By Tsutomu Sato and Kana Ishida. Released in Japan as “Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei” by ASCII Mediaworks. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Andrew Prowse.

Yes, just like Maou-sama and DanMachi in April, it’s now Mahouka’s time to have a short story collection. As such, the stories in this volume are highly variable. That said, there are two that manage to be relevant to the ongoing story, so I’ll deal with them separately. As for the rest, we get a story with the grumpy guy who hates Tatsuya, Morisaki, who rescues a young woman from being abducted and then has to be her bodyguard; Eimi, who we met in the Competition stories, having a nasty amusement park encounter with thugs trying to steal her family spells; Ichijou and Kichijouji trying to recover after their loss last time, and making annoying lolicon jokes simply as Ichijou’s younger sister likes George; and a jaw-droppingly syrupy date between Tatsuya and Miyuki that seems to do nothing but take the incestuous subtext this series is filled with and rub it in your face. These stories are all readable but not great.

The first story in the collection, which is a beach episode, also starts off pretty fanservicey and pointless, and seems to be about Honoka trying to attract Tatsuya’s attention by almost drowning herself, which backfires in a typical anime “you saw my swimsuit fall off” way. The surprise, and actual plot relevance, comes towards the end. First of all, Shizuku, who’s mostly been in Miyuki’s corner, decides to ask Miyuki the rude question: does she like her brother in a romantic way? The answer is not really satisfying to me, but very much in character for Miyuki, so that’s acceptable. Better is Honoka actually working up her courage and confessing, and Tatsuya’s honest answer: he’s incapable of emotions like that. Of course, this is not stopping her from carrying on liking him till she finds someone better, as Tatsuya says he’d feel the same way about anyone else. I honestly wasn’t expecting one of the main pairings of this series to be shot down this fast, and it’s somewhat refreshing.

The longest story here is the last one, which deals with the fact that Mayumi is retiring, and would like to pass on the Student Council President position to someone she trusts. Hattori is the first that comes to mind, but he doesn’t want to do it. This leaves Azusa, but she’s simply too terrified to do it, having always been the meek one in the group. This is eventually resolved by one of the most blatant yet hilarious scenes in the book, which I will try not to spoil. More importantly, the successor is also carrying on Mayumi’s will by seeking to eliminate the prejudice against Course 2 students by allowing them to hold Student Council Positions. It’s a good reminder of the prejudice that still exists in many ways, which we haven’t really focused on since the first book. It also shows us that Miyuki’s immaturity is still hanging around, and that she can be TERRIFYING when lashing out – there’s a reason she wasn’t chosen to succeed as President. Yet.

The Irregular at Magic High School has likely locked in its audience already. If you enjoy the series, you’re going to pick up and enjoy this. If you’re one of those who despise Tatsuya, this is not going to change your mind (I didn’t even get into the politics occasionally on display here). Recommended to the former group – this isn’t an easy series to hate read, so the latter should move on.

By Tsutomu Sato and Kana Ishida. Released in Japan as “Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei” by ASCII Mediaworks. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Andrew Prowse.

I’ve been very nice to Irregular at Magic High School in my last three reviews, despite being well aware that the series is very polarizing, and that there are many, many people who vehemently dislike it – not as much as Sword Art Online, I mean, let’s not get crazy, but a whole lot. This is the first volume that, while I still enjoyed it to a degree, I’m beginning to see their point. Everything that’s normally annoying about Mahouka is just that much more so here, and the book even has a huge page count to get it all in there. Tatsuya’s perfectness, the vague incestuous implications, the cartoon nature of the villains, who make even other anime Chinese mafia cringe. And most of all, the endless, endless “magicbabble”, as the reader begins to suspect that without each detailed explanation of what magic is used and how it works in that context, this book would be about 70 pages long.

The games themselves show off our first-years to the best of their abilities, and their are few surprises – there is one game-breaking injury (literally – we’re told she won’t be able to use magic anymore), but it’s to a minor character we haven’t seen much of, and it’s never even brought up again. What we mostly see is First High’s girls beating the snot out of their competitors (the rookie guys don’t have Tatsuya as their engineer, so of course they do badly and seethe at him all the time for being so Tatsuya). Indeed, the competition with the most tension is the one between Shizuka and Miyuki – it’s over far too quickly, and I’d like to have seen more of it, but again, Miyuki is so far above everyone else, I suppose there’s not much we can do. The Honor Student side manga should help.

Of course, Tatsuya is forced to compete himself due to various circumstances, and of course he is amazing, though Leo and Mikihiko are also allowed to show off their chops a bit. (Erika, sadly, gets very little to do beyond be jealous of her brother’s relationship with Mari, though that does give us the funniest moment in the book, as Miyuki teases Erika about her brother complex, and Erika just loses it because it’s MIYUKI doing this. The student council for the most part are there to be a Greek chorus, with Mayumi occasionally showing off her crush on Tatsuya and Azusa gradually realizing Tatsuya’s secret identity due to his complete inability to hide his amazing engineering skills (though he tries, multiple times in the book, not to take credit for things.)

The book is not bad per se, despite my complaining – the action sequences are well paced and work despite all the magic explanations woven into them. Tatsuya’s past and his devotion to Miyuki makes the book take a very dark tone towards the end, as he shows no mercy towards anyone who would hurt Miyuki, and the narrative points out – perhaps a bit too much – that it’s ONLY Miyuki he cares about, not anyone else. So it’s still a good series to read for fans, but I can easily see casual readers deciding that this is the point they may want to abandon ship.

By Tsutomu Sato and Kana Ishida. Released in Japan as “Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei” by ASCII Mediaworks. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Andrew Prowse.

I had mentioned in my Manga the Week of post that I was very amused at the coincidence that this third volume released only one month after the 9th volume of A Certain Magical Index, which is *also* the first of a two-book arc featuring a sports competition between various schools disrupted by a terrorist attack. (As it happens, they even have the same translator, who must have wondered what god he offended to get these assignments right in a row.) That said, thankfully the books take slightly different tacks. Index is fully concerned with the terrorist attack, and the competition games take something of a back seat. This first volume of Mahouka’s new arc is almost all about the games themselves, with the terrorist attacks only starting to come up near the end. And while Touma may be Index’s star, he rarely completely overpowers the storylines. The same can’t be said for Tatsuya, who is, as ever, the most awesome man to ever awesome.

I say this with affection, of course. I enjoy this series, and frankly if you’re still reading this series and don’t enjoy what they’re doing with Tatsuya after the first two volumes, what the heck is wrong with you? It’s actually helped by how ridiculous it gets – you can’t help but laugh at his discomfort as Azusa gushes about her love of the mysterious student engineer Taurus Silver, and Tatsuya does everything but rub the back of his head and laugh uncomfortably. Not that he would ever do that, as we do get a bit more backstory as to exactly what’s wrong with his basic personality. It’s apparently by family design, and he literally can’t feel emotional extremes. Which is handy if you want to keep your lead male from the standard harem series ‘whoops I walked in on the girls changing’ stuff, but can be a bit off-putting as well, because it’s hard to get a read on Tatsuya even when we are getting his inner thoughts.

We get a new member of his inner circle this volume as well. Mikihiko is a magician whose abilities are sort of being suppressed by a magic accident right now, and so he’s lumped in Course 2 with the rest of the “bad magic students”. Of course, like every other Course 2 student in Tatsuya’s inner circle, Mikihiko actually has brilliant magical control of spirits and will no doubt shine when the story call for it; his issue seems to be more self-doubt and angst. It’s not just him, either; many of the upperclassmen competing in the games feel a bit underpowered compared to our amazing lead, and those feelings don’t just go away. (The women, of course, have no such issues, and clean up in every event – or would, if not given a game-breaking injury by said terrorists.) Magic School is tough, and everyone is having difficulties working under the pressure.

This being the first of a two-book arc (though like the last arc, it seems to stop rather than come to a cliffhanger – did the author write one huge book that had to be cut in half AGAIN?), there’s lots of plot threads introduced that I’m sure will pay off in the second book, including Chinese mafia and a student from a rival school who seems to have fallen for Tatsuya’s sister Miyuki at first sight (boy, is he in for crushing disappointment) .So in the end, there are only two big flaws to this otherwise highly entertaining series. The first is the magical discussion, which goes on and on as if it’s trying to be a textbook as much as a novel. And the second is Tatsuya, who the reader needs to accept really is just that awesome, or they will hate this. I’ve accepted it. Viva Tatsuya!