Mahouka Koukou no Yuutousei Episode 8 Discussion

theGodde said:
Never really understood the ice pillar break event. Not only does it not make much sense in terms of demonstrating magic power, but it's also incredibly visually bland.

Considering the fact that ice is also susceptible to kinetic/thermal-based magic, it immediately feels like a pretty biased event.

A far more interesting way of doing the same kind of event would be to have 3 ice pillars at the back of either side of the field, and then have the students cast spells to attack or defend the pillars by creating protective barriers, shooting projectiles, etc. To make it more fair you could add a rule that they can only activate magic on their side of the field, and then send it across. That would force the magicians to get creative and it would provide far more visual spectacle.

Now you might think that makes Mahouka's spells more intelligent and scientific than regular magic, and it certainly does try But as an engineering student I can tell you most of the spells of Mahouka are nonsensical BS, and very poorly explained.

SCIENCE TIME

That way the whole bridge cannot vibrate at the same frequency and suffer damage. Now if we take this concept back to Mahouka, the explanation given is simply that "the oscillations are destroying the ice pillars", and that the opponent is "reinforcing the ice pillars". The issue is that they don't explain how the pillars are being reinforced. They also don't explain how exactly the oscillations can ignore this reinforcement.

you'd also need physical contact with the pillars in order to vibrate them, however according to Mahouka "Shiori's Magic Starts in Midair", which would drastically reduce the strength of the vibrations in the pillar by at least several hundred times (vibration is stronger the denser an object is. Air is not very dense so vibrations through air are very weak).

They also have an in-world inconsistency. How would fortifying an object stop an opponent from activating a spell? The two types of magic are completely unrelated. As far as I know there have been no spells in Mahouka that rely on certain physical conditions in order to be activated.

Overall by trying to add real science to their magic, poorly explaining it, and then getting it wrong, it is in my opinion worse than having no science at all.

Symons1m said:

It's not surprising that you won't get how this particular event makes sense in terms of demonstrating power, unless you make a really serious attempt to understand everything about magic that the anime explains. Though even that won't help you much as there's too many details and explanations missing in the anime. And, it doesn't really matter whether it's visually bland to you, as you don't know how "Japanese" people in "2095" think about it. Not to mention, they specifically do cosplay in this particular event, so it also makes things lively as you can notice from audience reaction.

To briefly explain it, the event allows the participants to clearly demonstrate the level of their data fortification (among other things), a technique that allows you to prevent the opponent's magic from affecting anything you want to protect.

Symons1m said:

Even Tatsuya (the original MC) thinks that it's an event tailor-made for Miyuki, so yeah. It's basically how there's things some people are really good at because of their natural talent, so they have an unfair advantage over others.

Symons1m said:

It's a misunderstanding that events in the NSC are meant to appear very interesting, fair, or visually spectacular. The main purpose behind the NSC is to encourage the young magicians to better themselves by having them compete against each other on national level. The army/nation uses the tournament as a means to assess their level. Moreover, the rules of the competition only state what is not allowed and the participants are free to use any means to defeat their opponent/s so long as they don't violate the rules. It's a place where the higher-ups want to see how you can deal with the enemies of the nation, so being fair or showing sportsmanship is out of the question in the first place. Anime-only viewers often misunderstand this competition as a typical tournament, but like many things in Mahouka, the reality is different.

Symons1m said:
The spells don't even work as things do in reality (as you overwrite the reality itself), so criticizing them on such a basis is pointless to begin with.

Symons1m said:
your desire to prohibit a fictional series from using its own terminologies

Now if we take this concept back to Mahouka, the explanation given is simply that "the oscillations are destroying the ice pillars", and that the opponent is "reinforcing the ice pillars". The issue is that they don't explain how the pillars are being reinforced. They also don't explain how exactly the oscillations can ignore this reinforcement.

Her interference power against the reality makes it so that the strength of the vibrations isn't weakened at all.

Symons1m said:
There's no such in-world inconsistency. First of all, you're wrong that fortifying an object stops an opponent from activating a spell. Secondly, it's very clear that you have nearly no knowledge about how magic works in Mahouka if you don't understand something as basic as fortification. At this point, it's clear that all of your criticisms about the magic in Mahouka is going to be pretty flawed due to your immense lack of knowledge about it, so I'd sincerely advice you to choose something else in order to criticize the series.

Symons1m said:
Mahouka's magic is a combination of programming and science (instead of just being a product of the latter), and it also involves various elements that can't even be defined by real science. So no, it's just your ignorance (and bias) that made you form such an opinion.

theGodde said:
before I begin, I just wanna thank you for providing more context from the LNs. That's obviously an area in which I am severely lacking, so I appreciate any clarification on that end.

I am making a serious attempt, otherwise I would never have gone to the level of detail that I did.
As for visually bland, I meant in terms of us, the viewer, not the in-universe audience.

Is the general concept behind Data Fortification that it essentially holds whatever substance contained within in a sort of stasis, where the intention is to maintain its current composition and reject all outside interference that attempts to change this composition? Kind of like locking out a file from further editing?

And since the flaws are so evident, it doesn't really make sense that this would have ever passed scrutiny. Especially considering how few events there are, there would be a lot more time and attention put into each event compared even the most prestigious interschool athletics competitions.

Let's once again circle back to the concept that this is an anime. It's perfectly fine for the LNs to have something like this because visual spectacle doesn't really matter (especially in LNs). However during the anime adaptation, someone should have looked at this and thought "why would anyone want to watch this?" The entire magic system is built in such a way that it's not visually engaging.

if there is a real world term for a certain thing and the show chooses not to use it that is causing meaningless confusion. I don't see the benefit of it, more immersion? To a person who doesn't understand the concept being explained it won't matter to them whether the word is real or...

You can't just say "she inferences the reality so the vibrations aren't weakened". Vibrations are particles colliding, and then colliding into other particles, and sending it down along the line in a gigantic Mexican hand wave. The strength directly depends on the density and bond strength of the particles the vibration is coming into contact with.

Once again I remind you that this is the anime adaptation. I've been forced to rely on the cards I've been dealt. And Magic fortification is something the anime has mentioned many times and properly explained none of those times.

this is me being a pedantic asshole - but programming is a science.

Symons1m said:

I see. Considering how many people were looking forward to the Ice Pillars Break event, doesn't it imply that it's quite visually appealing to us too? It's a subjective thing, so I won't say anything else. (personally, it isn't that visually appealing to me either)

Symons1m said:
The thing is, the organizers don't care about fairness to begin with. They basically want you to show your power, adaptability, and ingenuity. For example, if the other party has overwhelming advantage, show us what you can do to counter them in such a situation. The unfairness factor ends up becoming "a challenge to overcome" for the participants. It's just as Airi (blonde hair) said in this episode. Even if Miyuki has great power, she can still win against her so long as there's some rules in place that she can take advantage of.

Symons1m said:
You're more or less right that the magic in Mahouka isn't really visually engaging. Anyone who understands how magic works in Mahouka would know that most magic fights would literally end instantaneously because of how fast the magicians really are and how the magic works in the series. It's not like it was written with the plan to have it animated in the future after all. It's a series from a time when it wasn't that common for light novels to get animated to begin with. The author just wrote what they wanted to, it became very popular, and later it got an anime adaptation too. We believe that the series took a long time to get an anime, despite its popularity, precisely because of the difficulty in transitioning between mediums. The novel is too detailed for the anime to handle and the magic is so close to reality that it loses the flashy factor, so you'd need a huge production budget and an A or S-tier production staff to make it visually engaging.

To make it visually feasible, the anime has adopted a turn-based battle system. Otherwise, like I mentioned before, most magic fights would end instantly, if we consider the time of the 'actual fight' alone. There's no punching with energy and stuff in the series as the thing that serves as the medium to use magic can't affect any solid, liquid, gas of our reality by itself.

the suspension of disbelief when it comes to combat. The more you have to accept the fact that the enemy is just standing there looking, the more the suspension of disbelief is strained, the less enjoyable is the combat.

Symons1m said:
In any case, they still made the anime as it's one of the best ways for advertisement. When one look at the things they have left out and altered, it's easy to understand that the anime was never meant to be a thing on its own. Though seeing how there's so many fans of the anime and it selling more BDs than many extremely popular anime out there, it has been a success so far.

Symons1m said:
After all, Mahouka is one of the uncommon shows that tons of (not all) people watch not for the fanservice but for its distinct plot, vibes, and characters. It's pretty apparent when you see the reaction of the Japanese fans that are heavily criticizing this spin-off.

Symons1m said:
EDIT: Just checked the source material of this spin-off anime, and it mentions "constructive interference".
According to the source material, Shiori creates spherical shock waves in midair. Where the waves intersect, they create a new shock wave that is many times stronger.
As always, it's just the people involved in the anime production and the translation process that have been messing up with the anime adaptations of this series.

Symons1m said:
Shiori (purple hair) created several virtual spherical shockwaves in midair - on the air that's directly in contact with the pillar, so there wasn't enough distance to weaken it significantly I guess. Let me know if you still have any doubts about it.

Symons1m said:
Also, like I mentioned earlier, the skyscraper thing was just an anime-original content, and we know exactly how great the anime has been in delivering correct and necessary information from the source material. So in my opinion, it's likely one of the many things that the anime producers have messed up with.

theGodde said:
I would say there are things to enjoy within the event - such as the actual story being told through it. But the event itself isn't very interesting on its own.

The biggest issue with the visual spectacle of the event is the information exchange rate. We are told what is happening directly after it is happening not before, which reduces the actual impact of what we're seeing.

There's also the fact that watching two people point their mobile phones at each other while things happen to blocks of ice is not something that is inherently visually engaging to watch. There's not a lot of movement of visual effects being showcased.

I still disagree with that as a concept however I can see how the idea would be appealing to some people and that's enough for me to give it a pass at this point.

Instantaneous fights aren't bland or boring - look at famous westerns like The Good the Bad and the Ugly. All their confrontations are resolved in 1/2 shots, but tension is built up before to give these spontaneous fights more meaning and impact than long drawn out ones. It requires competence but it feels very visceral and real.

To me especially as a martial artist, it causes me intense mental strain when I see a guy just standing there taking the hit. Not only is it less visually engaging, but it also ruins the pacing of a fight. A good fight is like a dance, it has a rhythm. When you disrupt the rhythm it damages the pacing and fluidity of the fight. Mahouka has no rhythm, and as a result the fights feel mechanical and jarring.

And the very concept of anime being an advertisement for LNs or Manga offends me. The very fact that it ends up paying off in terms of both revenue and reputation offends me.

While I would agree there are several other elements that people take out of the mahouka anime, fanservice is certainly very high on the list. I see it mentioned every single episode in these comment sections.

The most reliable way to tell if the characters are good is if the male side characters are likeable (unless you're watching BL, in which case they will be the "waifus").

That's pretty cool. Being taught real world physics while enjoying a dumb LN about an overpowered MC defeating the bad guys and getting all the girls. Kinda like a sci-fi/fantasy doctor stone.

the transition from gas to solid state is the main loss of vibration

it is entirely possible that she could have "turned off inertia" (however IMO that is theoretically an incredibly destructive ability, and if disabling inertia was that easy then everyone would be doing it - to destructive results.

Sure to some it may still be interesting but there is no one who would prefer it over the real deal.

theGodde said:
Never really understood the ice pillar break event. Not only does it not make much sense in terms of demonstrating magic power, but it's also incredibly visually bland.

Considering the fact that ice is also susceptible to kinetic/thermal-based magic, it immediately feels like a pretty biased event.

Surely there are better and more engaging ways for characters to show off their magic power? A far more interesting way of doing the same kind of event would be to have 3 ice pillars at the back of either side of the field, and then have the students cast spells to attack or defend the pillars by creating protective barriers, shooting projectiles, etc. To make it more fair you could add a rule that they can only activate magic on their side of the field, and then send it across. That would force the magicians to get creative and it would provide far more visual spectacle.

As it stands now, they have to explain to you how each spell works as its already being used, and this dramatically damages the audience's understanding of the situation. Mahouka in general really needed more spells that can be understood simply by looking at them. Most of the spells in the show aren't visible to the human eye, and so the characters have to explain what each spell is doing as it happens.
Now you might think that makes Mahouka's spells more intelligent and scientific than regular magic, and it certainly does try But as an engineering student I can tell you most of the spells of Mahouka are nonsensical BS, and very poorly explained.

SCIENCE TIME
For example this episode there was a girl that used "Oscillation Magic" (aka: vibration magic) in order to destroy the ice pillars. The concept is known as harmonic resonance. Basically every single material ever made has a particular frequency, and if vibrated at that frequency all the vibrations will "add up on top of one another" in layman's terms. Eventually the strength of that vibration will be so strong it will shatter/damage the material. We discovered this in the 1800s when gusts of wind of a particular speed would cause bridges to resonate and suffer catastrophic damage. So in response we designed bridges that were shaped in a way where the each part of the bridge resonates at different frequencies. That way the whole bridge cannot vibrate at the same frequency and suffer damage. Now if we take this concept back to Mahouka, the explanation given is simply that "the oscillations are destroying the ice pillars", and that the opponent is "reinforcing the ice pillars". The issue is that they don't explain how the pillars are being reinforced. They also don't explain how exactly the oscillations can ignore this reinforcement.
All you'd need to do to prevent the oscillations from shattering the pillars is to change the resonance frequency. You can't use oscillations from multiple frequencies at the same time because they would interfere with each other and do nothing. So basically oscillation magic used for destroying things is incredibly hit or miss. You'd have to have every single kind of material and its resonance frequency indexed in order to use it effectively in real world combat.
you'd also need physical contact with the pillars in order to vibrate them, however according to Mahouka "Shiori's Magic Starts in Midair", which would drastically reduce the strength of the vibrations in the pillar by at least several hundred times (vibration is stronger the denser an object is. Air is not very dense so vibrations through air are very weak).
They also have an in-world inconsistency. How would fortifying an object stop an opponent from activating a spell? The two types of magic are completely unrelated. As far as I know there have been no spells in Mahouka that rely on certain physical conditions in order to be activated.
Then they say "since she's generating multiple oscillation waves, they intersect at a synthesis point and become many times stronger". Now there is some real science here, but the scientific terminology is completely incorrect (perhaps this is the fault of the translators). But basically, if you put two sources of vibration of the same frequency next to each other, there will be areas where they add together and become double the frequency and areas where they cancel each other out. There is no such thing as a "synthesis point", I'd guess it may be referring to the location where they add together (known as constructive interference). However there is no single point of constructive interference. It occurs in multiple areas along the places where the repeated frequencies interact. In all, poorly explained.
This is one such example, I won't go into any others because this is already the length of a small essay

Overall by trying to add real science to their magic, poorly explaining it, and then getting it wrong, it is in my opinion worse than having no science at all.