Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei 22-23: Shadow...

As the Thesis Competition slowly claws closer and closer to happening, it feels like I'm losing interests in this series overall. Several people have said that this arc will be the most exciting part of Mahouka, but I find that -- like the Nine School Competition -- I don't think much of this really matters. We are creaking up to the peek of the plot and I still don't really care for it and really don't think this Great Asian Alliance trying to interfere with the competition isn't that great of an antagonist.

There isn't a doubt in my mind that the current arc is far more important compared to all the others -- since we are deal with technology that could affect the economy on the front of energy. What I think might be the problem is the "people" Tatsuya is fighting against are groups, organizations, families, and alliances, making their interactions feel more hand wavy. Sure there is a clear "big bad leader" for these groups, but being protected by their group you never get a clear reason for why this organization is doing these acts of terror. What we do get is the groups goals with no explanation besides group think, leaving the antagonist feeling very flat.

Either way, I'm going to make sure I finish this series despite my complaint. So lets get into the episode that will lead into the competition itself.

It's always strange to see how media portrays anything involving technology. When it comes to hacking there is always this very visual and obvious display that someone is being hacked. In reality, cracking into computer usually is very silent and careful; if the person doing the hacking was skill there wouldn't be a sign that it happened and they would cover their tracks. If any thing, the people that have been hacked wouldn't find out until after the fact and thats when you should have the dramatic scene.

As a medium it's understandable that there would be some sensationalism, but a someone who is a software developer, this is somewhat of a pet peeve of mine -- kind of like a scientist when they watch science fiction. But that was only one scene from Mahouka that got resolved pretty easily.

Probably the weirdest thing about this episode was Tastuya randomly having a personal lab, inside the school, with an android assistant. It might have just been the school's engineering department, but the way it is presented it seemed like a personal space for Tatsuya.

With this person space, we did find out that Sekimoto Isao was connected to the Great Asian Alliance, since he was trying to stealing the plans for the Thesis Competition. So now two spies have been captured by a couple of high school students. At this point you would guess that the Great Asian Alliance would react in the same way they did for the non-student spy -- the one who got killed by Lu Gonghu, and this was very much true, first was Chiaki.

Fortunately, their attempts at cutting loose ends were a failure for both Chiaki and Isao because people happened to be there to stop them.

To finish up, I'm wondering what Zhou Gongjin's involvement with Chiaki is. It seems to me that that he is working with the Great Asian Alliance for now, but soon enough he will turn and sabotage the alliance. Of course that seemed to be quite clear the was he smiled the first time this character was introduced while starting the relationship between him and the Great Asian Alliance. Plus he was the one in this episode to initial prevent Lu Gonghu from killing Chiaki when he push the riot alarm; so I'm far more interested in seeing what he does when the eventual turn happens.

The last scene between Tastuya and Miyuki was both incestuous shenanigans and something informative about Miyuki as a character. It seems that she is struggling with her undeniable love for her brother internally. Throughout the series she has denied the romantic relationship publicly, but I still had the feeling that she did have this love for her brother with the amount of devotion and care she shows frequently. The only thing I dislike about this is the anime never really showcases the inner feeling that Miyuki is struggling with leaving it more of another check box to fill.

This anime covers so much that it ends up feeling really muddy and this episode is a pretty prefect example of this. However, the episode overall was pretty good but I can see the focus is being lost by introducing so much each episode.

Most of this episode was pretty much foreshadowing for the disturbance that is going to happen in Yokohama. Most people from the school are going there to watch Tastuya in the Thesis Competition and the security is becoming more and more beefed up as the event is starting. The only thing really worth noting is that the Gravity Control-type Magic Sequence Thermonuclear Fusion Reactor was finally revealed without a hitch. However, right after was the classic cliffhanger end that I was anticipating.

I'm still not that sure why the Great Asian Alliance wanted a copy of a technology that was going to be shared publicly anyway. It really does feel like the logic for most of this spying and hacking wasn't thought through that much since it would be more helpful for them to either destroy the data completely or actually take it and erase the data on the other person's device. Whatever happens next is currently the conclusion for the next three episodes and I'm pretty sure it will end predictably.