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EP. REVIEW: Irregular at Magic High School: Visitor Arc

T.Silver wrote:

I'm assuming you've seen the movie, but ill tag it just in case. spoiler[Remember that scene where the group is deciding to help Kokoa rescue her sisters? Everyone gave their input, except for Tatsuya. He took a moment, closed his, and we were given a flashback of a dying woman with a young Tatsuya by her side. And then opened up his eyes and agreed to help her. You see that woman was very important to him and those girls reminded him of her and shortly after their discussion he and Miyuki are sitting outside alone together, and he basically apologizes to her for making such a decision based on his own feelings.]That a pretty big example that you might have overlooked. I will say for the most part Tatsuya can be a pretty indifferent individual and is capable of making cold hard decisions, there's no denying that. But he does genuinely care for his friends spoiler[and a few of his family members, that haven't shown themselves yet]. The Vistors Arc does show a lot of evidence of Tatsuya being genuinely kind and caring towards others aside from Miyuki, so hopefully if the adaption doesn't cut to many corners you can see more of it for yourself.

Side note: You know, I had forgotten about that little flash in the movie (because I didn't and still don't have any idea of the context). The problem is that as the movie takes place after this arc, I can't be sure how it fits in with the mindset of the Tatsuya in season 2. Heck, I can't even be sure if it is an exception to his Miyuki-centric worldview (well, yet anyway). It'd be nice if season 2 dramatically changes how I view the movie.

Just a few things:

The way the seal works is that Miyuki uses a portion of her power(i.e her control) to suppress Tatsuya's powers. You know the instances in the series where Miyuki will sometimes involuntary activate her magic when she's emotional disturbed? That's a side effect of the seal. So what Tatsuya did was essentially copied the process she did, which lifted the limiter and gave her back the full control of her magic.

Also about Lina with her identity being revealed and her commiting treason. She's fortunate that the people who know her identity and shouldn't aren't the type to share secrets(secrets that could potentially cause a lot of political and international problems), so her identity is still safe. As for commiting treason, yeah your not wrong about that. What she did was probably objectively the wrong thing to do, but this kinda goes into one of the over arcing plots of this season, Lina is to kind to be in the military. She doesn't want to kill if she can help it, especially friends. Lina was actually thinking of fighting her way out before Tatsuya came up with the proposal of having a non-lethal duel to settle matters. To her that was a life-line and she took it without hesitation. Also no one else is aware of her sharing the Intel to Tatsuya who would inform the USNA, so she should be fine.

(Note: Tatsuya took her mask off because it operates as a communications device too, so he didn't want her calling for more reinforcements. Plus he wanted her to cut the act so they could talk and possibly form and temporary Alliance to combat the parasite threat.So he really had no ill intentions.)

T.Silver wrote:

Just a few things: The way the seal works is that Miyuki uses a portion of her power(i.e her control) to suppress Tatsuya's powers. You know the instances in the series where Miyuki will sometimes involuntary activate her magic when she's emotional disturbed? That's a side effect of the seal. So what Tatsuya did was essentially copied the process she did, which lifted the limiter and gave her back the full control of her magic. Also about Lina with her identity being revealed and her commiting treason. She's fortunate that the people who know her identity and shouldn't aren't the type to share secrets(secrets that could potentially cause a lot of political and international problems), so her identity is still safe. As for commiting treason, yeah your not wrong about that. What she did was probably objectively the wrong thing to do, but this kinda goes into one of the over arcing plots of this season, Lina is to kind to be in the military. She doesn't want to kill if she can help it, especially friends. Lina was actually thinking of fighting her way out before Tatsuya came up with the proposal of having a non-lethal duel to settle matters. To her that was a life-line and she took it without hesitation. Also no one else is aware of her sharing the Intel to Tatsuya who would inform the USNA, so she should be fine. (Note: Tatsuya took her mask off because it operates as a communications device too, so he didn't want her calling for more reinforcements. Plus he wanted her to cut the act so they could talk and possibly form and temporary Alliance to combat the parasite threat.So he really had no ill intentions.)

Even with that whole power seal explanation I am still thoroughly confused.

...Lina herself is a Lieutenant Colonel and reports directly to the Joint Chiefs of Staff—aka the leaders of the military. For a real-world equivalent, she is basically the leader of Delta Force. Thus, the idea that she would give up classified information—especially classified information about a US army unit conducting an illegal operation on Japanese soil—is pure insanity. The political fallout from this information (not to mention the additional information that AWOL USNA solders are committing serial killings in Tokyo) would cause a diplomatic incident that could lead to war...

Quote:

...Lina herself is a Lieutenant Colonel and reports directly to the Joint Chiefs of Staff—aka the leaders of the military. For a real-world equivalent, she is basically the leader of Delta Force. Thus, the idea that she would give up classified information—especially classified information about a US army unit conducting an illegal operation on Japanese soil—is pure insanity. The political fallout from this information (not to mention the additional information that AWOL USNA solders are committing serial killings in Tokyo) would cause a diplomatic incident that could lead to war...

I mean, she's also just a teenage girl.
And her leaders don't even trust her with the REAL details of the mission.
And she pretty much has carte blanche to execute her orders however she sees fit.

Even with that whole power seal explanation I am still thoroughly confused.

So on the suspension of disbelief, I think it is important to remember that Lina was forced into being the leader of the stars because she is the one who can use WMD magic.

Our world but 75 years into the future? Yeah if WW2 never ended. One of the big things Tatsuya is fighting against is how the world treats magicians as weapons. Talented magicians are conscripted.

Lina isn't the guy who worked really hard and wanted to become the leader of Delta force. Lina is the girl who was railroaded into becoming the leader of Delta force. Lina wants to be loyal to the states, but they shoved too much onto a 16 year old girl is what this amounts to.

I'm guessing you have no experience with military training? Modern military training is a borderline abusive process; the primary point of such training is to break down the soldier as an individual and force them to integrate themselves into a larger team unit. Officer training makes you go through the entire process sleep-deprived, and special forces throws in underfed as well (average weight loss is something like 10-20 lbs). If this were too much for her, she ought to have cracked well before she got put into this situation.

See your argument falls flat when you consider how much experience you need to join the military and get that training. They train you. On the other hand, being a top level magician normally takes more than a decade of experience. Why would you think she would get the same treatment as a normal soldier when the entire point of forcing her into the military is for her magic? It makes much more sense to, you know, make sure she can do that magic stuff for you.

And your argument about child soldiers is even more ridiculous. You know who usually aren't that age? Doctors. Physicists. It is much easier to teach a kid to fire a gun than to teach them calculus. None of those traits you are speaking of that result in child soldiers are the traits that a high level magician would have. Mahouka's "Modern Magic" is the equivalent of an academic field. It is something people go to a university to learn. You're just completely ignoring that.

So I may be misunderstanding, but this is how I think the Tatsuya/Miyuki seal works.

Tatsuyas power is so huge, that for whatever reason his family decided he was not able to control it on his own (Because he can essentially disintegrate anything he wants up to massive distances away). Miyuki is also massively strong, but not on a WMD level (Or maybe she is?), so a magical seal was developed that limits Tatsuyas power and speed of casting (Which is why he's "Irregular"). The "fuel" for this magic is about half of Miyukis power; Thats why the siblings are together most of the time, Why Miyukis power slips sometimes when she is upset, and why her regular power displays arent on the scale of what she did this episode.
Previously, Miyuki used the physical contact of a kiss to Tatsuyas forehead to remove the magic sealing his power; this has the duel effect of powering the 2 of them back up to WMD levels. I assume after Episode 24 of S1 the she re-established the limiter magic to put them both back to their "Normal" power levels. In this episode, Tatsuya used the same spell himself to break the seal (Though apparently his one has some sort of time limit before the seal re-establishes itself). I assume he knows the spell because thats his whole deal; he can analyze magic as it activates.

SOund right?

Basic training is about 3 months long. Officer training is about another 3 months. Occupational training for most careers is about 6-9 months.

I will admit that child soldiers are not known for having high flexibility (see especially Sparta). But the driving force there I would say is the extreme conservatism leaking into an unwillingness to acknowledge that tactics have changed from what they're used to. The Ottoman Janissaries (another well-known child soldier corps) were at their outset probably the most effective troops in Europe and were a major factor in driving Ottoman expansion into Europe. It's not unimaginable that you could develop a training program for magicians in such an environment, even if it is supposedly scholastically difficult.