Tags: Action, Adventure, Fantasy, Comedy, Romance, Harem, Ecchi, School Life, Martial Arts, Isekai

The Game Begins as Kousuke Enters the Magic Academy!

The fun eroge fantasy isekai series returns mixing its unique blend of dungeon crawling and eroge dating game silliness. This time, freed from the prologue of the game itself, Kousuke enters the game’s main setting, Tsukuyomi Magic Academy. Providing himself with a year’s time limit, he starts enacting his plan of making every heroine in the game happy by building up his abilities and testing himself against some of the unknown dungeons the world has to offer.

Tsukuyomi Magic Academy is like a dream come true for our protagonist and invites a host of future plotlines for the series to explore. Not only will Ludie, Yukine and the game’s original protagonist Iori be in attendance but we as an audience get the first glimpses at some of the eroge’s other heroines. Main box heroines Monica and Stef make their first grand appearance, wasting no time in asserting their dominance when it comes to magic power and putting on full display the fractured relationship between the highest bodies on campus – the student council, the morals and the ceremonial committee. The standout in the academy sections, however, goes to Rina Katou. She is one of the first characters to make friends with both Kousuke and Ludie, and her honesty and hardworking nature will likely make her a fan favourite when her arc eventually appears.

Ludie and Yukine continue to be great characters and it seems as though both characters have started to catch feelings for the MC after the events of the first volume. Yukine has an interesting point of view segment within the volume that showcases her deep level of trust in Kousuke as well as open up her insecurities about her jack of all trades abilities and the inability to catch up to her older sister, likely to come into play when her event from the game starts.

Kousuke ever remains the horndog with a heart of gold. This volume puts into perspective what puts him above most of the other MCs within the genre, the actions and training he puts in to achieve his dream of becoming the strongest making each of the heroines happy. In this volume, Kousuke takes to dungeon crawling and speedrunning to improve his abilities. Although improving his skills is his main goal, he has also come to one of the dungeons to meet with the next heroine he wants to save, the angel maid Nanami. Nanami is 100% the best part about the volume, she’s a great quirky character that has immediate rapport with Kousuke. Their scenes together always come with some nice back and forth as if they’d been friends for years. She gives the girls at the Hanamura household quite the shock, providing Ludie and Hatsumi with a reason to be more aggressive in their love approach. Moreover, Nanami’s introduction allows for another certified inspirational speech from Kousuke. Given that the angels are usually used as dungeon fodder, Kousuke’s speech on wanting her to live a free life and follow her dream, whilst cringy, has a deep effect on Nanami and why she continues to follow him by the end of the novel.

The main aspect that I think will continue into the next volume is the rumours surrounding the MC. To most outside of his circle of friends, Kousuke is an underachiever, a serial class skipper who doesn’t care about his appearance at the academy. Whilst this couldn’t be further from the truth and his friends know it and defend him, he’s already garnered the attention of the ceremonial committee. This committee is famous for its hate of slackers and underachievers and by the end of the volume both its president and vice-president have got their eyes on Kousuke, so it’ll be interesting to see how this develops alongside Yukine’s role as part of the morals committee in the next volume.

The second volume of Magical Explorer continues to be a fun and entertaining read as it was in the first volume, this time settling on the main location of the game. As characters continue to grow and Kousuke’s power multiplies we’re introduced to the speedrunning mechanics of the game as well as furthering the world-building beyond what the eroge could provide. Hopefully, there will be a little more conflict in the next volume as this volume has really hyped up some of the potential problems to kousuke’s plan as well as perhaps plant the seeds for some future antagonists.