Review: THE HONOR STUDENT AT MAGIC HIGH SCHOOL

 Sadly, there's plenty of unworth franchises that get spinoffs too, including the most stubborn of the old-school 'magic school harem light novel' franchises.

THE HONOR STUDENT AT MAGIC HIGH SCHOOL (Mahouka Koko no Yutosei), by Yu Mori, based on the light novel series by Tsutomu Sato and character designs by Kana Ishida.  First published in 2012 and first published in North America in 2015.

PLOT:

Miyuki Shiba wanted to just spend the day with her beloved brother Tatsuya.  Everything was going swimmingly until a terrorist came along to threaten them, but then Tatsuya used his incredible magic power to save her and everyone at the mall!  Now she can spend her days hanging out with the other student council kids being admired (all while keeping an eye on her brother and the numerous girls around him).

STORY:

Who out there was asking "you know what The Irregular at Magic High School needs?  A story about Miyuki!  Y'know, the protagonist's practically-perfect-in-every-way adoptive sister whose existence is defined almost entirely by how badly she wants to bang her older brother!"  The original series is indulgent enough, but this is somehow even worse and even more boring in comparison.

It certainly makes no pretense at anything other than indulgence right from the first page. It begins with Miyuki and Tatsuya going on a date in everything but name.  She's all blushy-crushy and constantly reminds herself (and the audience) that she can't let on how much she wants her brother.  Meanwhile, Tatsuya acts like a sentient 2x4 who only springs to life to explain in boring, granular detail how the magic system of this world works on the fancy barrette he buys her.  All the while, the crowds around them coo over Miyuki's beauty, glare in envy at Tatsuya, and basically treat them both like divine beings who have deigned to grace this sinful world with their glorious presence.  There are hentai manga that are less masturbatory than these first 25 pages and it absolutely sets the tone for what is to come.

It all leads up to an action set-piece with an anonymous fire-wielding nutjob that mostly exists for the same reason everything in this franchise exists: to reaffirm just how awesome these two are at everything, particularly magic.  There's little sense that either of them are in peril or even particularly struggling with any aspect of this battle, rendering the whole sequence dramatically inert.  From there it shifts to the titular Magic High School, but the worship doesn't stop from there.  The girls around Miyuki can't stop marveling at her beauty and perfection, while Miyuki can't stop thinking about her brother and harassing anyone who gets between him and her (be they school bullies or her brother's growing harem of classmates).  The dialogue remains much the same, alternating between blandly conversational and glacially stiff anytime someone needs to explain some plot or something about this world's boring, overly technical magic system.

I don't understand why this spinoff exists.  Sure, The Irregular at Magic High School was (inexplicably) popular in Japan, but telling Miyuki's side of the story doesn't add anything you couldn't get from the original.  At least her brother has some social stigmas to work around in his version of the story.  Meanwhile, Miyuki is rich, popular, pretty, magically gifted, and the golden child of her family.  She has no problems other than her incurable thirst for her brother and clearly the writer sees no problem with that and that leaves this version with no drama to explore.

ART:

I've had my suspicions in the past that the mangaka working on these light novel-to-manga adaptations are largely amateurs, but this is one of the few times I can confirm that thanks to the mangaka's own notes at the end.  They do a perfectly adequate job translating Ishida's character designs to manga form, mostly because those designs were pretty blase to begin with and Mori never forces them to emote beyond vague smiles and yelling.  

Really, most of the issues I have with the visuals here stem from the source illustrations, be it the completely bland settings or the odd school uniforms.  Sure, they're more conservatively designed than most anime high school uniforms, but the boys have these weirdly long, stiff jackets while the girls have odd, diaphanous trains attached to their bolero jacket tops.  There is one person who approves of how Mori handles this manga, and that's the original writer Tsutomu Sato.  I don't know how much I want to rely on his opinion, though, considering his first comment is about how cute the girls are and their "sexy body lines."

RATING:

The Honor Student at Magic High School is not only as tedious and self-indulgent as its parent series but thoroughly pointless to boot.  I can't imagine anyone who wasn't a fan of the original getting anything out of this other than tedium and a serious case of incest-related heebie-jeebies.

This series is published by Yen Press.  This series is complete in Japan with 11 volumes available.  All 11 volumes have been released and are currently in print.