Review of A Certain Magical Index
A Certain Magical Index – Dubbed Story 2/10 Story? What story? There are plenty of ideas in this series waiting to be executed but never are throughout the entire run of this series. This show is basically about a guy who goes around risking his life for complete strangers, all of which happen to be female moeblobs, for no explicit reason. It’s basically a harem series that pretends to be something else and, in the process, accomplishes nothing. Everything - from the action, lore and overall setting of the anime - is basically meaningless. All of it is secondary to Touma, the MC, showing how much ofa selfless hero he is and how he cares about random girls he meets by risking his life to save them. The girls he saves add themselves to his harem along the way. Unlike a traditional harem series, you won’t find any romance, romantic build-ups, misunderstandings, rivalries or anything typical of a harem series here. All-in-all this show has proven to be a drag that went nowhere and then expects you to follow it further into any sequels. I initially wanted to drop this show after the 2nd episode because it demonstrated, based on the bland characters and lack of focus on an overarching plot, that it would be a long drag to nowhere. However, being that there is considerable hype surrounding this series, I decided to drudge through to the end in hopes of being proven wrong, but alas, that was not the case.
Art 7/10
Art is alright. Animations in fight scenes are ok. It’s a shame though, that the action scenes themselves didn’t make good use of the animation since the fight scenes are rather boring because the MC is basically a 1-trick pony that goes around punching enemies with his right hand (since his right hand negates all magic and stuff). You have all these cool abilities that would make for a good fight but the MC’s power just negates it all and makes it meaningless.
Sound 5
I really think they could’ve done better in the sound department. There were some instances where build-up music would’ve fit in, but there was none implemented. A lot of arrangements felt random and unrelated to the tone of events going on.
Characters 1
The characters are all trash and have no depth to them since everything revolves around the MC and the MC sucks.
Touma is so ridiculous as a character. He’s supposed to play the part of an unlikely hero but it’s so obviously forced and fake. In execution, he’s an irrational, pompous harem lead who randomly encounters girls and risks his life to save them despite not even understanding the circumstances surrounding them and knowing next to nothing about them other than the few minutes of conversation that they may have had once they initially met. He’s so ridiculous that at one point in the series he more or less says, and I paraphrase, “I risk my life for complete strangers (who all happen to be female moeblobs) for no reason.” So yeah, he has no reasoning behind his actions, it just is and you have to accept it or you’re wrong. In fact, that’s how most arguments are settled in this series, whoever is the strongest gets to decide what’s right and what’s wrong, and Touma happens to be the strongest so screw everyone else’s reasons (not that any in-depth reasons are given for anything to begin with.) As if he weren’t ridiculous enough, early on in the series Touma gets amnesia while trying to ‘save’ a girl. The ridiculous part about it is that the amnesia lasts throughout the run of the series and, for no explicit reason, rather than being honest and letting people know that he has amnesia and doesn’t remember them, he decides to pretend that he remembers people. Brilliant!
Index is a useless moeblob who only uses her powers a handful of times throughout the series.
Misaka is supposedly an incredibly powerful character but we never get to see anything to back that up.
All the antagonists have no depth and no purpose other than to make Touma look good.
Enjoyment 2
It was hard not zoning out through parts of this series since everything about it is so meaningless.
Overall 3
This show would’ve been better suited as a Harem/Comedy, with more focus on those aspects instead of trying, and failing, to be a ‘cool’ Action/Magic show.