Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei 16-17: Shatterin...

So the match that has been hype up for about as long as the Crimson Prince appeared has finally come in this episode. And in the previous post, I hoped for there to be some struggle for Tatsuya, and his team, during Monolith Code against these two prodigies. Well I guess I can say that Mahouka did accomplish that, but it felt fake to me; however, there was something interesting that was revealed about Tatsuya during that competition and I will go into it later on in this post. Before the match itself, there was a scene between Miyuki and Tatsuya that had some phrases that felt like foreshadowing to me.

Funny enough, in the extra long arc that this current one has become, I completely forgot about the explicit incestuous nature between Miyuki and Tatsuya -- that the characters do draw lines at some point. But beside that side note, before the finals of Monolith Code, Miyuki said that Tatsuya was fighting with restrictions. And that really is one of the biggest complain I have with Tatsuya as a character; he is just a guy that is good at pretty much anything he does and there isn't much effort used at the same time. So having Miyuki point it out is both annoying to be reminded that a character's "flaw" is that he doesn't have any flaws, but it also seems like Tatsuya would be applying effort during the finals.

By the time we did get into the finals, Tatsuya did use effort, but it was in the most flashy way possible. There were flips, gun tricks, slow-mo and all types of things that wouldn't normally be considered trying, but more on the try-hard side, a show off even. However, eventually he did get hit by the Crimson Prince and we get shown something very familiar from when Miyuki attacked Tatsuya before.

I don't know why I didn't think this when Tatsuya first did this, but I'm starting to think he is a cyborg. And with such a conclusion, I kind of get why Tatsuya would be portrayed a perfect character. If this is the case, I kind of give Mahouka a bit more leeway to have this type of character, but there still a lot you can have flaw-wise for something that is enhanced by machinery. Maybe Tatsuya malfunctions at one point, or someone finds out he isn't entirely human and treats him differently. Actually, I think this is also why his family doesn't like him as much compared to Miyuki, but we don't see that as much anymore.

Either way, these reveals are bringing me back into the series after the long lull of this competition continued on. The only thing I'm still confused by is why the fuck is Miyuki crying at the end? She expressed her confidence for Tatsuya right at the beginning and now it seems more like she is shocked that he actually won. I'll probably never under Miyuki, but I'm fine with that cause I still dislike her.

In this episode we see the Bookmakers' downward spiral as First High continues to take victory after victory despite their best efforts to stop them. I still find it so strange that these guys go to such extreme lengths just to win a bet. It might be over a hundred million dollars, but them injuring students and planning to kill a significant amount of people viewing the competition really is unbelievable to me. I can't take this competition serious just as much as I can't take Bookmakers seriously for betting on something that is just an insignificant school event as far as I'm concerned.

The closer we get into finally completing this school competition, the more we see the influence the Bookmakers have. During one of the Mirage Bats Mizuki noticed traces of spirit magic after the heads up from Tatsuya. This confirmation gave Tatsuya precedents to look closely at the CAD inspections and sure enough there was some tampering. We found out that it was infected with something called "Golden Electron Silkworm", which is a delayed malfunction in a CAD. So in a way, Tatsuya's sister complex saved the only person that Tatsuya cares about in his little cyborg heart.

I think I can say that Tatsuya is a cyborg with confidence after this episode, because he said something that confirmed it for me. In regards to Tatsuya being a protective brother -- and him declaring it as natural -- he says, "that's the one natural thing left in my heart". So now things are slowly started to connect around the story for me and that is pretty great.

The last thing is Miyuki using the flying magic during Mirage Bat. It seems the suspicion of Tatsuya being connected to Taurus Silver has faded for whatever reason, but I thought this new magic being showed off would bring back the attention. Considering this flying magic was recently release it would should have raised red flags, especially for Azusa but nothing really. Welcome back to the sequential way of dealing with issues for Mahouka. There are a lot of flaws with this series, but these two episodes are pulling me back into this anime and I'm glad because the past few were pretty boring. Regardless, I'm still waiting for this damn arc to end as we are well in ten parts, and next episode will be the eleventh!