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「来訪者編Ⅷ」 (Raihou-sha-hen Ⅷ)
“Visitor Arc VIII”
Move over yuri, there’s a new forbidden love in town. Real forbidden love. The kind that makes even Alabama go “oh hell nawh!” And when that happens, darling you know you’ve got a problem. Or two. Don’t tell Miyuki that though, because if the latest shenanigans surrounding parasite love are anything to go by, the fire of heart won’t be lasting too long out in the cold.
As we’ve been gearing up to since the very start, Mahouka’s latest arc will come down to putting the parasites in their place, and first major gambit of that has now commenced—just a little differently than I expected. Having our extradimensional visitors pull some sort of Sense8 plotline complete with love-infused deviance and refusal to toe the party species line? Definitely going places, Chinese necromancy places. While a lot of this is pretty much just giving reason for Tatsuya to keep showing off all that wonderful and stupendous power driving girls mad (well, at least euphoric), I have to give Mahouka some credit for the sheer thought put into the mechanics behind it all. Source material chopping or not (and it’s clear quite a bit is missing), delving into what makes veritable aliens tick is worthy of a bit of praise when similar works often pass over such things as boring, icky detail. Call it the textbook treatment, and I do like me a good textbook at times.
Otherwise the interesting bit here will be what happens with Lina and the American angle, which so far at least looks to be taking the passive route. Well, on the administrative surface if truces and quid pro quo courtesy of Yotsuba involvement are anything to go by. While this seemingly precludes further tsundere Lina-isms (which one can never have enough of), frankly I expect the girl to pop back up before too long considering she’s unlikely to take her defeat lying down and how the parasites are intimately entwined with the American side of things. It’s unlikely Lina will just up and leave things alone simply because she’s been called off for example, especially given how emotions are starting to get the best of her. Probably won’t see the girl going full ambush predator on Magic Jesus and company, but an honest showdown or tactical alliance is in the realm of possibility, particularly given the growing number of interested parties.
Damn, now I think I’m a little eager to see what next week brings.
Preview
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Full-length screens? I haven’t seen those in a while. Miyuki is a most powerful mage indeed.
On another note, while this show gets grief for many reasons — much of it well-earned — I think that Tatsuya gets unfairly treated on the issue of driving the women around him mad with desire. Really, so far at least, only two women in the show have any serious romantic feelings for him — and one’s his imouto so you can’t really call it standard (and even she seems to have fallen into the deep end lately). The other of course is Honoka, but she had already fallen for him prior to the first episode, so neither of the two developed those feelings in response to his actions.
Pretty much all of the other women in the show compose a typical enough spectrum of affinity for him — one briefly infatuated, one who finds him interesting, a few who like him as a friend or person (and might respond were he to take the lead), some who find him annoying…. He’s actually less magnetic than the wretched leads of a hundred other anime yet draws comments that suggest he’s as overpowered on that front as he is as a mage. Note, I’m not really considering Lina at this time.
While kind of slow-paced and heavy with interrogation, I still enjoyed this episode although I’m not sure why yet.
Agree, Tatsuya himself has done absolutely little to get any girl to be attracted to him. The girls that like him do that on their own choices, there’s no element of courtship of any kind. So criticisms of “harem lord” are unfounded and unfair.
If the episode has a scene worthy of making a full-length image, I’m going to ensure it’s captured for posterity 😛
And I agree with both you and Dude. Tatsuya has many issues and Mahouka treats him far too much like a Gary Stu at the best of times, but the series is surprisingly restrained in terms of harem building. I think what gives the harem master perception is wholly Miyuki because her obsession (and frankly it is at this stage) colours almost every plot aspect or interaction with Tatsuya – her sheer prominence bleeds over and affects (in the eyes of some) what the other girls do.
This is probably one of the few positives to be had for heavily sidelining the secondary cast because it’s likely you’d see more Tatsuya infatuation as a way of fleshing out any additional screentime for the other girls.
Sometimes, I wonder how long they’re going to stretch this “pseudo-incest” before it gets too tiring or gets blocked by the plot. Well, the answer might be already mentioned here with the issue of succession in a powerful clan. And it’s plausible answer. Yet, there seems to be an insinuation that even that might get bypassed by some future incident shaking the clan succession perhaps an internal rebellion? Because surely as forbidden love was already explored last season, the scenes here already dial up a notch-it’s already an obsession. I find the whole thing a little disturbing, but thankfully, the whole parasite plot is moving forward to make us all forget about that. And this whole parasite enemy seems quite a bit complex, it reminds me of the Festum in Fafner, assimilating yet learning. The lack of Lina in this episode was disappointing as I wanted how the show would follow through with her “breakdown” shown in the finale of the previous episode.
Given how closely intertwined Miyuki is with Tatsuya and how much the series wants to play up her love at every opportunity, I wouldn’t think we’ll have long to forget about it lol.
The big question as you mention is how Mahouka plans on dealing with it because there’s no way in hell it’ll try and enable the relationship – that would create too many other problems to deal with. No good answers really, we’ll just have to wait and see!
IMO, the incest thing is the authors way of expressing/recreating Japan’s History with Incest and inbreeding. Although it’s completely not favorable to westerners or others around the world, it’s to emphasize how Japan came to be from back then(Hence, the obsession of retaining power between Clans). A reason why Incest in Japanese Anime still exists.
As someone who has read the Novels, I can say that the Pseudo-Incest stretches quite far, but not to the point where plot completely blocks it, because it was already planned from the start. The build up of obsession from Miyuki as seen in this episode is a sign of further plot relevance being set in motion for future occurrences. Although, I still cant say for sure how they’ll treat the Anime Adaptation as it is (Because they Cut off A Lot of relevant plot and Character development in this Season)