So, Mahoyo. Let’s talk about this.

I guess I’m pretty late to the party at this point, considering it’s been 3 years since it released, but still, this is one I had wanted to read for a very long time, so I wanted to give my opinion now that I’m done with it.

Mahoutsukai no Yoru (or Mahoyo, for short) was released back in 2012, made by Type-Moon, who brought us other classic VNs such as Porkslope Turkeyhandle and Fall/Semester Mike. They released it following their 10th anniversary and it was their first VN in 7 years after Hollow Ataraxia, but more than anything, some fans back then were thinking that maybe Mahoyo would be the beginning of Type-Moon venturing into new stories and settings to leave grail wars behind. Needless to say, they were all wrong.

Anyway, Mahoyo was supposedly the first story Nasu ever wrote back in highschool, but obviously the whole thing was rewritten in order to get this. I suppose that since Aoko was Nasu’s waifu he wanted to not only improve the story from his highschool years, but wanted to make a story that would do Aoko justice as well.

I think he succeeded.

Mahoyo takes place somewhere in the 80s, about 20 years before the events of Tsukihime, and it follows a 17 year-old Aozaki Aoko as the protagonist. She previously appeared briefly in Tsukihime as well as Melty Blood as the protagonist’s mentor and a seasoned mage, but in Mahoyo, she’s only a high-schooler who’s still learning the ropes of magecraft from her friend and teacher Kuonji Alice.

The story begins when Aoko meets Shizuki Soujuurou, a new student at her school who used to live away from civilization somewhere in the mountains, and came down to the city for unknown reasons. After their meeting, Soujuurou has to get accustomed to a new enviroment and way of life, meanwhile Aoko and Alice have to deal with protecting the city from an enemy magus.

After certain things happen, Soujuurou ends up having to live together with Aoko and Alice in their mansion up on a hill. This is where the relationship between the three starts to deepen as they try to live together and cooperate.

Mahoyo is definitely Type-Moon’s best work in terms of visuals and music. Everything in Mahoyo looks fantastic. From sprites, to backgrounds and CGs, everything looks amazing and is enhanced by the way T-M employed effects and animations with them. The animations flow perfectly and many times it looks as if one was watching some sort of animated scene rather than a visual novel. As far as visuals go, Mahoyo’s probably among the best VNs out there.

Since it is impossible to show off what I’m talking about, I figure it would be better to leave a couple of videos that showcase Mahoyo’s great visuals. Of course, these have spoilers. Sample 1 Sample 2

Mahoyo’s music is really good as well. Even though Mahoyo doesn’t stand out from other VNs in music as much as it does in visuals, it still has a really great and extensive soundtrack. Even most of the more lighthearted themes used for SoL scenes are pleasant to listen to and don’t get tiring like they sometimes do with other VNs. But of course, it’s the themes used for more serious moments and fights that stand out the most, and help make each scene have more of an impact.

The only problem I had with Mahoyo is the lack of voices. With the amazing production values it has it seems really weird that Type-Moon chose not to have voices in it. By the year 2012 and with all the money Type-Moon has to throw around they have no excuse not to include voices in the game. I realize that none of Type-Moon’s VNs have ever had voices included, but at this point you’d think that they would do this. But no, they still refuse to have voiced characters, because god forbid they have to use some of their Fate money to hire actors.

It’s not like the lack of voices is crippling to Mahoyo. I found it really enjoyable even without voices, but I think it would have made for a better experience if they had included them, I really wanted to hear what young Aoko and Soujuurou would sound like.

As far as the characters go, they were all pretty good. There weren’t really any characters that ticked me off, and most of them just made me think I wanted to see more of them.

Mahoyo’s portrayal of Aoko makes her seem very different from how she was in Melty Blood and Tsukihime. In Tsukihime, Aoko’s portrayed as an easy-going but serious person, and a sort of inspiration and mentor figure for Tohno Shiki. In Melty Blood, Aoko’s portrayed as a funny and weird character who still retains her serious side, but for the most part just fools around.

Meanwhile, Aoko’s character in Mahoyo is very serious and harsh towards others. They mention pretty early on that most of the boys in her school are terrified of her and that she keeps her distance from most people, leaving her with very few friends. She also gives Soujuurou some harsh treatment, even mentioning that she can’t stand him at the beginning. Still, even with all of that, you can see some hints of the fun Aoko we all know, since in Mahoyo she still plays pranks on some characters and makes jokes every now and then. She also makes the best faces, no doubt about that.

Still, this change in the way Aoko is portrayed has made some people complain, calling her a “generic tsundere bitch” (which is completely wrong) or other nonsense, though most of the shit talking about Aoko, and Mahoyo in general, comes from people who haven’t (and can’t) read Mahoyo so they base their opinions off of random comments or just parrot what other people say. The weirdest thing about this is that they expect a 17 year-old girl to act and behave the same way a mature woman in her late 30s does, which is pretty ridiculous. I can see why there would be backlash at her change of personality, but it’s completely understandable, and personally I didn’t have much of a problem with young Aoko. She may be kinda harsh, but not an unlikable character. I really enjoyed seeing how Aoko was like when she was young, and what kind of things she went through to become the character we know from other works.

It was also nice to see some of her magecraft in action. Of course, we already saw some of what Aoko could do in Melty Blood, but seeing it in Mahoyo is completely different. Though as we already knew, Aoko is only good at destroying things.

There were also interesting bits that talked more about her personality, like the way she reacted to being chosen as the heir to the Aozaki crest and being forced to change her way of life completely, to her reckless use of the 5th Magic. She also likes playing the guitar and going to rock concerts, as well as claiming to be a fan of Arnold Schwarzenegger and David Bowie.

Next is Alice, the modern-day witch. In Mahoyo, Alice plays the role of Aoko’s teacher, as she has been teaching Aoko about magecraft for about two years prior to the start of the story, and, as much as either of them deny it, they’ve become good friends in that time.

Of course, having been raised as a witch from birth, Alice’s personality is colder than Aoko’s and at first, she rejects Soujuurou more than Aoko did. Of course, all magi are assholes by nature so it’s nothing to be surprised about, but as Alice gets closer to Soujuurou and accepts him, she starts acting more relaxed and gets more fun moments.

As cold as she appeared to be at the beginning, I think Alice is a good character, she can be pretty fun when she wants to and even pokes fun or bullies Aoko every once in a while. Not to mention that the familiars she uses, called Ploys, are all pretty interesting and are talked about in detail on the VN. Alice’s mom was apparently a fan of fairy tales, especially Lewis Carroll’s works, so all of Alice’s Ploys are based on those sort of things, though they were all named by a different character, Alice herself claims she called her Ploys by numbers when she was little, and that those numbers would change depending on her mood, but after a certain incident, someone gave them names and made Alice start calling them like that.

Basically, Alice may be a quiet character, but she’s definitely a good one who brings interesting moments and elements into the story.

Then there’s Soujuurou, the guy who never has any idea of what’s going on. Soujuurou starts off as a simple boy who came to live in the city after being in the mountains his whole life, so everything is foreign to him, and at first, he even thinks magi like Alice and Aoko are something common to people of the city. Of course, this also serves as a way to justify infodumps about things Soujuurou and the reader wouldn’t understand.

For most of the story, he comes off as a really nice and simple guy just trying to get used to his new life, just saving up money with part-time jobs and trying to stay out of trouble. He shows interest in Aoko from the very beginning, but he himself admits there’s no romantic meaning to it, which leads to some misunderstandings.

Right off the bat there’s plenty of mystery surrounding Soujuurou, like what were his reasons for leaving the mountain, and what kind of life did he have over there, among a few other bizarre details about him that I won’t mention. There’s also the mystery of whatever he’s hiding beneath the bandages he wears on his neck, which is one thing that gets teased throughout the entirety of Mahoyo.

I have to say I found Soujuurou to be a pretty cool guy. He has some really neat moments throughout the VN, and his reactions to all the crazy events unfolding around him are pretty amusing to see; he’s so cut off from society and common sense that he accepts anything he sees as completely normal, to a frightening degree. The thing is, the more you see Soujuurou and the more you learn about him, the bigger the mystery about his past seems to get, something that would just make anyone question “Who is this man?”.

There’s also a bunch of other side characters, some of Aoko and Soujuurou’s classmates, as well as church people and Aoko’s sister, Touko, who most people probably know from Kara no Kyoukai.

Most side characters just fulfill comedy relief roles as well as being support for Aoko or Soujuurou, and for being side characters, most of them are pretty fun and interesting in their own ways, and they get enough screentime to make me want to see more of them on future works, which probably isn’t gonna happen. Touko, on the other hand, shows us more about the Aozaki’s story and the circumstances that lead to Aoko inheriting the crest and the 5th Magic instead of her, though to be honest, after reading Mahoyo, I don’t think I can ever look at Touko the same way again.

I don’t think there’s much to expand on regarding the side characters, though. Unlike the three main characters, it doesn’t look like there’s much character development that could be made to the others, along with the fact that most of them had their backgrounds explored so we could get to know them.

I think Mahoyo’s story was well done. At times it seemed kinda like the pacing was starting to drag but sometimes Nasu found a way to turn that around, though it didn’t always turn out that way. It’s always the same with Type-Moon’s SoL scenes, they’re not that interesting to read most of the time and they can even seem to drag on for too long, but I can definitely say that Mahoyo’s SoL scenes were much more enjoyable to go through than Fate’s and Tsukihime’s, so that’s good.

I had heard that this one was much shorter than FSN’s Fate route, but it seemed much longer to me, it was a surprise how long Mahoyo seemed to be for a kinetic novel. That’s not really a bad thing considering how much I enjoyed the ride, even when the last few scenes were tugging at my heart, but it was certainly surprising how it just kept going. They even throw in a couple of extra chapters and segments to keep you entertained in between main chapters and after the ending.

One of these extra segments is “Why? What!? Ploy”, which, in the same way that the Tiger Dojo and Ciel-sensei’s lessons did, works mostly as a comedy skit between two characters while also giving info about the story, in this case the segment is hosted by Alice and one of her Ploys, Robin. What they do here is just bully Robin and give out information about Alice’s Ploys as well as some of her background. It works pretty well as a way to give more information that couldn’t be brought up in the main game, and is pretty funny at the same time. Robin himself was one of the more amusing characters in the whole VN, so more of him is always good, and he’s funny in these segments as well, so I pleased with it.

There’s also a few other extra chapters that pop-up as you read the story. There’s Chapter 1.5 which comes up after you finish Chapter 1, and then there’s a couple more of them, somewhere after the middle point of the story.

But then there’s another one that appears after you clear the ending, and it’s a really short chapter told from the perspective of certain character that details what he was doing before and somewhere around the beginning of the story, as well as after the ending.

Lastly, there’s an extra chapter starring Taiga from Toradora Kumari Kojika, one of Aoko’s friends, as the protagonist, and it’s about solving a series of strange murders that occur once all the characters decide to get together and hold a birthday party for a certain someone. This one is, for the most part, comedic. Even though it’s a murder mystery, it’s very tongue-in-cheek about the whole thing and just tries to play everything for laughs, like a character dying naked with a rose in his mouth and other silly situations like that.

This extra chapter is the only part in Mahoyo that has choices, 22 in total, and you have to choose the right ones in order to solve the mystery and catch the culprit behind the murders. This was another fun part of the VN, and it was nice having the perspective of a different character. It was especially nice to me since I really liked Kojika when she appeared in the main story, and she’s pretty fun in her role of protagonist as well.

In the end, Mahoyo was a great piece of work in my opinion. Good characters, great and exciting moments, decent comedy and fantastic visuals and music. It is a real shame Type-Moon decides to focus on their mass-production of Fate stories rather than continuing the Mahoyo trilogy they promised. The second Mahoyo game’s supposed to come out after they finish Tsukihime’s remake, but that’s another project that is going nowhere, so we might not see any mention of Mahoyo 2 until the next decade.

Still, I’d definitely recommend this one to anyone with an interest in Type-Moon’s works, and even if you’re not a hardcore fan of them, it’s still worth checking out since it’s a good standalone story with great action.

And that’s about all I have to say about this one. Until next time.