What BlackAeronaut is Watching (Was Magical Girl Spec Ops)

[classicdrogn]

Cute Girls Doing Cute Things In Magic High School is the kind of trope-laden description that brings to mind lots of sketch comedy, lazy teachers being scolded and harsh ones terrorizing everyone, suggestive misunderstandings and accidents, blushing over having a lunch box accepted, sports festival filler, etc. And, indeed, there's all of that to be found in Akashic Record of Bastard Magic Teacher, but you know what else it has? An absolutely blazing fast level of plot development. Like, the first three episodes go over what might normally be a particuylarly action-oriented season in a show playing it closer to the tropes, and rather than follow that up with filler, the sports festival in 4-6 is just a pretext to get some outside characters on campus for another seasonal arc level adventure. (And set up some jokes at the slacker teacher's expense too, of course.)

I can't say the magic system is anything ground breaking but it does actually go into some of the kind of interesting detail that is skipped over all too often in magic school material, and I haven't even watched the last half of the season yet. I only glanced through the first few manga chapters as well, but it seems quite faithful there, with the only meaningful difference being a cut line about the changing rooms having been switched around since slacker teacher attended that makes it look like he intentionally burst into the girls' locker room in the anime.

Overall, I'm giving this one a solid thumbs up if you haven't watched it yet.

Since this is at least nominally BlackAeronaut's thread and I know you're into Girls With Guns shows too, BA, have you checked out Lycoris Recoil? The first episode just showed up in the usual places, and while I'm not expecting much when it's apparently basing its action on zombie hunting (blegh, I don't even love to hate zombies; they're the penultimate lame-pocalypse, second only to Waterworld) it does at least look pretty and the production company and director don't raise any immediate red flags.