I get the feeling that Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei (The Irregular at Magic Highschool) really shouldn’t have been set in highschool. It’s right there in the title sure, but the characters don’t really do a lot of typical highschool activities, making it seem like a compromise for an audience that perhaps wouldn’t as readily accept “The Irregular at Magic University”.

The “magic” part of the title though is different from all the other magical highschool based anime (throw a dart at a list of modern anime and there’s a high probability you’ll hit a similar series) by being technological rather than, well, magical. Modern day wizards tote around electronic devices looking like anything from mobile phones to guns in order to summon pre-programmed spells. The explanations for this magic are laid on thick, with talk of psions and eidos and phenomena when really all I want is for mages to beat the tar out of one another with their own brand of magic. It’s an uncomplicated desire and in some ways Mahouka gets that part right. In a whole heap of others, it gets things quite wrong.

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There’s a fundamental problem with No Game No Life in that when the series isn’t revelling in the games that form the core of its mythos, it’s chronically dull. Like a lot of series this doesn’t become apparent until well into its run and for NGNL it’s the shift away from minute-to-minute, seat-of-your-pants gaming pugilism towards the “long game” that starts being played.

Rewind though. Young man and even younger girl get transported to a fantasy realm of elves and angels where every conflict is resolved with a game. These games cover the spectrum from cards to chess to video games and are governed by a set of rules outlined by the whimsical child-like deity Tet. As I mentioned in my Mondaiji-tachi review, it’s a well realised world that takes its core conceit to its logical extreme: nothing is contested without a game. This obviously puts our heroes, Sora and Shiro, at the top of the pile because of their impossibly prodigious game playing abilities.

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