10 Second Anime - Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei - Episode 9

Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei - Episode 9

Taurus Silver starts work on the flying spell. Slice of life scenes provide more back story. Flaming SUV hurtles toward school buses.

Heh.

Lots of time spent with our characters to give us some funny stuff, some world-building exposition, and character back stories before we get thrown back into the action elements. Or more like, a flaming vehicle gets thrown at us...

Nice. Taurus Silver is a duo of engineer and theoretician, where Mr. Silver is Tatsuya doing the basic research and mocking up prototypes, and Mr. Taurus is the engineer in charge of development and refinement.

Best part is the test subjects having so much fun flying around, they use up all their magic. It also shows that the Shiba siblings are huge balls of magic themselves, the difference between them being how quickly and elaborately Miyuki can cast her magic compared to Tatsuya.

Tatsuya still trolls with the best of them.

"If this is consensual, I'm out of here." Looks like Yoshida's ancient spirit magic knows the best part of MIzuki to target. Hurr. We got some confirmation that Mizuki inherited the magical abilities of one of the 10 magic clans.

Speaking of trolls, Mayumi the President is a world-class tease.

She couldn't get a reaction out of Tatsuya, who hints that he may not be able to express emotion, but she's got a reliable target in Hattori. There were more bus hijinks too, as the members of the magic competition team make their way to the venue. One girl is sad is that her boyfriend has to be in another bus because he's on the technical support staff. And some other girl is sad her big brother had to stand around in the heat waiting for the last student to board the bus.

Miyuki let her bro con flag fly high this episode. She was so happy to see other people heaping praise on Tatsuya at the FLT headquarters, and then see some of his skills acknowledged by the school in an official capacity. Miyuki's friends know how to counter her sadness by triggering her bro con flights of fancy. Is Honoka crushing hard on Tatsuya too?

Hmm.

We actually got to see the Shiba siblings' father, along with the family financier and butler, and we see how outrageous Tatsuya and Miyuki's decision to leave the clan looks to the more orthodox members of the main family branch. Because Tatsuya took on the role of bodyguard to Miyuki, the favored heir to the clan, the butler wants to treat him as such, without acknowledging his presence. Miyuki, of course, can't stand that. The father seems more reasonable, but also looks like he's caught in the middle.

The mother appears to be absent, and is the older sister to the current head of the clan. According to the exposition scene, their mother either engineered or heavily modified Tatsuya as a child, so he and Miyuki may not be brother and sister in a conventional sense. These modifications Tatsuya went through may explain his alluded history as a child soldier, and also why he may not feel or express emotions. The most expressive I've seen him has been a slight raising of his voice as if something were a nuisance, and his wry, half-smile when making a droll comment.

As for the flying magic device, it looks like Taurus Silver has been trying to make it work for a long time, and he finally had a breakthrough. Last episode, Tatsuya said, when he got the prototype functioning correctly, he was one step closer to his dream. Perhaps his dream is to solve all three of the magical impossibilities that Azusa was studying. He struck one off the list with achieving a workable flying spell.

World building and slice of life was fun for most of the episode, but we need to get back on track with the action. The designated external Big Bad is this Hong Kong crime syndicate, the Headless Dragon. They're my prime suspect for throwing a flaming truck at the school bus with Miyuki in it. Time for Big Bro BAMF to get his BAMF on next episode.