Review of A Certain Magical Index

Ever since people started thinking, gathering in groups and building villages and cities, there was always the one question that some people asked themselves and even though most people probably didn't really care in the first place, they later started asking the same questions. It was a matter of time until that question was raised. "What are we?", "Where do we come from?", "Why are we on earth?", are the ones I am talking about and one answer became popular quickly: God! Religion was founded in the early days and while having it hard at first, the religion that in the end came out ontop in the western world was Christianity. Not always through peaceful means, but they somehow managed to make people believe them. But the church doesn't really have the monopole of answering these questions. Science did not always played a role as big as it does now, hell it even was forbidden to oppose the church by using science for some time! The war between science and church though has always been going on, Galilei, who was imprisoned for spreading the truth he found out through scientific mediums, probably is the best example for it and while it certainly did cool down a lot, there probably are still people fighting about it right now! Ladies and Gentlemen, today's topic shall be the Anime with the oh so interesting topic of science and church, Today's topic is To Aru Majutsu no Index!

As this is a Review for both seasons of Index, I will go on and give two scores for every category!

Story:To Aru Majutsu no Index or Index as I will call it for short, revolves around Kamijou Touma, a middle school student that lives in Academic City, a city solely dedicated to science development and Esper training. It is technologically advanced and around 80% of the people living there are students. In this city there are different ranks of Espers, telling their strength, going from Level 0, people that don't have any ability, up to Level 5, which are the 7 strongest ability users in the entire world. Our Main Protagonist Kamijou though unfortunately only is Level 0 and doesn't have any ability at all, except for one thing: His right hand can destroy any Magic or Ability! One day as he comes home to his apartment, he suddenly finds an oddly dressed catholic sister hanging on his balcony, muttering that she is hungry. After taking her in, she explains to him that her name is Index and she has memorized 103000 Grimoires in her mind. She tells him of the existence of Magic as well and that some kind of evil organization is after her.

The basic premise of Index is really interesting, featuring the earlier mentioned differences between the Church and science, but it's nothing that the show focuses on too long. While the enemies often are either from some kind of church or some evil scientific organization, it doesn't feel anything but a mere excuse to have a new antagonist. The setting still remains really interesting, but more for the reasons of Academic City being one of the coolest cities that I have seen in a Franchise so far, featuring underground organizations, a realistic set of population, meaning it is not perfect and a really interesting society where students are able to rule a lot. Also the whole Esper system is really well thought through and was a lot of fun to think about, even if it certainly is not the main point of Index.
Index Story itself consists of many arcs, bound together to an overarcing story, that is not too significant yet, but might get soon. Every single arc is built the same way, there is some light hearted fun going on, something bad happens and everyone freaks out. Then some Plot Twists happen, the bad guy is getting figured out, he fights Touma and everything ends. Of course for the most time it is not as easy as that and surely isn't as dull as it probably just sounded. What this show does really well though, is the pacing. It never feels rushed and never drags once it really got going. Even though it has a few difficulties getting into the arc at the beginning, as the light hearted parts often drag out a little. As the arc gets more story focused though, the show starts to throw in a good amount of twists before ending in a for the most amazingly climatic and epic fight, that basically consists of our main characters holding epic speeches and punching everyone in their face! Believe it or not, it is a lot of fun to watch! If the show really has one big problem though, than it is the getting into it! The first few episodes of Index are pretty hard to watch, not because the story is bad, but due to another reason...
Index: 8.5/10
Index II: 8.7/10

Characters:The characters of Index are by far it's weakest points! The first character is Index. Index is a catholic sister, with the ability of remembering everything she has once seen. This ability is getting used by the church, as she had to read 103.000 grimoires for the church and remember every single one of them. She now has to take care of them and keep people away from looking into it. Index rarely really gets active in the show itself and for the most part only is the reason for things to happen. If she starts acting on her own though, it often gets pretty cool and the power of the grimoires hidden within her mind is not to underestimate. The second main character is Kamijou Touma. He is your generic Light Novel Protagonist, being the guy that wants to save everything and holds epic speeches, why the antagonist is wrong. His catchphrase is the sentence "Fukou da" which in English means "Such misfortune", as he sees himself as an incredibly unlucky person. There is not a lot more to him though, as he is pretty blant. It takes a lot of time, to really get used to him, since at the beginning he is really annoying and only gets really likeable in the second season. It's not that he changes a lot, but the one thing that is different, is that he is a lot more badass later on and while not being a good character, he at least is really cool! In short, the longer the series goes on, the better the main characters get!
The character cast around those two characters is huge, introducing at least one new character every single arc (there are a lot of arcs...) and keeping most of them for use later on. Every single one of them though, especially those that are getting used more often, are really well fleshed out and are by far not as one dimensional as the two main character are. They are a lot more interesting than Index and Touma are and every new side character is a great addition to the already amazing cast of side characters. I am looking forward to getting more of those in the coming seasons.
The last problem in the character section that Index has, is the character interaction, which the comedy relief scenes are focused on. The problem is that while the interactions are funny when seeing Index biting Touma the first time, as she seems to be doing it second episode, it gets boring really quick. The two characters are way too boring to produce anything amazing outside of fights and most of the side characters can't really safe that either. There were some points when I simply had to laugh out loud, but those were pretty rare. The comedy itself was just something that was overused to a point that I was not able to do anything but facepalm at times.
Index: 7.2/10
Index II: 7.6/10

Art:Index for the most part doesn't look too amazing. The Slice of Life comedy scenes look pretty generic and there is nothing standing out at all. When it gets serious though and they start to animate fights, they do a pretty good job at it! There are not too many stills and the animation itself is pretty fluent and while it still is not too amazing it certainly is above average! The Animation quality gets better in the second season, but still is in comparison to other Anime of that time nothing to noteworthy. The backgrounds often look pretty good though, especially when being the Academic City itself, surprising with a good amount of details. At some points the lighting is something that pleased me as well, even though that was rather rare in the show itself and happened more in the movie. The CGI though, looks pretty bad and that doesn't get better in the second season either. Unfortunately they use exactly that CGI for the backgrounds as well. It's not as clearly noticeable then though.
Index: 7.5/10
Index II: 7.5/10

Sound:The Soundtrack of Index was composed by I've, a Japanese techno sound production group. The Soundtrack itself is what I consider to be rather average. There are some tracks that are pretty cool and those are the ones that either show up as soon as some kind of mystery accures or as soon as people start fighting. In the more quite parts of the show though, the soundtrack was pretty generic and couldn't quite match up to the ones of others. The Openings on the other hand were all pretty much amazing! Every single one of them had more of a techno vibe to them. Every single one was sung by Kawada Mami, which did a really good job at it! They did a good job at preparing you for what was to come in the Anime itself, while getting you hyped if the last episode ended on a cliffhanger. In total the RailDex Franchise has amazing Openings. The endings were all quite good, but definitely skippable. They were nice to hear once or twice but after that, there was no real need to listen to them any more. The Voice Acting was splendid and leaves nothing to be desired as far as the emotions go. As my Japanese is not that good, I will refrain from saying more than that!
Index: 8.1/10
Index II: 8.1/10

In total To Aru Majutsu no Index is really good show, that has it's only big fault in it's main characters, but even that is something to get used to after a while. It convinces with a good story, a huge but likeable character cast and simply the amount of fun you have watching Touma punch someone in his face. It has amazing pacing and a skill to climax it amazingly well, making every arc somewhat epic!
Now as I calculated the scores I gave To Aru Majutsu no Index and it's second season (Story, Characters, Art, Sound and my personal Enjoyment), I came to a score of 7.94/10 for the first season and a score of 8,14/10 for the second season. Both are amazing even though they are flawed. The pure fun watching them turns around a lot! As it stands now the first season of Index has been licensed by FUNimation, but the second has not been picked up yet. The first season is also available on the FUNimation Website for legal streaming.
And with that, I hope you enjoyed this Review of Index and I see you next post!

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