While the reasoning may legitimately exist in the source material it's very poorly communicated considering this is the foundation for the entire story going forwards. So while I can understand why on a political standpoint he doesn't have the qualifications to be the next leader, I fail to understand what meaningful reason his own mother would have to look down on him as a failure. However as we see in this special, and even more so in the rest of the show, he is practically speaking a better asset to the Yotsuba clan than Miyuki has been, and far, far more useful than pretty much every other character we've met thus far in the anime. Because he can't do "proper magic" Tatsuya is considered lesser and therefore not worthy to be anything other than a bodyguard for Miyuki. The implication of this is that it makes it less meaningful when Miyuki learns of his origins because we can only empathise with his suffering on a surface level.Īnother issue here is with the way his mother views Tatsuya. We've only ever known the god Tatsuya and not the person who he was before, so we aren't given any reason to care about his origin apart from the fact that it sounds cool. First of all, we didn't get to see Tatsuya before he underwent surgery and became an emotionless OP god, so we don't really understand what Tatsuya lost in order to become who he is. This was a terrible idea for several reasons. So why then do I call it an origin story if it's not really an origin story at all? That's because it drops all of Tatsuya's origins in an information dump in the last 10 minutes. It only covers Tatsuya and Miyuki becoming acquainted and forming the incestuous sibling duo so many fans know and (supposedly) love. However the special begins after Tatsuya has already become an OP God. It's just a very bad regular storyĪs for the fact that this is supposedly an origin story, there are problems with this as a concept, and most of them are not necessarily adaptational issues but general issues with the story itself.įirst of all, if you have an origin story, what is the best way to deliver it? Typically speaking you would want to start from the beginning, establish who your characters were, and explain how your characters became who they are now. And no you can't call this a "slice of life" side story since there is already plenty of action and plot progression (albiet incredibly botched).
It's a terrible, uninspired way to tell a story and as a result the special has no real momentum or driving energy to it. Various events happen that affect Miyuki in various ways, Tatsuya gets to flex, there's a big battle, and Miyuki's arc is brought up to the status quo that will kick start the rest of the series. It would have been better to begin in the past and immerse us in the story, and then timeskip at the end to present day to remind us of how these characters have grown and where they're going. Having present day Miyuki and Tatsuya flying to the island and reminiscing about the past is a terrible way to frame an origin story because it provides a context that disconnects us from what is happening. Now from a construction standpoint I have two more gripes.
franchise is what I'd call a well animated visual novel with action scenes. Miyuki narrates throughout the whole anime and it's used as a means of dropping meaningless exposition and lore dumps and telling us things that really should have been conveyed from the direction and animation instead.
I'll get more into that later (spoilers I guess), but now for my surface level problems.Īs usual the show has an over-narration problem. However it fulfils an interesting role in that it is the missing link to understanding who Tatsuya is, how he came to be, and his relationship with Miyuki. This special is par for the course when it comes to the Mahouka franchise - bad