Reflection and Analysis

Bad Science - IMHS (1/21/22)

So--

While there were certain aspects of The Irregular at Magic High School, I've never liked the incest angle. And yes, it is incest.

Sure, I get that (and I'm quoting the Artificial Human page on TV Tropes), ".One of the main intrigues of the series is that the biological sister of the protagonist, Miyuki Shiba, was created as a perfect improved magikan. Although she is his real sibling, their genes are different enough (how much is never said, but it is implied that they are technically only half-siblings) that their mating will not be dangerous to their offspring, and the head of the clan announces the engagement of Miyuki with her brother. After it becomes known, the whole second half of the series is devoted to how Miyuki and her brother Tatsuya will try to understand their feelings for each other and the apparent immorality of their new status of "lovers"."

This ignores that a.) the ability to consent has been taken away from both characters so that their family can have their genetically perfect grandchild and b.) there is no court in the world that would ever recognize "their genes are different enough" to not count, particularly since whether one is a full or half-sibling isn't measured based on how genetically similar or not that they are.

And how dissimilar as this person says is never covered, though I saw one place say they're genetically half-siblings, although this doesn't make sense given that marrying a half-sibling would still be illegal. Registering his birth as him being the child of his aunt (yeah, I've done my digging) also doesn't suddenly make them cousins, which means alterations of the DNA wouldn't suddenly make them half-siblings—well, you start to get to the fact the author's trying to hand wave reality-- that they are biological siblings.

Or should I say the adults in their lives are, but that said adults are attempting to push said reality onto their kids. Perhaps even more baffling is that this family actually thinks something like this would actually make it suddenly not incest because the problem with incest from the scientific standpoint (let's completely forget the psychological side of it) the problem with incest is the risk of genetic defects, right? Which in turn means that there must be some form of mental instability going on with the adults, so--

Are we sure that there is absolutely no chance that there is no risk just because they say there is no risk? This is, after all, an experiment for which this was the first time trying said experiment, with no known end results proving what they say is true. We're talking adults who violated the human rights of their children, albeit I do have to admit I don't think they or some others in the series believe that genetically altered individuals have rights. They're removed the ability to consent, what they're doing is child abuse, but like any other abusers they're attempting to find excuses for what they're doing.

Which, it would be awesome if this was being done to explore how awful this is, but nope—it's an attempt to brush off the incest.

Oh, and speaking of which—there's also the issue that, and nobodies ever bothered thinking about this, is that genetically altering Miyuki enough so that there children won't be harmed by genetic anomalies doesn't actually mean genetically altering her enough so that they're no longer genetically full siblings, and this has to do with the fact each genetic anomaly can be tied to something specific and by the time they got to this era, supposedly these would be known.

Though, there's another problem in that genetic anomalies aren't always passed down through the mother's side but can be from the father's side, yet the entire dependence on avoiding genetic anomalies is placed on the mother, which is a form of sexism and outright ignores that some can be based down by the father and some are passed down only by the father, adding further bunk to this whole thing.

Which, I think part of that is the writer didn't bother to do their research, no? They were just looking for a way out of the incest issue.

There is another issue though, and that is this idea that we should be curing genetic defects. You know, such as finding a cure for autism for which there is a huge controversy, where cure is considered by some to be the C-word. Yup, it's seen as a bad word. It's also why Rett syndrome has been separated from the autism as Rett syndrome is in fact a degenerative disease where the symptoms mimic autism