After the eleven episodes of the drawn out Nine School Competition, this arc has finally come to an end. Admittedly, toward the end, these episodes have been getting more interesting, but I'm still pretty excited for the start of a new arc. However, I still need to rewind a bit and actually write about the wrap up of this arc. Considering there are things that get tied closed and others that have been show the starting end of this rope. The first thing that was stood out to me was the statement, "magicians were initially developed as weapons".
The term "magician" is a pretty loaded word as it is almost assumed to be just someone who can use magic. The thing that raises flags, at least for me, is the way the sentence is being used. When using "initially developed", it seems more like magicians are much more than your everyday magic user. I think that is what Tatsuya is but I'll most likely still be calling him a cyborg considering that is more explicit, but I digress.
The Yotsubas were said that they are using magicians as weapons, plus these magicians were initially developed as weapons. I'm not that surprised that anyone would be using some enhanced humans as a tool to gain power. However, we are finally veering away from the boring high school stuff and starting to see the more hierarchical structure outside of First High. The Ten Masters Clan is basically the clan that has the top ten most powerful magic using families are apart of -- which include the Yotsuba Family. There is a fear of the Yotsubas using their magicians as weapon simply because their power alone could surpass the Ten Masters Clan.
Most of the conversation between Kazama and Koudou were pretty interesting, but more of that is foreshadowing for the future. The funny thing about the scene itself was Tatsuya and Kyouko setting up to take out the people who interfered with the school competition. Basically it this was going from a scene where they are saying that magicians are more than just weapon and the next scene is Tatsuya being a weapon. The good this I guess is he also got information out of these Bookmakers.
We ended up finding out about No-Head Dragon's leader and who No-Head Dragon actually is. The Bookmakers seem to be connected with this organizations and both are essentially the underground type of operators. With all this struggle to hold on to power, there is bound to be someone who wants more, even if it way in an illegal manner -- and this is what No-Head Dragon is doing. They are suppliers of something called sorcery boosters; these items are underground because the core is made of magician's cerebrum.
So with everything in this arc about finding out who is the most talented -- or powerful -- school of the nine, we end on a note of clans grabbing at any advantage they can. The final party was pretty funny because of the 3D that was used to animate the many students dancing. However, all in all we are starting to see more of the outside power struggle, as made evident with things I discussed and Juumonji trying to get Tatsuya to join the Ten Masters Clan through marriage. I'm pretty glad to see this damn arc be finished and way more excited to see what is to come next.
With the end of the competition of magical strength, a new competition has popped up, and unsurprisingly Tatsuya will be involved. What I'm guessing is that the time around this "Thesis Competition" will be less drawn out compared to the Nine School Competition was. However, surely there will be connections to "the disturbance in Yokohama" as the place this competition is being held in is Yokohama.
Now that the flying magic is out in the public, there was a convenient interest of using the magic with nuclear fusion. This interest is what brought Tatsuya in to the Thesis Competition via Suzune. Even with the subject being as fancy as "Gravity Control-type Magic Sequence Thermonuclear Fusion Reactor", I'm far more interested what Tatsuya was researching before being called to enter this competition. Items with the ability to store magic sequences is very similar to embedded systems; automating a task with an efficient program within the device, just switch the program with an automated magic sequence and there is the similarity.
The object that could store magic sequences Tatsuya was looking into was a Philosopher Stone, but there is theoretically another object that can do the same. The item in question is a relic of the Nino Magatama, and person who brought this to Tatsuya's knowledge was his and Miyuki's stepmother Sayuri. With her arrival, we see Miyuki's flips switching and defaulting back to her obsession with her brother, completing ignoring Sayuri. It's nice to see Miyuki become shaken slightly after her keeping the stoic act for a good chunk of the anime. However, Tatsuya was basically unfazed by her appearance and went straight into business mode.
Even with the scene and Sayuri's visit being so short, you can see how the relationship of this family is. To me it seems that Tatsuya is more or less treated like a tool to further the Yotsuba Family's strength. And that makes sense logically, if you put the last episodes statement about the Yotsubas into consideration.
So with this new avenue of magic upon us, there seems to be some clan wars about to happen. Near the end is where we figure out who these guys that want the relic for their own, and that is the Great Asian Alliance. This may be the first episode into the arc but I'm just glad to see there are things that did happen during these competitions that affected the world. We see the consequence of human nature as they discover more and more about the mystery that is magic.
