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The Fall 2020 Preview Guide

I liked wandering witch, but holy crap, worst parent ever! And I feel like her parent and Fran get off way too easily. First Elaina is already facing setback by not being able to find a tutor, so getting someone to to force to deal with setback makes no sense. Second, either someone never face setback, in which case its pointless for them to learn to deal with them, or someone will eventually face a setback anyway and will learn to deal with it then, setting one up is then pointless. Third, what was the parent goal? How would having Elaina serve as a de facto slave for a month teach her anything? Sure Fran ended up teaching her a "good" lesson but that wasn't her parent goal. Also I'm not sure the lesson is a good one, it sounds like Elaina had literally no other option but to apprentice under a witch, what should she have done if Fran really was bent on just exploiting her, steal the badge while Fran is asleep and claim she's a witch now? But everything is fine cause Fran said she was sorry (after beating up Elaina) and Elaina is just okay with her parent? I don't think I'd ever want to see my parent again after they'd pull something like that on me and even if Fran ended up teaching me anything I would not be sad at all seeing her leave.

meiam wrote:

I liked wandering witch, but holy crap, worst parent ever! And I feel like her parent and Fran get off way too easily. First Elaina is already facing setback by not being able to find a tutor, so getting someone to to force to deal with setback makes no sense. Second, either someone never face setback, in which case its pointless for them to learn to deal with them, or someone will eventually face a setback anyway and will learn to deal with it then, setting one up is then pointless. Third, what was the parent goal? How would having Elaina serve as a de facto slave for a month teach her anything? Sure Fran ended up teaching her a "good" lesson but that wasn't her parent goal. Also I'm not sure the lesson is a good one, it sounds like Elaina had literally no other option but to apprentice under a witch, what should she have done if Fran really was bent on just exploiting her, steal the badge while Fran is asleep and claim she's a witch now? But everything is fine cause Fran said she was sorry (after beating up Elaina) and Elaina is just okay with her parent? I don't think I'd ever want to see my parent again after they'd pull something like that on me and even if Fran ended up teaching me anything I would not be sad at all seeing her leave.

The parents' goal was to discourage her from becoming a witch, or at least that was how I read it.

Warlords of Sigrdrifa links to Inuyasha in the guide.

It wasn't to discourage her from becoming a witch. Elaina is gifted so everything has more or less been easy for her. Her parents notice that when she put down her fellow testers as "weak" that it was a likely outcome that she'd continue on that path and could easily become full of herself or lack empathy for those around her who struggle at things that come easy for her.

So they paid off her teacher to push her in a way that would make her experience hardship and frustration.

I think the whole bit with the root demon in Yashahime is supposed to be adapted from an epilogue chapter that Takahashi wrote as part of charity anthology with other Shonen Sunday titles for the Tohoku earthquake relief, but it's been awhile so I'm not 100% sure.

octopodpie wrote:

It wasn't to discourage her from becoming a witch. Elaina is gifted so everything has more or less been easy for her. Her parents notice that when she put down her fellow testers as "weak" that it was a likely outcome that she'd continue on that path and could easily become full of herself or lack empathy for those around her who struggle at things that come easy for her. So they paid off her teacher to push her in a way that would make her experience hardship and frustration.

I agree with all of this, but I'm with meiam that Fran took it too far - something that's a particular issue of hers in later chapters, too. From reading the first two novels, my two cents is that Fran's power is offset by the fact that she's a very poor judge of when and how to use it, particularly when teaching others.

Thinking about it, that starting with the chronological first story meant that the anime opened with a Fran story is part of why I was hoping that they'd stick with the order in the books...

Out of all of the franchises featuring OP protagonists in a magic school setting, Mahouka easily has the most passionate defenders.

Whenever someone uses the phrase “OP” in reference to an anime protagonist, my mind immediately shoots to Tatsuya from The Irregular at Magic High School. That quality stands to get him in some trouble this season (or rather, more trouble) because he's now firmly in the sights of foreign powers who aren't sure they're comfortable with what he can do

A lot of that has to do with how detractors tend to ignore what it's going for. They see an OP protagonist and write the series off as garbage. I'd see where they were coming from if it was another "protag is supposed to be normal/weak but the plot finds ways to make them unbeatable" series, but it's not. It's an "OP character tries to live a normal life but fails miserably" series.