I’ve been enjoying the Nine Schools Competition arc a lot because we got a lot less high school filler and a lot more magic action. The episode begins with Leo testing out a new weapon prototype by Tatsuya…

Rating: 4/5 curiously excited cloud 

Episode 12 builds up the suspicion and hype for the rest of the Nine Schools Arc which will more or less plunge into an investigation over the third party person or faction that’s been tampering with the races causing pretty dangerous incidents. The first incident starts with Mari which leaves everyone on edge for the last few competitions. Tatsuya’s keen analytical abilities haven’t missed a beat with what’s going on. As a result, Miyuki will replace Mari in the official Mirage Bat competition. Luckily, Miyuki has her Onii-sama as her engineer/technician which should keep her pretty safe. Despite there being other male characters, I think you could probably consider Mahouka as a harem sort of style even though each of the female crushes on Tatsuya are super subtle in the plot. The random supporting female characters who fall for Tatsuya’s stoic and non-existent charms are pretty two-dimensional throughout the story…

As a side note to the main plot, Tatsuya’s reputation as a skilled engineer is slowly building and everyone seems to want his expertise on their CAD. During Shizuku’s Speed Shooting was the perfect event to demonstrate Tatsuya’s engineering finesse. Here we find out that an engineer isn’t only in charge of fine-tuning equipment, but also to work with the competitor to design magic strategy schematics for the spells and activation sequences that will be utilized in the competition. To put it simply, Shizuku’s CAD was basically fine-tuned to lock onto different targets within a specific distance (since sharp shooting is confined in one place) and they sort of set speed-dial instant spells for each of the targets. Shizuku only needs to focus on a key number in the activation sequence and her CAD will fire the sequences automatically.

For the midpoint episode in the overarching 24 series scheme of things, we still have a long way to go till the finale but I enjoyed the natural pace of episode 12. I guess the magic sport competitions make things a lot more exciting than the usual high school dialogue scenes in between characters. I am looking forward to more exciting things from the story. I have a feeling that sooner or later the anime will venture outside the high school setting for a more magic-political oriented setting like in the light novel as more of the Shiba siblings’ pasts are revealed to us.

Stay tuned for more Mahouka next week ^_^

– Cloudy

What are you pondering today?