Mahouka Review — F-



As far as I can recall, this is the single worst anime I have ever watched. And I watch a shitload of crappy anime. Mahouka has made me realize how much worse they could actually be. Even with shows like Sword Art Online and Guilty Crown, which were so stupid as to boggle belief, I could understand how someone could enjoy watching them. Hell, I enjoyed watching them and writing fanfiction. Those shows have some action and tension, even if they’re puerile pandering wish fulfillment.

Mahouka has nothing worthwhile to offer. Absolutely nothing. Well, okay, the author constantly inverts good and evil, which is kind of interesting to watch, albeit completely insane on a level far behind that of shows like Guilty Crown and SAO.

To attempt to sum up Mahouka’s myriad failures, the biggest issue is that about 75% of Mahouka’s screen time is devoted to two things:


  1. Praising Tatsuya’s godliness. A good deal of the show’s dialogue is similar to the above screenshot, except without such clever metaphors.
  2. Spouting meaningless babel. Every time anybody uses any magic, it has to be explained. Even if it’s completely fucking obvious what happened. Sometimes it needs to be explained multiple times in exactly the same way by multiple characters.

Needless to say, 75% of Mahouka is a complete waste of time.

As an example, consider the middle arc, the magical olympics. Every single episode of this arc (10? 8? don’t want to damage myself further by going back to check) is exactly the same.

  1. Some people talk about how Tatsuya is so awesome and made his school win the event last week.
  2. Tatsuya’s school has a wide lead but could potentially lose the olympics if they lose every single remaining event. The only reason they aren’t winning by more is due to evil Chinese terrorists.
  3. Some random girl needs Tatsuya’s help.
  4. People tell her how amazing Tatsuya is.
  5. Someone explains the magic people use for some stupid olympic event, such as magical surfboarding, magical ice cube melting, magical hula-hooping, or magical capture the flag.
  6. Tatsuya types something into a computer.
  7. Everyone talks about how amazing Tatsuya is.
  8. The girl holds her hand out and it lights up.
  9. Someone explains what amazing magic Tatsuya programmed into her computer.
  10. The girl wins.
  11. She tells Tatsuya how it’s all because of him and how amazing he is.
  12. All her friends tell Tatsuya it’s all because of him and how amazing he is.

Every single episode, but with a different girl and a different stupid sport.

I almost dropped the show during that arc.

Also, Mahouka is written by some right wing nut job. It glorifies war, violence, torture, and female submission. Mahouka openly comes out in favor of discrimination and opposed to equal opportunity. That was the reason I originally enjoyed watching the show, but sadly the moral insanity is quickly overshadowed by the atrocious storytelling and the show is wholly unwatchable.

My rating system doesn’t actually include an “F-“, but fuck, if anything deserves it, it’s Mahouka. Screw it.

  • Storytelling – F – A fucking disaster.
  • Voice – F – Some uniquely atrocious themes.
  • Characters – F – A robot and horde of girls and boys who suck his cock all day.
  • Attention Grab – F – God it’s boring.
  • Production – C – Not nearly as bad as the rest.
  • Overall – F-

Recommendations – Go watch Fox News, it’s significantly less openly evil and way more entertaining.

30 thoughts on “Mahouka Review — F-

    1. The contrast is hilarious!

      One thing though, with all these F’s floating around it kinda weakens the impact of your grading system.

      For example in your Majimoji and Rokujouma posts you had a suitable amount of disdain for them, but the overall impression I got was that they were your average boring anime. If that level is F, then F- doesn’t feel that much worse, even though in your post you seem to feel Mahouka is much lower. If you rate crappy but not OMFG THIS IS SHIT anime more in line, you can really drive the point in when such an anime comes along.

      1. I grade to a curve. So A+ and F- are pretty much impossible to get. There is a huge gap from B+ to A-, and an even bigger gap from A- to A. But C-, C and C+ are not too far apart. C is the average. A lot of anime get F because it maps to a large area on the curve. So F anime cover a wide spectrum of horribleness. Basically, when I rate an anime, I look at my Review Index, and see if the show is better than most of the shows a grade below and worse than most of the shows a grade above.

        Majimoji and Rurumo are average unoriginal boring anime, which for me is F level. They’re somewhere in the middle of the Fs, like a 40 or something. Then there are better shows, like SAO and Brynhildr, which are closer to 55. Then F also includes stuff like Devil Survivor 2 and Dragon Crisis, which get like a 15.

        Mahouka gets 1 point for the author writing his name on the top.

        The intent of my rating system is:

        • A: Must watch.
        • B: Should watch.
        • C: Watch if you have time.
        • D: Watch if you’re really bored.
        • F: Watch if you hate yourself.

        All of those shows deserve F’s under this scale, and I’m not too concerned about differentiating them precisely in the rating. That’s what reading the review is for. 🙂

  1. “Mahouka openly comes out in favor of discrimination and opposed to equal opportunity.”

    I hated how the show tried to frame all this business like it was making a point about false equality. They started saying that the Course 2 students were mad because they were just jealous of the Course 1 students, but it totally forgot about the fact that the Course 2 students were only mad because they were being harassed and mistreated every day. That had to have been the thing that pissed me off the most about this show.

    You’re nicer than me if you give the production a C. It really wasn’t all that bad, but I probably would have rated it down for the way things almost never move on screen, the lack of background characters in areas that you’d expect to be heavily populated, and the fact that I hated the rest of the show so much that I would just do it out of spite.

    1. Hold on didn’t Mahouka drive in the point that course 2 students weren’t REALLY being mistreated? There were some people like Morisaki and Hattori who had bad attitudes, but they were quickly made out to be fools.

      The show also went on and on about how the course 2 students that complained were just being brainwashed by some TeRoRiSts lol and were being pulled down by their own lack of belief in their abilities etc etc. All of Tatsuya’s friends in course 2 proved themselves to be equal to course 1 students in magic and etc too.

      The plot and etc were defiantly questionable, but I thought the production values were pretty good. A few minor cost cutting efforts were employed (lack of background characters being a big one) but overall nothing big. It was a ton better than the average anime. Also the fight scenes (at least the ones were Tatsuya doesn’t just lol breath and vaporize everything) were well animated. Lowering a score in a different aspect out of spite seems really dishonest as a reviewer, so I applaud Draggle in that regard.

      1. Well, it certainly claimed they weren’t REALLY being mistreated, while simultaneously showing them being mistreated. I would imagine that with not being able to participate in student leadership positions, being called “Weeds” all the time, and so on, they would have some legitimate grievances. It tried to drive home this point but wasn’t particularly convincing.

        1. Still, I never got the sense that the anime advocated discrimination. None of the characters represented as good approved of calling course 2 students weeds. Characters that were high and mighty about their course 1 status promptly got their asses handed to them by Tatsuya or someone else in course 2.

          Of course that’s just the 1st arc. After that it was full on CHINESE BADMEN. GOTTA KILL THOSE INVADERS FOR THE GLORY OF JAPAN! NIPPON BANZAI! As a Chinese person myself I’d be offended if I could somehow bring myself to take any political lulz in Mahouka even halfway seriously.

          1. The main characters didn’t approve of calling the Course 2 students Weeds, but they did accuse the Course 2 students of being complicit in their own harassment because they didn’t stand up for themselves while at the same time criticizing them for standing up for themselves in the wrong way. And either way, the show utterly fails to acknowledge that the harassment was the reason the Course 2 students were upset, whether it approves of that harassment or not. The student council president also says she doesn’t want them to create “new discriminatory practices,” which isn’t only a strawman but is also inconsistent with the show’s internal logic.

            And yeah, it would be bad for a reviewer to rate down a genuinely good (or in this case genuinely adequate) aspect of a piece of work just out of spite. I’m glad draggle didn’t. I’m just saying I probably wouldn’t be as good about it.


            This show makes Shinzo Abe look mild in comparison good lord

    2. Yeah, I was tempted to give it straight Fs out of spite. 🙂 But the other aspects were so disproportionately worse it made me take pity on the animators.

  2. Pretty sure the amount of swearing on your blog has increased 1000% since you started watching this show, lol. Anyway, good job on battling through this series!

    1. Yeah, Mahouka made me become an 18+ blog… oh well. Children should be taught to only use swear words in the most extreme circumstances, such as when watching Mahouka.

  3. This show should be Z. And in MAL’s score, minus 10.
    Glad that I dropped it.
    A guy who’s omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent?
    I would rather read some Greek mythology or Norse mythology.

  4. This show, no, Mahouka’s universe should be destroyed from existence because they are considered too dangerous to be trusted. Artificial magicians are nothing more than monsters created from human technology and genetic engineering to play god. I propose a permanent ban on that show not only what I said about this show from time to time, but they also encourage incest between the siblings of the opposite sex. Have the japanese government to ban it or find some way to destroy it to ease our pain.

    1. Well, they restricted publications which involve incest to adult readers only, but that’s not really banning it. I’m really surprised that incest as a fetish has so much appeal in Japan. Somebody please explain.

  5. *hands you a box of tissues and a platter of cookies*
    Thank you for suffering through Mahouka, for the rest of us who had the sense to stay away. You deserve a medal.

  6. *hands you a box of tissues and a platter of cookies*
    Thank you for suffering through Mahouka, for the rest of us who had the sense to stay, far, far away. You deserve a medal.

    1. Yeah… I couldn’t even pretend to be a fan of Mahouka. 🙁 It just made me went to vomit whenever I watched it. Sword Art Online is childish and delusional, but at least you can tell they’re trying.

  7. Mahouka may be the only anime which made me hate the fans of the series for liking it. It’s that much stupid show where entire setting is made to give fellato to just one character. Even those mythological texts where some guy wanks about their superior gods (this isn’t limited to one religion) aren’t that bad compared to this.

    1. Same. I have very little respect for someone who could enjoy this show, especially for someone who agrees with its messages.

  8. Like I said before, Mahouka can go to hell for all I care! Those artificial magicians are nothing more than ugly monstrosities playing God with genetic engineering and manipulation. Just send Mahouka to hell and never release the dub version let alone the sub version. No exceptions!

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