The Irregular at Magic High School: Reminiscence Arc

8igfan★ 10

For starters, if you plan to watch this special, then you are quite acquainted with Mahouka and the various anime that have already come out in previous years. What this special did was shed a lot of light on the relationship between Tatsuya and Miyuki and how it evolved to its current state. A lot of background information was also provided, and some rather important characters made an appearance as well. To say more would be spoilers, so I'll refrain from going further. The art and sound were just great overall, and anyone who knows anything about Mahouka should have an idea of how things willtypically progress when Tatsuya is involved, so no surprises there either. All in all, while somewhat predictable, it was still quite enjoyable to see the progression and finally get to the heart of the character that is Tatsuya. Would definitely recommend for any Mahouka fans!

theGodde★ 5

This special is par for the course when it comes to the Mahouka franchise - bad However it fulfils an interesting role in that it is the missing link to understanding who Tatsuya is, how he came to be, and his relationship with Miyuki. I'll get more into that later (spoilers I guess), but now for my surface level problems. As usual the show has an over-narration problem. Miyuki narrates throughout the whole anime and it's used as a means of dropping meaningless exposition and lore dumps and telling us things that really should have been conveyed from the direction and animation instead. The entire Mahouka animefranchise is what I'd call a well animated visual novel with action scenes. Now from a construction standpoint I have two more gripes. First is the framing of the story. Having present day Miyuki and Tatsuya flying to the island and reminiscing about the past is a terrible way to frame an origin story because it provides a context that disconnects us from what is happening. It would have been better to begin in the past and immerse us in the story, and then timeskip at the end to present day to remind us of how these characters have grown and where they're going. The second gripe is the plot itself. It doesn't really exist. There is no act structure of any kind. Tatsuya is introduced. Various events happen that affect Miyuki in various ways, Tatsuya gets to flex, there's a big battle, and Miyuki's arc is brought up to the status quo that will kick start the rest of the series. It's a terrible, uninspired way to tell a story and as a result the special has no real momentum or driving energy to it. And no you can't call this a "slice of life" side story since there is already plenty of action and plot progression (albiet incredibly botched). It's just a very bad regular story As for the fact that this is supposedly an origin story, there are problems with this as a concept, and most of them are not necessarily adaptational issues but general issues with the story itself. First of all, if you have an origin story, what is the best way to deliver it? Typically speaking you would want to start from the beginning, establish who your characters were, and explain how your characters became who they are now. However the special begins after Tatsuya has already become an OP God. It only covers Tatsuya and Miyuki becoming acquainted and forming the incestuous sibling duo so many fans know and (supposedly) love. So why then do I call it an origin story if it's not really an origin story at all? That's because it drops all of Tatsuya's origins in an information dump in the last 10 minutes. This was a terrible idea for several reasons. First of all, we didn't get to see Tatsuya before he underwent surgery and became an emotionless OP god, so we don't really understand what Tatsuya lost in order to become who he is. We've only ever known the god Tatsuya and not the person who he was before, so we aren't given any reason to care about his origin apart from the fact that it sounds cool. The implication of this is that it makes it less meaningful when Miyuki learns of his origins because we can only empathise with his suffering on a surface level. Another issue here is with the way his mother views Tatsuya. Because he can't do "proper magic" Tatsuya is considered lesser and therefore not worthy to be anything other than a bodyguard for Miyuki. However as we see in this special, and even more so in the rest of the show, he is practically speaking a better asset to the Yotsuba clan than Miyuki has been, and far, far more useful than pretty much every other character we've met thus far in the anime. So while I can understand why on a political standpoint he doesn't have the qualifications to be the next leader, I fail to understand what meaningful reason his own mother would have to look down on him as a failure. While the reasoning may legitimately exist in the source material it's very poorly communicated considering this is the foundation for the entire story going forwards. overall, this is a poorly directed, poorly written, poorly characterised, but well animated mahouka special. Ie: a generic Mahouka special