Sunday, April 13, 2014

[New][April2014] Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei

I'd been thinking that, too

Summary: In a world where magic has become a technology of reality for over a century, various countries are in a race to nurture modern magic users. In Japan, 'First High', the prestigious first Magic High School of its kind in the country is where the most excellent magicians are sent. Two-hundred students there are divided into Course 1 and Course 2, where Course 1 students are those who excel in magic, and Course 2 students are viewed as merely 'reserves', replacements to fill in for the first 100. This results in severe discrimination between the two courses, embodied in how the students frequently refer to each other, as 'Blooms' and 'Weeds'. In this environment, Tatsuya and Miyuki Shiba are enrolled in First High. Tatsuya barely manages to place in course 2, while his sister places as the top freshman of Course 1. 

First Impression: Everything's looking good so far. There were plenty of chances for them to trip up or do something stupid, but they nicely side step the prat-falls. 

First Opinion: This suddenly feels like the promise to be everything I had expected of Mahou Sensou, and never received. Mahou Sensou lined up to be a 'Modern Magic' technological marvel with its poster, but performed as an old fashioned magical brawl out. Meanwhile, in Koukou no Rettousei's camp, we have very pleasingly technical levels of detail and interest. I'm giving this one a nice happy seat in my list, and taking note of its release day. Mostly I'm just impressed with all the chances they had to fall into stereotypical tropes or idiocy, and how neatly they side stepped all of it. As an additional bonus, I found the hand-to-hand fighting that broke out to be very well made, in my own opinion. No promise about what an actual martial arts enthusiast would say, but it did look very nice and fluid. 

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