Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei - Raihousha Hen - Episode 11 - 10 Second Anime

The school term ends, and Tatsuya says goodbye to graduating seniors and Angelina the foreign exchange student.

Visitor Arc XI

Hmm.

Mahouka ended the Visitor Arc abruptly with slice of life stuff and graduation goodbyes. There wasn’t enough material to fill out twelve episodes. Fitting in this tower attack story near the end needed to add an extra episode too, but the confluence of humanists and magic supremacists staging terror operations dovetails nicely with the introduction of the Seven Sages and particularly that Ray guy. Mahouka should have some fun with Shizuku discovering how much power that blonde pretty boy wields.

As for the unwieldy adaptation of a longer arc trying to fill a whole season, I can’t complain about Mahouka’s intentions here. The anime wants to tell the story in the light novel series as accurately as possible, but there will always be time constraints because of the different formats. Mahouka, like the first season, plows ahead, telling the story in a linear fashion. Thankfully, the show made its audience so accustomed to people standing around talking for exposition, so the latter half of this episode efficiently placed all the important characters on the board in their proper context.

I’m curious about the brother-sister pair and why the boy likes Tatsuya so much. We get so much harem dynamics in Mahouka between rivals, so I’m glad to see regular hero worship of a young boy looking up to an older cousin, or whatever Tatsuya is to Fumiya. Tatsuya maintains regular bro friends too, so he’s not the fanservice harem king we see in other magic academy light novel adaptations.

Heh.

Angelina gets naked and immediately she thinks about Tatsuya. She has misgivings about being a soldier after Tatsuya offered her help in pursuing a different path. She realized she can be something other than Sirius as America’s strongest magician.

Fast forward to graduation day. We won’t see any more of Mayumi in a school uniform. There are all these characters from the first season who we’re still waiting to hear again six years later.

Flashback to last episode when the Tatsuya Scooby gang finds their sealed “demons” missing. He claims he hadn’t thought about what to do with the bodies if they were successful in catching them. Yeah, right.

Ha. I still giggle when the funny, lovey-dovey background music comes on. Harem comedy hijinks! Even Juumonji came to say goodbye to Tatsuya. The powers that be recognize the powers that will be. Angelina needed to help with the Student Council graduation party and she’s mad Tatsuya. Disciplinary Committee members aren’t members of the Student Council, though. Har. Angelina only agreed to become a “temp” student council member because she thought she would see Tatsuya at the party. Miyuki is ice cold, naturally, in calling her out. She wanted to sing for him!

Yay! Shizuku returned to Japan. I suppose Tatsuya will see Angelina off at the airport too. Shizuku became important because of unwitting relationship with one of the Seven Sages. Ah, here we go. Tatsuya needs to say goodbye to a certain busty blonde strategic weapon. Angelina has many souvenirs to bring back. Miyuki knows that Angelina can’t say no to her onii-sama, so she’ll be coming back to Japan sooner than she suspects. And that’s the true end of the Visitor Arc. Let’s get ready for two and a half episodes of a disappointing conclusion to the season that feels more like a placeholder until we start up again.

This little girl in an empty room will wail on some white-clad super soldiers. For training. Or testing. This little lady’s introduction starts off with a bang. She’s all about shields. Ah. Maya Yotsuba watches the operation with her butler. New hire, I suppose.

New school year and Miyuki likes Tatsuya’s new shoulder badge. It classifies him into the new Magic Engineering Course, instead of the drab, blank patch which just meant “Irregular.”

Kiddie magicians with red eyes. These kids are part of the Yotsuba clan. Fumiya the boy wants to see Tatsuya. Maya meets the new maid, Minami. Ah. The next couple of episodes deal with a “hyper tower” as the target of a magic supremacist group at the time of a special event. It feels like the Seven Sages are playing games between the humanists and radical magician terrorist cells. Some magicians work like slaves, so there’s merit and nuance to their goals, but violent tactics discredit them. Groups have attacked towers before, giving us shades of 9-11. Ooh. Hayama the head butler will lead the security forces at the party. Maya takes the threat seriously. Minami will be Hayama’s bodyguard! No maid duties for her that night. And! She’s a new student at Tatsuya’s high school. We’re all set up nicely here.