10 Second Anime - Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei - Episode 4

Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei - Episode 4

Tatsuya has some explaining to do. No, I mean, he explains a lot about the magical world and its factions and enemies. Plus, blushing power and frozen jealousy.

Heh.

People are starting to get the lovey-dovey siblings routine. Except for Mizuki. She's still hoping!

Our BAMF didn't have much to do this week, except show off another one of his superpowers: the ability to make any girl blush!

Even girls with boyfriends! Way to get a confession out of Mari that she has one. With great power come great responsibility, Tatsuya. That, and your sister can probably freeze your jumblies solid, so you should step it down a couple of notches.

There was so much exposition this episode, that they had to cut out 3 minutes of opening and closing credits.

Also, the way rumor and gossip goes around this school defies relativistic signal theory. From Tatsuya's badassery with taking down the kenjutsu club to how quickly everyone wants to know about his making Mibu the girls' kendo club captain blush at their meeting, even the school nurse has to ask about it, although there might be other reasons she has to know.

Hmm.

This episode laid everything out, and built the framework for the rest of the series. We have an explanation on why Tatsuya was so interested in the numbers in peoples names. There are 10 magic clans in Japan, and he and Miyuki ran away from the 4th Main Branch family of the Yotsuba. Yotsu and Shi can both be pronunciations for the number 4.

We have an explanation of how Tatsuya is jamming magic spells, which relies on his own unique talent of reading spells as they're cast to write another one with 2 CAD's to cancel out its properties. There is a rare mineral that can also cancel magic, but it is so rare that only the military can use it, and only in very limited circumstances. But if Tatsuya's method could be made widely available, it would be like our world having cheap personal EMP devices everywhere. There would be chaos and anarchy. Tatsuya doesn't want to be open about this Specific Spell Jamming technique that he discovered because of those ramifications, and also because 1) he hasn't perfected it yet, and 2) he wants to also discover a way to nullify it. Talk about an exceptionally forward thinking guy. Maybe his time as a child soldier, or some kind of human weapon of mass destruction, has given him a unique perspective on magic and counter-magic.

In this context, we are introduced to what Tatsuya is looking for at this school: members of the terrorist anti-magic organization Blanche. I like how he sees clearly through the hypocrisy of any idealistic revolutionary group, spouting off about "equality" but still employing the means or products of whatever they're fighting against. They also make sure that idealistic recruits have no idea that they are using magic to further their ends, and conveniently ignore the fact that magic users have to go through many years of education and training to use their abilities too. All this sounds exactly like all the arguments by libertarians and capitalists against the bankrupt ideas of communism and socialism. Also, he believes there might be some other national power behind Blanche with the aim of weakening their own nation's strategic use of magic. Magic Cold War Games... I'm liking this show even more!

Tatsuya was already attacked by the student faction of Blanche, known as Egalité (heh!), and we see the captain of the overall kendo club is wearing the CAD that they use. I'm sure it would surprise all his recruits into their nascent anti-magic league that he is a talented user of magic himself.

We've gotten deeper into the mysteries surrounding the Shiba siblings, which opened up even more things to discover. We've been introduced to the main conflict of the story. Now, we just need to see who's on which side, what their own personal agendas are, and add in more backstories. Plus, more lovey-dovey sibling jokes with blush-power 9000 thrown in!