Normally I love overpowered main characters, but this series takes it too far. The main character is so overpowered there isn't even a semblance of suspense or challenge. What little timbits the author provides for the main character's back story are few, far between and typically come off as forced.

After reading the first two volumes of this I see no reason to waste any more time on it.

... Last updated on April 18th, 2015, 7:40pm

I don't have much time to read lately but MKnR is an exception.

Even though there are things that might feel forced or be against one's preferences...

For me this series is a jackpot.

Before I got influenced by Japanese culture my favorite book by far was Count Monte Cristo. And after I got into anime and manga, my favorite characters were the anti-hero types as Lelouch, Kira, Alucard and so on.

The settings and description of battles make me shiver when I imagine this series being adapted as anime by some decent studio. Magic circles, beautiful visual effects, rivers of blood and that all centered around characters that show that the author was writing about something that he was passionately working on.

Some might not like it but for me, the fact that it was originally published as web novel is one of the positive points. It shows that it was written as the author wanted to...

Without taking note on how to present it or thinking that something might be seen as controversial.

I'm not delusional enough to think that it would leave any noticeable impact on society or literature. And I don't know how about how it is in other countries but the things that are criticized in the book are something that I see here in Czech Republic all the time.

I won't go into deep details but I think that it is the same in many countries: The educational system is set so the children/pupils/students learn to parrot some information, which they probably won't ever need (apart from writing/reading and basic calculations). I could see this quite well when I was on grammar school, there were 3 kinds of people in my class 1st group was intelligent people, 2nd group was those who can study and the last one was those who got accepted only so there would be enough kids in class... In a learning environment where real intelligence and ability to connect concepts has no effect on the test scores...

This was one of the points I could really relate to.


Anyway... my point is that one could find faults, and I don't think that author fully utilized the potential he had, but at the same time I can't find any solid reason why I wouldn't recommend this series to anyone...

imagine if clark kent enrolled at xavier school. standard curriculum are meant for mutant only, so ck only C- student
good series. but i disagree with the harem tag. because he doesnt have feeling for anyone but one.
the plot is like wuxia novel, simple! which i like!
try it! its good!
its about tournament, politics, war, and hidden identity (like superman).
but you wont find any of those if you only read volume 1 & 2.
the first arc its about discrimination and logical fallacies of terrorism.

... Last updated on May 12th, 2013, 4:40am

It is rare for any story to get overpowered done right but Mahouka does it perfectly. Unlike most series that end up raising power levels to impossible proportions (i.e. dbz, gurren laggan), or other series that gimp/injure the overpower main character to balance things (i.e. the breaker), the main character is just pure and absolute awesomeness with a character to match. The novel has an interesting way of "capping" his power, but every time he goes into action you simply can't stop reading until it is over!

The novel takes a good look at the relationship between the weak and powerful, and it does well to create a world with a complete history. The explanations can get a little bit lengthy, but the complexity behind the magic theory adds a depth of reality to it all. The arcs are simply fantastic, although I sometimes wish they would celebrate the MC's victories even more, and overall the pace of the light novel is excellent.

If a guy like me who doesn't like to read is recommending it (and I've reread the various arcs 5x over already), then it must be good (it's also one of the rare series that doesn't have a "1" rating as of 02/28/2013. Normally no matter how good or bad a series is, there is also some counter-culture douche bag running around dishing out "1s". I highly doubt any series is THE WORST series ever...)

Great Novel !!!

Tatsuya Shiba = Lelouch (intelligence) + Wolverine (Immortal) + Rei (DtB Personality) + Rai (Destructive One shot powers)

Miyuki Shiba suffers from Bro Complex and surprising to say it is also one of the reasons i keep reading this...i really love their interactions and chemistry and as they say INCEST IS WINCEST!!!

Side characters are really well fleshed out and the Events of the story are really well planned you get to know this as you cover each volume which are distinctively better than the previous ones

10/10 MUST READ NOW !!!

... Last updated on February 21st, 2013, 5:32am

one of the must read series
main character is super op and it makes a great story
the series starts to get even better after volume 2

This is already a great story that anyone who at any point in their life liked shounen battle manga should read. But in many ways, this story even had the potential to be a lot more popular than it already is.

This story's strong points are its setting and its characters. The setting is god-tier. I don't recall another supernatural action setting with such detailed, consistent, plausible explanations for supernatural combat techniques. If you read this for a volume or two, you should be impressed, as well as excited/intrigued to learn about the various spells and technologies/abilities. The characters are varied, likable, interesting, fairly evenly developed, and consist of both boys and girls. The boys are worthy friends or rivals to the protagonist rather than third wheels. The dialogue is also very expressive and engaging. I never expected to find such a great cast that looks nothing like a typical supernatural LN. I love this story and look forward to reading more of it!

This story's flaws, which do hold it back even though it's an excellent story no matter what, stem from the author's writing style. Simply put, you can tell that the author first wrote this as an online novel and didn't try to adjust his style to appeal to the masses. The problem is how the author "tells" rather than "shows". He has characters and a setting and a plot he wants to convey and he does it all as efficiently as possible, which means frequently recalling events out of order, summarizing important or cute conversations instead of writing them out, third person omniscient, and constant infodumping. The author uses third person omniscient liberally but doesn't use it like he should! There's great character development, and it's noticeable, but it would be far more satisfying if the author were clarifying the emotions and attitudes of the characters more frequently so that readers could feel tension toward characters the same way we feel tension toward the setting. I like stories where all the characters' facial expression are constantly changing, ...But don't let my verbose explanation of this story's flaws leave you with the impression that the overall product is anything less than what its rating on MU right now indicates.

The title of this manga is kind of misleading. You might think it was about a sub-par student struggling to overcome his deficiencies, but you'd be dead wrong. Instead it's about a practically god-like main character who is absurdly overpowered in every single way *except* the one bizarrely over-specific criterion they use in this setting to evaluate magical power. It's kind of a hard premise to relate to. By any reasonable measure it's completely obvious that the main character is not "poor performing" at all, leaving the reader to wonder who the heck designed their evaluation system. The problem isn't with the student, but rather with the test.

But that quibble aside, I actually rather like this novel. It has a lot of things going for it. The whole lore the author has developed around modern magic and casting assistant devices is quite interesting and well thought out. The main character's backstory--which is revealed slowly in snippets throughout the novels rather than in a big flashback or something--is dark and interesting. And the novels really give the feel that they were properly planned out over several volumes and not just written by the seat of the author's pants. If you go back and read the early volumes there is a lot of subtle foreshadowing of things to come. At the same time, though, this can be a bit of a detriment with regards to keeping track of all the characters. There are a lot of them, and the author seems to assume that just dropping their names is sufficient to make you remember them even if they haven't appeared in a whole volume or more...

Ultimately my main beef is that the main character is just too much of a Marty Stu. He's just too powerful. The only reason anyone else can even come close to touching him is because he's holding back most of the time. We've yet to see a single credible threat. Maybe something will develop eventually.

But even with these complaints, I can't stop reading. This novel is something unique. Marty Stu MC aside, there aren't a lot of tropes to be found here. It's a fascinating setting filled with interesting characters, and I eagerly anticipate every update. And if that's not a recommendation then I don't know what is.

At first i thought this might turn out to be harem-ish, but that prospect has one giant flaw, in that the mc is about as close to a freaky cyborg as person can get.
You may see the Mc as an overly manipulative person with every word and expression, having the intent to guide and alter a persons mood.
And you would be right, but isn't that just awesome. Anti-heroes are the best, makes me feel like there may be hope for me yet. (-_-")

The story development can feel pretty forced. Early on in the story, a very very important detail on the MC is shown very abruptly with no warning whatsoever, like in The Clash of the Titans (2010) when Perseus finds his sword just sticking right the crap out of the ground one morning. Similar things happen later; the MC is like (Note: This exact scenario doesn't actually happen as far as I'm aware but you get the idea) *GET SUPERMAN-SLAPPED BY RANDOM PERSON* *Bam! Character Development!* It just feels out of place.

Other than that it is quite entertaining.

... Last updated on October 23rd, 2012, 11:35pm