05.11
This makes as much sense in context.
…according to Tatsuya’s standards. So apologies to all of my white supremacist fans who were misled by the blog title.
But that drives Mahouka’s plot into a wall, by casting this type of conflict as a black and white view where the people fighting for equality are either evil or stupid, and the people fighting against it are painted as valiant warriors of justice who will not let so much as a piece of their school uniforms be stained by these simpletons. The siege in this episode isn’t even a difficult issue for the students to deal with. They pretty much squash Blanche’s attack in the first act of the episode, leaving only a few members left to fight back. Even if they didn’t accidentally paint Blanche as more sympathetic than the protagonists, this isn’t how you establish conflict. You make the bad guys competent enough to one-up the heroes every now and then, not stomp them in the face at the first moment they act.
I would also like to note how you see no casualties from the school’s side, with most of the students being able to take out four men each. There’s not even an account from Tatsuya about how many students got injured, whereas all of Blanche’s force suffers huge casualties with no chance of even making a dent into the school. Where’s the threat? Where’s the proof that these guys are the monsters Tatsuya rails against? Instead, I see lazy attempts to paint them as villains like giving them gas masks so we can’t see their faces. The writer seems to think painting a little arrow pointing at Blanche saying, “these are the bad guys. Hate them or whatever” is enough to introduce a struggle in this story.
That’s what Tatsuya does: Tell the audience what whom we’re supposed to hate rather than the series itself showing why these people are contemptible. He even scoffs at Sayaka by calling her allegiance “misplaced sympathy”. He acts as if joining a civil rights movement denotes foolishness and savagery, with no exceptions the rule at all. I know Japan hasn’t had the cleanest record when it comes to human rights, but to dismiss all of that as no better than terrorism just seems backwards even for the most draconian societies. How Aniplex thought this show could be released here without controversy boggles the mind. And yet, you know this will be on Toonami in about a year. If they can air Asuna getting molested by tentacles, than Tatsuya pulling a John Galt would be no problem.
It almost makes me tolerate the magic technobabble. Because after all of the political dogma, hearing a guy explain how wands work for half an episode seems less torturous. That’s not to say the exposition has gotten better. No. It’s only made the magic even stupider. And that deserves an achievement to somehow make the action of flying via iPhone stupider than it actually looks. Explaining it is not going to make magic any less dumb. Your audience is probably savvy enough to understand the basic rules of magic, so hammering them over the head with terminology in place of showing the magic actually works only belittles expectations. This show acts as if I don’t know what a spell is.
But then, the show really likes to look down on the intelligence of anybody who doesn’t side with Tatsuya. The last act is just a long-winded speech to Sayaka, telling her how stupid is for thinking equality could really work out in society. Tatsuya even says flat-out that equality would mean being equally snubbed, as if being any less than the fastest excelling student in the area could be the worst thing to happen to him. This show is so smug, unable to question itself and instead having the characters assure themselves that any attempt to go against their values will result in the worst-case scenario. I can’t wait until the show tries to prove people who run homeless shelters are actually terrorists. Or that immigrants are all out for blood.