Notes of Mahouka Koukou Rettousei Episode 4

Cue the information overload.

Summary of Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei Episode 4

In the previous episode Tatsuya joined the Disciplinary Committee and right off the bat, had to broke up a fight between two club leaders.

Summary of Episode Four: Tatsuya reports to the committee leaders, then goes out for dinner with his classmates. The next day he continues patrolling and is attacked by a mysterious foe. By the end of the recruitment week he makes quite a name for himself. Sayaka tries to recruit him into the kendo club, which leads to rumours spreading about the two of them. He even gets called to the student counselor’s office. At the committee meeting he makes a scene when he reveals he is in possession of classified information; also, Miyuki gets repeatedly jealous of him because of all the girls he is meeting.

Our dear Tatsuya is quite the ladies’ man! I lost count of how many girls he made blush during this episode. Not only girls, but even the student counselor lady. The fact that Miyuki dotes on her brother is nothing new at this point. What surprised me though that the other girls didn’t strike me as the type that blushes so easily; in fact, I’d expect a student counselor not to blush at whatever her students throw at her. On the contrary, it seemed to be as if she was hitting on Tatsuya. Let’s see, his first victim is Mibu Sayaka, whom he calls pretty kendo girl.

And she reacts as expected.

Were I in her place, I would’ve been offended to be seen only as a pretty kendo girl…
Next off he makes Mari blush and reveal she has a boyfriend.
This time it’s her who’s caught off guard.

Then it’s student council president Mayumi’s turn to blush. It didn’t come as surprising that Miyuki felt jealous, but it was funny to watch. Next up on the blushing list is the student counselor lady. To be fair to Tatsuya it could’ve been annoying to repeatedly deal with the rumor about him and Sayaka… but him clearing up this misunderstanding was equally as funny to watch.

There was quite an information dump this week. We learned how the use of two CADs can nullify magic and that there is a shady organization called Egalité operating on campus and there is magic restricted to military uses and so on. Now I might forgotten to mention last week that the guy from the kendo club looked really shady with his glasses and slanted eyes (anyone who watched anime long enough will recognize these stereotypes), and so it didn’t surprise me at all that he was behind the attempt on Tatsuya. On the other hand it is a mystery why he would wear his armband that allows anyone to identify him as a member of a political organization. In my experience schools don’t take well when students openly associate with political bodies, and I would’ve thought that this isn’t different in the future this series presents us.

There was one more thing that bothered me. When Tatsuya sees the armband of his foe, we unmistakeably know that this clue is going to be important and the anime reinforces this with the way it emphasizes the armband. Then he loses sight of his attacker and suddenly we get a flashback of said armband… which we saw like five seconds before. If it wasn’t obvious that the colours and shape will be important later on, the anime made sure no-one has the slightest bit of doubt. This seemed completely unnecessary to me.
Gee, thanks for the SUBTLE hint there.

What’s up with anime nowadays portraying teachers as almost the same age as students? I was surprised how young the counselor lady looks. And why, oh why is there a need to emphasize her bosom? The anime even hints at the color of undergarment. I’m speechless; I didn’t expect this series to stoop so low. My first thought was to insert a screenshot of said undergarments, but for the sake of decency I’m not going to.

The part where Katsuto, head of Punishment Committee, was introduced was so over the top that it made me giggle. Are we supposed to be immediately in awe of his stature and muscles? Because that’s clearly what the anime was gunning for.
He’s larger than life.

The way Tatsuya told us about Katsuto’s muscles reminded me how another series I recently finished watching (Kill la Kill) portrayed its character, Gamagoori Ira almost the same way – he also was head of the Disciplinary Committee and he was packing quite the amount of muscles, which the series constantly reminded the viewers of.

When Mari asks Tatsuya whether Kirihara was the only one to use magic, Tatsuya lies without almost any hesitation. I kind of expected him to tell on the two other guys attempting to use magic, but it seems either he has a heart or he decided this detail was too insignificant to make a fuss out of. Although technically the two guys didn’t use magic because their casting was nullified by him, so maybe that’s the reason why he didn’t mention them.

We get our share of sibling love in this episode as well, and the series is clearly making fun of it.
All that’s missing is some roses in the background.

The club recruitment week has gone by in a flash; all we get from it is Leo reciting Tatsuya’s achievements to us, viewers. Scenes like these always irk me when one character tells another information he should already know just for the sake of the viewers. They just reek of lazy writing. I think they could’ve presented this time skip much better.
Witness the birth of a legend.

There was a similar time skip when Tatsuya gets grilled about what Sayaka told her about how the students feel about the Disciplinary committee and he repeated her words. This time the time skipped was much shorter, but nonetheless the screen fading to black and Mayumi summarizing what Tatsuya just told them felt somehow just as out of place.

Sayaka’s resentment against the discrimination and two-courses system is understandable, but… My question is that if she doesn’t like the treatment of 2nd course students and wants to show the 1st course students that there is more to them than just magic, why doesn’t she leave school? I don’t think anybody forced them to enter Magic High and they all knew what they were getting into, right?

All in all this was a mixed episode with both strong and weak points. I’ve touched upon the weak point, but what I consider this episode’s strength was finally moving forward with the story. I’m waiting how this anti-discrimination movement issue will be expanded upon in coming episodes.