Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei: Raihousha-hen

Episode 6

I decided to take a little break from Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei: Raihousha-hen, in large part due to my disappointment with regards to the second season but to also clear my mind. Now that I’ve taken time away, I am now more than ready to resume this anime little by little. One thing is for certain, the OP “Howling” by ASCA is starting to grow on me, at first I personally didn’t like it, something about it didn’t really fit. It felt a little out of place with regards to the overall mood and general feel of the anime, nonetheless, it’s starting to grow on me I quite like it now.

It’s strange. I wanted to put aside the inconsistences in character design, however, this episode is just fill with it. Especially whenever Miyuki is in the frame. It honestly felt like each scene looked a different version of Miyuki was taking part. It bothered me quite a lot actually. If I were to be completely honest here, this entire episode as a whole felt rather sloppy with regards to character design. There wasn’t anything consistent, each character felt different every time; not too sure why, but it also made everything feel rather ‘blocky’, it felt like a rough draft.

Another gripe I have with this particular episode, was how it made Tatsuya look like a regular character out of your typical slice of life. Walking around accepting chocolate from everyone. The Tatsuya I want is the cold hearted Tatsuya from last season. The one that displayed next to know emotion, the weapon that he is. That is what made this series as a whole something I enjoyed because of how cool Tatsuya he was, seeing him display regular emotion seems really strange and is something I do not think is really fitting of the character he was built to be.

Futhermore, the overall episode as a whole felt unfinished and bland. There were attempts to make it interesting like for example the Colonel of the USNA coming to aid Lina as they survey Tatsuya. The news broadcast about USNA losing control of their magicians and stuff like that. However, this episode just leaned into the ‘it’s Valentine’s day, let’s give chocolates!’. Ideally, I would much rather have an episode filled with action, or something of greater substance than just a Valentine’s day episode.

Episode 7

Target acquired, eliminate the caster who caused the Scorched Halloween, otherwise known as Tatsuya. That is the mission given to Lina by the Colonel of the USNA. That in itself is quite the task if I do say so myself.

I liked episode seven a lot more than its predecessor, comparing the two, episode seven does a lot to add to the general story Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei: Raihousha-hen is trying to tell. We now find out that whatever this parasite does, as it moves from host to host, it gains knowledge from the host’s I guess you can say ‘mind’, but as soon as it transfers to a new host, that parasite forgets everything about their previous host and who they were. They’re only just left with the knowledge gained by them.

What I did find entertaining though, that this parasite that attacked them two episodes ago, now wants to be some sort of ‘ally’ with Tatsuya and company. Not to mention that this robot host the parasite had moved into somehow was able to gain Mitsui Honoka’s thoughts, therefore slowly revealing that Mitsui has feelings for Tatsuya and Mitsui’s outburst to try and silence the bot; thus saving her from embarrassment. This scene was made even more entertaining by the fact that she was being held back by Miyuki and Erika because the only way for them to know the intentions of the parasite was for Tatsuya to talk to the robot named Pixie.

Moving onto my favourite part of the anime, which is as per usual, it’s fight scenes! We finally get to see some real one-on-one battle. Lina whose mission was to eliminate Tatsuya of course has failed. What’s even more shocking is at the end of the episode, when Lina wakes up from her attack and is recalling the events of last night. She questions what kind of magician Tatsuya is, coming to the conclusion that he’s an ‘illusion master’. I believe she comes up with this theory because when Lina blows off Tatsuya’s arm, he was able to restore his arm and again when he literally shoves his arm with caster in hand, inside the firing barrel Lina had pointed at him crippling his fingers. Not to mention, Lina had noticed that she didn’t have any injuries or pain from their battle, so I assume that she thought that he was able to make everything seem like an illusion hence ‘illusion master’.

Little did she know however, Tatsuya has a certain ability that no one else has the ability to restore any object of his choosing up to 24 hours in the past. When Lina finds out that he’s able to do this, I am sure that it’ll also click that Tatsuya’s capabilities are unmatched and have yet to be unlocked unleashing its full potential.

Without a doubt, episode seven was definitely the better episode and made up for the shortcomings of episode six.