Quote:
Originally Posted by BW95
For starters, he is Miyuki's Guardian so he has to guard her at all times. Going to high school isn't all that bad of a deal for him, either. The nation's magical research can only be accessed from magic high school and university, which he plans to use to achieve his true goal. Tatsuya wants to move magicians out of the private sector so they don't have to be used as weapons by the military. This would also cut the power of the ten families, particularly the Yotsuba.
The ultimate antagonist will undoubtedly be the Yotsuba, but for now they consist of foreign military powers such as GAA and USNA, other families such as the Saegusa, and other other sages.
|
I disagree with the idea that the Yotsuba will be the ultimate antagonists. Partly out of pure bias because dammit, I
like the Yotsuba and partly because I just don't see how they've been set up to be antagonists. Sure, their treatment of Tatsuya was appalling and I don't think much of the way they treat the Sakura series either, but in no way have they been depicted as any worse than any other group (barring the 101 Battalion which so far has been shown as nothing but entirely positive).
In fact, the author has gone out of his way to introduce sympathetic elements within the Yotsuba: the Kuroba twins genuinely love Tatsuya (and are hugely sympathetic characters in their own right), Hayama the butler fully acknowledges Tatsuya and is a remarkably sane and competent advisor to Maya, Maya herself may be dangerous but she is also absolutely charming (and fully aware of how capable Tatsuya actually is), Kuroba Mitsugu is quirky and likely to be rather more pro-Tatsuya after volume 13 and so on. Plus the entire clan has a Tragic Backstory courtesy of the Dahan incident. Sure, they're not exactly innocent, defenceless victims, but they are the clan we know the most about, they're the clan our main characters come from and, all in all, they're the clan readers are the most likely to identify with. The fact that the Saegusa are plotting against them whereas the Yotsuba have never been shown to initiate hostilities in the Saegusa/Yotsuba conflict further reinforces the impression that the Yotsuba really aren't that bad. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure the Yotsuba can and do manoeuvre to keep the Saegusa and everyone else in check behind the scenes, but their actions haven't been portrayed in the same rather sinister light as Saegusa Koichi's have.
A full school year is over and the scope of the Mahouka's story has spread far beyond just Japan; if he wanted to set the Yotsuba up as the ultimate antagonists, shouldn't Tsutomu have made them more sinister and shown them to be in cahoots with overseas enemies rather than make them increasingly sympathetic?
Besides, what interest do they have in a confrontation with Tatsuya and co.? Yes, if Tatsuya succeeds in creating magic-based technology that anyone can use, society's views of magicians will change, thus weakening the position that the Yotsuba have so carefully built up. But the change won't happen overnight and a clan as adaptable as the Yotsuba shouldn't find it too hard to seize all the new opportunities that this change in society will bring about. Also, it will affect every one of the Hundred families, so why assume that only that one clan will turn antagonistic?