Review of A Certain Magical Index

In order to enjoy this anime one has to realize that these are story arcs each having a number of episodes. Each of these arcs have some sort of boss battle in each end. Too bad most of the bosses aren't too impressive. And the finale doesn't weave all the arcs into one. The story is too shounen oriented which will deter those that are looking for depth. It is unfortunate since there is potential for the storyline which in turn is trying too hard to be deep with the inclusion of quasi-physics theories that only drags it down. Pacing-wise it feels way too slow.A good amount of time is spent on needless talking even though the viewer already knows what's going to happen. Most of the time viewers will feel that the story should go to the boss battles as soon as possible.

Fortunately there's the art and animation. The high-production value is almost prevalent throughout all 24 episodes. Lighting, character design, backdrop, etc. I find the loliness of the girls' character designs disturbing. Then again the artist (as well as fans of the female character designs of TAMNI) likes lolis so I'll leave it at that.

BGM is average at best so that leaves us with the techno-oriented OPs and EDs which are almost memorable and fits the anime well.

For an anime that spans 24 episodes there's little to no character development. No problem with that. Most shounen action animes stick to this formula. It's just that they didn't stand out too much.

Amidst all its flaws, I did enjoy TAMNI because I just needed to shrink my anime backlog. But it just can't stand out from the season's batch. Maybe because it's from an unfinished manga; maybe because it only touched around volume 6 of the said manga. I don't know. It just felt empty after watching it.