If there’s any one anime, any one popular anime in particular, I could say is feasibly written by an AI scrolling the algorithm, it would be The Irregular at Magic High School. Why so?

Because the show does not have a spec of human emotion in it.

Ignorance is the word of the day here folks. It was fairly apparent in the first season of Mahouka, and somehow even moreso here. Every aspect in this season, from the narrative, to the soundtrack, to the characterization, to the tension, to the worldbuilding is divorced from what’s commonly viewed as respectable. It’s not quite as insultingly awful as Season 1, but it does repeat a lot of similar failures, and even amplifies other parts. It saddens me that out of every show in the mostly dead genre of magic high school power fantasies (except perhaps the Index franchise), THIS ONE was the breakout hit that came to spread holiday depression by amplifying all its worst traits.

To say this season has a “plot” would be massively overselling it. Things “happen”, but very little lasts to any degree. An American secret agent girl named Angelina Shields drops in to stop “vampires” from draining magic from faceless NPCs in a world we’re given no reason to care about. She uses a disguise, and the show tries to build intrigue of what’ll happen to her and her rivalry with Tatsuya and Miyuki. Which might’ve been something………….unless of course you watched the film, which came out three years before this season, immediately giving away what happens to her. Oops. Oh, and then the last two episodes try very badly to make some point about discrimination with the worst racism allegory since RWBY’s White Fang.

Many fundamental problems with the core premises of Mahouka return this season (except the magic system issues that’s just ignored), and they tend to affect the new elements when it wants to branch out a bit. The new element they want to highlight the most is Angelina. A top ranked American superspy with a secret identity, the show actually tries to give her feelings, and a goal she wants to accomplish, something seemingly foreign to Mahouka. But what’s the show’s reaction? Treat her like an absolute joke.

Most of the “comedy” revolves around her constant incompetence at her job, mostly the lazy chibi comedy that feels bafflingly out of place for how solemnly serious it wants to be. The show can’t go one episode without having Tatsuya, the All-Knowing Übermensch, snip out that she’s sus, yet the camera still focuses on her devious smirk. By Episode 4, she duels Miyuki, and is on the verge of handily losing, Miyuki portrayed like an imposing villain by the direction. Then, for the rest of the arc, Tatsuya and Miyuki effectively do her job for her, rather than giving her the chance to actually grow or change with any renewed confidence. A show with thought or effort put into it might’ve made her seem more like a competent rival, or at least have compelling payoff for running into Tatsuya and Miyuki, but no! Can’t let anyone get anything out of Tatsuya and Miyuki, the incesty power couple of modern anime.
No one wins here. Fans of her character don’t get to see her actually prove her competence or get meaningful development, and fans of Tatsuya and Miyuki don’t have some sort of rival that can in any way enhance their growth. And it makes America look stupid for having someone like her headline their team.

Not that Tatsuya and Miyuki look any better. Oh, the show tries to FOOL you into thinking there’s character development, but it’s lies that mean nothing. Miyuki is still one of anime’s most poorly written characters, with no personality besides loving her brother and being jealous of anyone else who gets near him. This could work if she was an antagonistic figure that stretched her love for her brother through drastic actions they take against the world, but no, deuteragonist keeping the status quo. The show will claim there’s an arc of her losing attachment to her brother by having her monologue about it, which bears no fruit, and is partially demonstrated by the camera ogling her. After all, the chart says that fanservice sells, why not show more of the female and none of the character?!

Mahouka: We're a super serious science conspiracy anime about secret agents, political drama and magic parasites!

Also Mahouka: Let's have two separate scenes of women undressing for the camera, once for goofy comedy and once for drama with no foundation or worth that's really just fanservice anyway. Also let's give a tagalong girl no personality whatsoever besides being another tsundere for Tatsuya with inexplicably magic hair beads. that's just perfect.

Aniplex: Perfect! Get it into production immediately!

The ignorance never ends.

Tatsuya smiles more, but he’s only slightly more tolerable than the previous season. In Episode 5, there’s a plot involving a rogue parasite that the show tries to act like has tension, but the cast has the answer to every hitch there could be. Tatsuya admits he could've solved the problem for good, but didn't, thus prolonging the runtime. Genius. Another episode tries to act like he missed some detail about Angelina, but he gets the info he wants almost instantaneously just by phoning a few people. It’s lip service to the idea of conflict. The obvious worship continues; a parasite powering a robot by someone’s love for him clings to him like they’re trapped in a spiderweb, Miyuki and Tatsuya feeding off everything else; ironically for a plot about stopping possessive parasites, that’s exactly what the leads are, the algorithm too ignorant to admit it. Less than two minutes after losing his arm to a power blast, he instantly gets it back. We can’t have TWO MINUTES of tension in this show. And don’t worry about the vampire plot; it’s solved instantaneously when the utterly unmemorable leader shows his face and could quickly be put on hold for a Valentines’ Day episode, which is the only time the show has a pulse of life in it.

As if the cherry on this shit cake wasn’t done yet, you get the last two episodes. Radical magicians forming in response to discriminatory boycotts from the ordinary humans who claim (race) superiority enact terrorist attacks against magician slavery……something never ahown and of no value since all the main characters are magicians reaping the benefits of the system's high class. Of course, none of these terrorists have any actual point that causes the main characters to question anything, or have the charisma of say, the villains in Die Hard. This would be like if The Hunger Games was from the perspective of the capitalists on top….....…………............................................do I even need to say what’s wrong with that?

Everything else? Well, Erika’s the only returning side character allowed to have half a personality but it doesn’t matter any, and no one else even gets that much. The animation is decent; nothing exceptional with no memorable action, but it fixed the first season’s color grading issue, and the soundtrack is poorly mixed. Most of it is unmemorable dubstep techno, but Episode 9 tries to have a rap go along with it that’s super drowned out by the dialogue and action sfx. There’s so little to attach yourself to in this series.

Mahouka confuses me, it really really does. I’ve seen bad anime aplenty that set clear goals for themselves and fail at them, but I’ve hardly seen an anime be so antithetical to everything about basic storytelling. Even series like SAO can pass off as fantasy adventure stories with kernels of depth and the occasional bit of earned emotion burdened by some icky scenes. Mahouka can’t even do THAT. It’s a bevy of mismanaged priorities and “things people like” stuck in a perpetually constant status quo with protagonists that have such a foothold over everything else that they’d be great villains in another work. I try to imagine the visions of the creators and there’s nothing here. A super serious science anime with botched attempts at political drama, that’s also stuck with incest pandering, fanservice, and childish comedy. It wants to be everything at once but throughout the 4 and a half hours, accomplishes nothing. Appeal exists in media, even bad media, but Mahouka stands as a narratively backwards empty shell only notable by its ineptitude.