I think it's a series that you have to be willing to ignore the pro-nationalist, pro-authoritarian, anti-Chinese overtones to enjoy, and even then you have to like stuff like edgy, OP protags, incestuous over and undertones, and magic high school settings.
Oddly enough, that cross fits right with me. I like the worldbuilding - which is easily the most interesting, creative, and consistent within the magic high school settings I've read/watched so far - and I like a lot of the characters. I find the aesthetic fun. I actually thought Tatsuya was so ungodly OP and the way he curbstomped everyone was so direct that it was kind of fun in its own way. Pretty much every character had a somewhat unique power/ability (or at least a unique way of using them) that really kind of just added to their personality and really made them feel distinct from one another. That was great. Miyuki is one of my favorite characters, period. She's just awesome. And hot. Really hot. But also awesome.
I think it would've been a 10/10 if it wasn't for the fact that it is pro-authoritarian. Which it has an entire arc dedicated to being pro-authoritarian, where Tatsuya literally starts whispering all of these pro-authoritarian sweet nothing into Miyuki's ear, and it's portrayed as a realistic and truly understanding assessment of why the protesters - which are actually second class citizens, in a fucking section established as being second class prior in the narrative - are angry. And that's not actually because they're marginalized. They're just opportunistic vultures selfishly ignoring the student council government. The student council has a better grasp on the situation than the protesters have, and have only set it up to where the Weeds are marginalized because it's best for the whole, and the protesters need to get over that and accept it for how it is. Just fucking lovely, really.
Of course, that's all followed by an arc that is very jingoist and pretty racist against Chinese folk, like, shockingly so. And all of these things are more or less overt themes of the narrative itself that it hopes to communicate to the audience. I can put that aside because of how much I like about Mahouka, but not to where I'm unwilling to acknowledge that it exists, either, so I docked a point or so from it. It's not a huge penalty because I was able to ignore it somewhat and I loved everything else about it, but...yeeesh. It was really over the head.
Which is sad. I love magic high schools, and this is what I honestly feel to be the best magic high school setting I've found so far. It drove me to paying for the LNs to find out more about it, and I wasn't disappointed in it. I love incest, it's fucking spicy. I'm down with edgy, OP MCs. I'm down with pretty much everything about Mahouka. It should be a 10/10. Then it slams me with all of this Imperial Japanese tier thematics and well, ree. |