abilities, there really is no one who can pose a threat to him always winning. Even the powerful character from the Third Magic High School that we saw briefly in the last episode is probably going to be shown to fall short of Tatsuya’s overwhelming abilities.

Without dramatic tension, there can be no suspense, no surprise, and no ability to continue drawing my attention. At this point, unless there is some sign that there is something, anything, more to this series than what has been shown in the eight episodes to date, I don’t see much point in reviewing it further, if it is going to consist solely of Gary Stu defeating his underpowered enemies again and again and again.

In Summary:
Before the Nine Schools Competition can begin, First Magic High School needs to choose an engineer to handle the competitors’ CADs. Apparently none of the third years are theoretically minded (most are powerful in magic skills) and the second years are also somewhat lacking. So, of course, thoughts turn to Tatsuya, who might well be a super-secret legendary engineer called Taurus Silver, though no one knows that outside of himself and Miyuki. Oh, and Ms. Ono the counselor is actually an undercover police investigator. Is anyone in this show NOT a secret agent or hidden member of a special lineage? Enough.

Grade: D-

Streamed by: Crunchyroll

Review Equipment:
Apple iMac with 4GB RAM, Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard

G.B. Smith

Greg Smith has been writing anime reviews and a review column on anime dubbed into English for several years, first at AnimeOnDVD and now for The Fandom Post. His occasional column on English anime dubs, Press Audio, appears whenever he comes across a dub worthy of a closer look. He is also the deputy editor for our seasonal and year end retrospectives.

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