10 Second Anime - Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei - Episode 12

Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei - Episode 12

Sabotage and cheating at the tournament? Miyuki replaces Mari in some of her events. Tatsuya shows how important an engineer can be in competition.

Heh.

When the head patriarch of the 10 families did his little parlor trick and asked the students to show him their new kinds of spells, I'm sure he didn't mean to emulate his masking magic to sabotage the other players.

Perhaps Tatsuya's little toy demonstrating fortification magic on an unconnected piece could be useful in making the competition CAD's tamper proof?

A former child soldier might know a thing or two about triage in medical emergencies. Too bad Mari wasn't awake for her to enjoy Tatsuya's princess carry.

Tatsuya, working his special blushing skills on unconscious maidens, and other maidens too...

Tatsuya even made Shizuku blush! That's some kind of BAMF blushing power right there. And invoking Miyuki's brocon to make sure she wins the Mirage Bat event in Mari's stead to make her brother proud, genius move on Mayumi and Mari's part. I think Tatsuya even saw through that.

It's interesting that a player's engineer is also like a corner coach. He and the player figure out which spells they want to program into the CAD, when to use them, and how much power to give them.

Is Mari calling Mayumi dumb, just because Shizuku uses a spell that requires a lot of math to initiate in the speed shooting event? Does the Elfin Sniper just go up there and shoot at stuff? We also see why Shizuku was so interested in seeing Mayumi compete. It wasn't just because she's a celebrity at the school, but because they participate in the same event.

Hmm.

I am shocked, shocked that there would be cheating going on at a competition with a lot of Japanese students. I mean, they certainly don't do that now for the university entrance exams! Actually, you can see how much cheating in competition is a part of Japanese culture with the nonchalant mentions of all the proctors, security, and surveillance around the grounds of the tournament. It's just a given that somebody's going to cheat.

The way that Mari and the other girl were sabotaged reminds me of the way that SUV targeted the school bus at the beginning of this arc. Untraceable magic, except for those with BAMF skills, and plausible deniability being the similarities. It probably won't be too much of a stretch to see this Hong Kong gang being involved with one of the schools to gain an advantage. I could see a scenario where the gang uses the opportunity of sabotaging the CAD's to also steal the spell sequences to sell on the grey or black market. If you think Asian countries barely respect Intellectual Property these days, how little respect would they have 80 years later after a 3rd World War using magic tech?

It really is a mistake to think of these kids as just competing at some athletic tournament. This is more like military academies playing war games with each other, while the individual students market their skills to the military contractors in attendance. There are no civilians in this story.

One thing I liked was how Tatsuya and Shizuku are changing up their shooting strategy as they go further up the matches. His Active Air Mine was fine while Shizuku was the only one shooting the targets, but when they go head to head past the quarterfinals, indiscriminately blowing up the air around your targets will also blow up your opponent's targets. That's no good. Shizuku won't have to worry about mindlessly squeezing a trigger in the later rounds. She'll have to work for it.