Plot / Story
This anime series has an alternate history timeline, so the first episodes starts out with a little history lesson, which is quite lovely. The world was changed when magicians first took to the front lines of World War III. They changed the way the wars were fought, and they changed the balance of power. One of the first scenes we see is our main character, Tatsuya, when he was still a young boy. He stands without fear as he fires spell after spell at an approaching fleet of ships. This is also where we first meet Miyuki, Tatsuya’s sister, and learn of her deep sympathy for her brother.
The Shiba siblings are part of a clan that is based in Japan, they are one of the master clans. Whenever Tatsuya was born, he was born with a unique skill to even magicians. He has the ability to decompose, reconstruct, and detonate matter. The leader of their clan saw him as a threat, and as a result, they genetically engineered his sister, Miyuki, to be the perfect magician. Her role was simple, she was a successor to the clan and also was to be there to limit Tatsuya’s amazing power. Along with her limiting him, Tatsuya’s emotions were almost all suppressed, leaving only the feeling of love toward his sister, to which he was trained for his sole purpose, to protect her. Due to his power, even suppressed, the clan does not take too kindly to him, ignoring him on a routine basis. Miyuki sees this, feeling bad for her brother she often speaks up, to which Tatsuya almost always make her take back her words.
Since magicians are so valuable, they must attend a magic high school, one of nine that are spread across Japan. Our siblings enroll in First High School, a school that suffers from diversion of First and Second class students. Naturally, Miyuki makes First Class with ease, but she is troubled whenever the test scores classify her brother as a Second Class, or a “weed”. The school and its system are completely unaware just how dangerous, and frankly awesome, Tatsuya is. Despite constant worrying and despair by his sister, Tatsuya has no problem with the classification, after all, all he is there for is to protect her. Under this classification, the siblings come under pressure to not be seen together, since all of the First Class students feel that the Second class are inferior to them, and shouldn’t fraternize with them.
The series focuses on a variety of different events, all of which are separated into sections by the series. For instance, the Enrollment section highlights with an unexpected attack on the school. Other sections include a type of “Olympic” games for magicians, and a research contest. Obviously, things go wrong at both that cause Tatsuya to get involved. As for the enemies, quite frankly, they all regret ever crossing the likes of the Shiba family.
Overall
I am very split on this anime series, I enjoyed it, but at the same time I didn’t quite get what was going on half the time. They didn’t do a great job at explaining a lot of things, so you kind of get lost in all of the terminology and what not. Also, the strong since of “sibling love” (hint hint) gets kind of disturbing at times. Though it is mostly only Miyuki, Tatsuya has some scenes where he plays along as a joke, which end pretty funny actually. Tatsuya himself in a scene actually says “I wonder if she’s taking this the wrong way” implying that his sister may actually have feelings for him, which is obvious to us. Aside from that whole thing, the characters are all pretty awesome. Tatsuya is an epic, overpowered, main character, and I love it. Check it out, it’s worth a glance.