Tejina-Senpai – Episode 9 – Senpai Feels the Heat

Senpai and the Magic Club make preparations for summer activities, including a beach trip.

Episode 9

Hmm.

The Magic Club continues to do real club things, which includes planning for summer vacation and making friends. Earlier in the season, I was concerned that Assistant-kun did not have companions from his homeroom class and was just using the unofficial Magic Club to play video games and sneak peeks at Senpai’s luscious body. His plan was to have a peaceful high school life, but that didn’t appear to include making friends or finding love. Well, Ma-kun, Saki-chan’s younger brother, is proving to be a normal boy too.

Ma-kun plays video games with Assistant-kun, tries as much as he can to avoid the creepier parts of Saki-chan’s brother complex, and he plots with Assistant-kun to get Senpai into skimpy swimsuits. Assistant-kun has found his Magic-Bro! It brings a tear to my eye. It’s the springtime of youth! Actually, it’s the summertime of youth, which becomes important, because the Magic Club needs to deal with the heat.

During the episode, the kids start summer vacation, and like many clubs in anime, they still have club activities during the school break. Unfortunately, it’s still the same old thing of dealing with Senpai in the club room, like how she made their ice cream disappear. This magic trick looked more like a mean joke on her club mates, which made me ponder on the line between performing a magic trick or pulling a prank.

I think the main difference is that the target of the illusion or subterfuge has to be expecting it, whereas a prank has an unsuspecting victim. Many of the times Senpai’s “tricks” failed this episode was because she actually tried pulling a prank in public, and then they backfired. A good magician should shape her performance to her audience. Most of the time in Magical Sempai, the target is also the audience, but that person knows a trick is about to happen. If there isn’t an audience and only a target, then that trick is just a practical joke.

Heh.

Chapter 1 – “Biased Senpai”

Assistant-kun doesn’t have any secrets. Sure…

Aw. Back to getting flustered. Senpai forgot which envelope went with which person.

This is just like the mentalist scene where Senpai just doesn’t know her club mates that well. Her reactions say more about her than the target. She’s the one who actually preferred it when it was just Assistant-kun and her by themselves.

Ha! A growing chest has become a bother! For whom? This is obviously Ma-kun! But Assistant-kun wants to believe! “Return my boner!”

2nd round of secrets seems more exciting for some reason. Holy crap, how long did they give Saki-chan to write this letter? Ma-kun has it rough…

Nothing weighing on Senpai’s conscience? That’s not necessarily a sign of purity — it could be sociopathy.

Chapter 2 – “Make-up Exam Senpai”

This numbers magic trick is from the set of mentalist illusions, which relies on arithmetic and turn-based rules. Of course, Senpai is going to mess this up.

No! It’s not Senpai’s fault! But she did let herself get distracted, unfortunately. She says she’s actually smart, you know! Oh, come on. Smacking the teacher isn’t her fault either, but that ends the game. Plus detention.

Chapter 3 – “Ice Cream Senpai”

Why are the kids having club meetings during summer vacation? I understand Senpai being obsessed enough, but why do the others have to come in? Disappearing ice cream trick! So cruel! Another instance of Senpai not reading the room.

What kind of balloon torture is this?

How was this wooden spoon for Senpai’s ice cream supposed to disappear?

Saki-chan wants to do summer stuff! Yeah! It’s kind of weird that the other kids need to convince Assistant-kun to make summer plans, as if he’s the one giving them permission.

Chapter 4 – “Swimsuit Senpai”

Oh yeah! It’s the trying-on-swimsuits episode! Azu, the manga artist, is excited too! Tomorrow is the beach trip, but Senpai needs a real swimsuit instead of the school one. We’ve already seen that one, anyway, so…

Yes, boys, you really need to be there at the swimsuit shop.

The boys get it. They need to fool Senpai into getting a sexy swimsuit. The one problem with this plan is that Senpai doesn’t think like a regular girl does.

I wonder how Ma-kun learned about these negotiation tactics. Is it how he gets his sister to stop bothering him? Assistant-kun’s imagined scenes of Senpai’s responses to sexy swimsuits are hilarious because she would never act like that.

Of course. The swimsuit got handed off to Saki-chan. She would totally wear that for Ma-kun. An acceptable consequence! Not so much for Ma-kun. Assistant-kun got his good look at Senpai too!

Oh no. Senpai needs to stop doing magic in public like this, because these are just pranks now.

This trick failure isn’t her fault either! But it’s ultimately her fault for not controlling the environment.

Next week is the beach episode! We might already know which swimsuits the girls chose, judging from the end credits, and maybe Madara will be joining them too.