I always find it odd that many long running anime, like Mahouka, tend to assume it will have a second season; however, seeing as how popular it is, I think it might just get one. Regardless, this final episode did close some loose ends but left quite a few open and even open some in this episode as well. So even if my prediction that this conflict would be resolved pretty easily was correct, there are some things to the episode that were good; the first being the explanation of Tatsuya's restoration magic.
The official name of Tatsuya's magic is regrowth and to me it sounds a lot like how a databases works. Think of an action taken on a body, in this case an injury, as a transaction and the act of bringing the body to that previous state as a recovery of data. So this Regrowth Magic is essentially recovering corrupted data from one of the previous transaction before that corruption. The downside of such magic is that Tatsuya ends up experiences the pain the body experienced in a compressed form.
With that information, I think my hypothesis that Tatsuya was a cyborg is invalid in the sense that his body wasn't modified or enhanced via technology. However, I do think experiencing these types of condensed pain frequently might have numbed him emotionally, making him seem like something other than a human. You could say I was on the right track but ended up at the wrong conclusion and I'm fine with that. But knowing this, there is the question of does he feel the pain again if he himself uses this regrowth magic on himself?
Also the fact that this magic only activates automatically when he is pretty much dead lead me want to hold on to this cyborg idea. If Tatsuya looses consciousness, there is no way of him activating such a spell, but it goes of anyway. That makes me think that he has some technology built into his body that get triggered when his body reaches its limits of damage taken.
The last, and probably most important, fact about Regrowth Magic is that having this magic is the reason Tatsuya isn't able to use any other magic. Now, correct me if I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure Tatsuya has been using maybe different types of magic; not to mention he used on new one this episode that took out the remaining unit ships of the Great Asian Alliance.
With this lack of a very detail integrity, it feels like Mahouka was trying to explain why Tatsuya is so overpower but has a limitation, only that limitation isn't ever valid. This is why I, and many others, don't feel like Tatsuya is much of a character and more of an idol of power -- which can be interesting to some, but to me that interest fades pretty quickly.
After all the battles between the Japanese Military, the other magic students, and the Great Asian Alliance was resolved, this is where the setup for the next season started. Miyuki was the one narrating which lead me to believe -- and hope -- that she will be the focus of the next season. This season was clearly about Tatsuya and him flexing his overpowered magic muscles; as a result, Miyuki took the backseat which made me lack the ability to care for her. Fortunately, there were events that got me intrigued with her as a character and unfortunately, the initial interest with Tatsuya has subsided through the series.
As a result, if there is a second season I'm only going to watch it if Miyuki is the focus because I can't stomach the power fantasy that this series has when it is highlighting Tatsuya mostly.
Thing that caught my attention when Miyuki was speaking with her aunt was the mention of this vow that Tatsuya has with Miyuki. It might simply be about him protecting her, but the fact that Miyuki holds the key to unchaining Tatsuya's true strength is something that I want to see explored in the next season. Of course there is also the family relations of the Shiba/Yotsuba family that was barely even touched on this season despite it being featured right on the first episode. And last would be Miyuki's struggle to keep her love for her brother under wraps.
Shortly after the conversation with Miyuki's aunt, the epilogue of what happened after was simply magic is now regarded as something very valuable as a weapon. Hearing that I kind of thought that was exactly what the people thought about magic before all this. The last of this epilogue was this "magician race" are now entering a new frontier since a lot of people now regard magic a mighty weapons. This might make people afraid of magicians, but even more so when they explicitly call a magician a different race. Throughout the anime I never considers a magic user as a race separate from human, but more of a human that had the ability to use magic.
So we I can see that there might be more exploration of discrimination outside of the school. This theme was the reason I found the series so interesting from the start. Soon after they did take the focus away from that and that interest has lowered quite a bit, but there is still enough left to want to see what happens next in the universe of Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei.
My final thought of the series overall would be that it is a bit above average as a whole, but for me the thing that make me less likely to want to watch the next season is the lack of interesting characters and their development. Like I said before, if Miyuki is the main focus next time, the likelihood of me watch the next season is much higher. For now with just this season alone, I say Mahouka have an interesting setting but the lack of characterization that make for something that isn't as entertaining or even relatable.
