Review of A Certain Magical Index

I'm going to come right out and say it: I struggled with A Certain Magical Index. It didn't start that way. In fact, I loved it for a good bit. But then, I began to to realize that I was having certain issues with the general trajectory of the story-line. It was somewhat strange for me, because generally, I like Magical Index's genre. The story with the main character who has "special powers" and can't help but attract new recruits for his harem wherever he goes. It reminded me a bit of Strike the Blood, which I enjoyed a great deal more. Maybe you couldsay that Strike the Blood improved upon the formula of Magical Index, which came a good 7 years before it, or maybe I'm just biased because I watched Strike the Blood first. Either way, I was disappointed with Magical Index, especially in the latter third or so and I'll explain why, but first I'll go over what I liked.

I really liked the premise of Magical Index for one. The idea of magic versus science is a really strong premise and, at first, I thought that it was executed really well. The first arc with Index was a great blend of magic and science, with Touma working in both worlds really well. However, they kind of lost me a few arcs later as I began to see the same premise essentially re-skinned and re-used. That's about the time I began to wonder if Magical Index was just really formulaic. The second thing I liked was Touma's ability. I didn't love Touma himself too much, I was more indifferent than anything about him, but what made him stand out to me was his power. Touma's right hand possesses Imagine Breaker which can destroy any kind of supernatural power. It's kind of a unique take on the "powerful MC" trope that dominates most, if not all, supernatural shows and allows for more unique conflicts, even if they usually just end up as "Touma punches something with his right hand as hard as he can". Finally, I loved Mikoto Misaka. This may be something of a personal preference, but I thought that she was the best character in the entire show. It wasn't that far through that I realized that she was the only reason I was watching in the first place. In a show about supernatural abilities and unnatural situations, Mikoto felt like the most human character in the show. She was strong, but she also had weaknesses. She was confident, but also had insecurities. Maybe all of this praise is just my best girl bias, but she definitely kept me watching. With all that said, I'll probably watch A Certain Scientific Railgun just for her.

Oh boy, what didn't I like? Pretty much every other character, outside of a few like Accelerator, Kanzaki, Himegami, and Kuroko. I disliked the magic arcs a lot, they felt really boring and convoluted compared to the much more interesting and grounded scientific arcs. I think the big thing about the magic portions of the show was that they felt unrestrained. At least in the show, there are no rules to the magic, like how the hell does it even work? Is it just whatever you can think up, is it grimoire based? Who knows? Like I mentioned above, I really dislike the direction of the story. I could basically feel the insane escalation coming. I mean, I could already tell that it was just going to get crazier and crazier, but the fact that it was getting ridiculous in the first season was kinda concerning. Kind of a side point, I spoiled myself a little bit and found out that Touma's harem just keeps growing to ridiculous proportions and he just strings them all along kind of made me a little upset. I would be the first person to admit that harems can be fantastic, but there's a point where the constant adding of girls should just stop and use the girls that are there. The greatest sin in Magical Index is who else but Index herself. Oh God, she made me want to pull the trigger to the gun that I put to my skull every time she was on screen.

Even if the above paragraph made it seem like I despised Magical Index with every fiber of my body, I really did enjoy it for the majority of the run-time. Something just stopped working toward the end, causing my enjoyment to really suffer. It's something that I really can't put my finger on. By all means, I should love Magical Index, seeing as it has everything I could ever want from an anime. There's just something there that really makes me not want to finish. At this point, I have no idea if I'll finish or not. I probably will at some point, but it won't be for a while. I'll probably watch Scientific Railgun for more of best girl sooner.