A Certain Magical Index Overview:
In A Certain Magical Index, Kamijo is a student in Academy City, a city that is almost entirely populated by students who are using science to develop supernatural powers. Only, Kamijo doesn’t have any. He’s a level 0. Which would be fine except he has terrible luck and keeps getting into situations well over his head and then he doesn’t run away, he tries to fight. Turns out he has a secret. His right hand essentially nullifies any power that comes in contact with him.
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A Certain Magical Index Review:
I’m going to be honest, if you haven’t watched either A Certain Magical Index or A Certain Scientific Railgun, watch Railgun. It’s the spin-off and is the more compelling viewing of the two series. It’s also the more traditional in terms of following group of girls with powers as they try to live normal lives but keep getting mixed up in things. In terms of concepts, Magical Index is more interesting, but makes for less compelling viewing.
A lot of the problems with Index come from the Protagonist Kamijo. He’s boring to look at at boring to follow. He’s the typical ‘I have no power but I won’t just keep my head down’ protagonist. Oh look, there’s another highly powerful girl in trouble, I best go help her even though I’m mostly going to fail. And then his power nullifies other powers. That’s all well and good, and extremely frustrating for those attacking him, but why doesn’t anyone just shoot him with a gun?
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Alright, to put some order into this review I need to discuss the plot a bit more. Index is the name of a person (the young girl dressed in church robes that are held together by safety pins after Kamijo’s hand conveniently destroys the magic holding the outfit together early in the series) and she contains a whole bunch of magic books. Essentially she’s a walking library. The church (one of many church’s – there’s a lot of religious terms thrown around in overly long explanations) doesn’t want anyone to have access to these books so they wipe Index’s memories every year. Why that would be effective at containing anything has yet to be adequately explained.
So Index is on the run because her memories of people who are protecting her are gone and she quite rightly suspects the church of trying to kill her. She ends up at Academy City and somehow falls onto Kamijo’s balcony. But rather than let her go about her business, Kamijo decided to try and save her from the evil magicians that are now chasing her. In the process he learns that Index’s memory is about to reset again and he has to stop that from happening (we’re still in the first few episodes here).
Long story short, Index gets injured and they go to one of Kamijo’s teachers for help because he can’t use magic and neither can anyone trained as an Esper but a magic spell might heal her. They do that and Kamijo undoes some magic whosit and now Index is going to be fine and not have her memories erased but Kamijo gets hit on the head by a magic feather and loses his memories.
Wake up in hospital, pretend not to have lost memories. And then… Like, we’re only a handful of episodes in. The series is called A Certain Magical Index but the story isn’t following her, although she never leaves after this, even when she serves no purpose.
Yep, the rest of the series sees Kamijo meet a girl in distress, stick his nose into her business, try to save her, usually succeed but get severely injured in the process. While some of these individual encounters are interesting, the overall narrative kind of collapses. They try to keep an ongoing theme of rivalry between the magicians and the scientists but to be frank there isn’t enough of this for it to hold the story together.
So, the main character is bland, other characters come and go, or come and hang around like a bad smell, the plot is not particularly coherent… Why are we talking about this?
Well, because there are some moments of sheer brilliance in this. Certain exchanges, battles, sub-characters and even the occasional arc just shine. This anime builds a rich world full of lore and history (though they could find a better way to explain some of it) and really it’s a lot of fun with the occasional hint of drama.
As I said at the start, if you haven’t tried this series, A Certain Scientific Railgun is a much better bet than this, but if you like things that feel both generic and different at the same time and you don’t mind the odd info dump to get you through an awkward bit of storyline, there’s certainly some enjoyment to be found in watching A Certain Magical Index.
If you have seen it, I’d be interested in your thoughts.
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Karandi James
So I still feel like I end up defending this series more than I probably should. I like it. I wouldn’t say that I love it, but, for the most part, I find Toma interesting enough.
I know everyone says Railgun is better, but I’m really not interested in watching Tsundere girl being tsundere and doing tsundere things. That said, I haven’t watched it, so maybe it’s better than that, but judging by her appearance in here I’m not that intrigued. Then again, I might be being contrary.
But getting back to Index. I recently went back and watched it again. My general impression is that the first two arcs are pretty good and the last arc is good, and the middle arcs are varying levels of less good with one being not good.
Probably my biggest complaint is that there is a pivotal moment that occurs at the end of the second arc, and they never really capitalize on it, or use it as a real storytelling hook. It gets acknowledged from time to time, and dragged up to create tension, but they don’t do anything with it. Toma doesn’t really become a drastically different character.
It’s frustrating.
That said, I like the earnest, well-meaning shonen hero archetype, and that is what Toma is. Sometimes I just want to watch him doing shonen things.
Index is certainly watchable and if Railgun hadn’t come out I would probably be happy with what Index delivered. But as you mentioned, the story is all over the place with a number of arcs that don’t quite come together and a number of wasted elements. Railgun feels like they learned from these issues and ends up being a better told story.
Index was one of the most annoying and unlikeable lead characters in anime and a key reason why this series was hard to enjoy – that and the lousy storytelling. As you say, Railgun is the better show.
It is a shame because I really liked the world building and the conflict between magicians and espers that Index set up, they just never really managed to capitalise on it and the convoluted story telling didn’t help. And yeah, Index and Kamijo weren’t thrilling characters.
Index was fun but she ended up being a perpetual victim to be saved.
Railgun is more interesting but she never showed the kind of power she was truly capable of.until the very last season. Either her opponents were not very impressive or she was also a victim to be rescued. I really wanted her power to be bumped up so she would be in the same class as Accelerator but they decided to write it such that it would blow up the city if she did, Guess who had to rescue her…
Accelerator is a very good anti-hero. IMHO
I never really got into Accelerator. I enjoy Railgun and find the girls very charming. Index on the other hand seems to focus on the least interesting character this world has to offer.
For me, Accelerator is the only thing that saves this show. I watched it just to see how it’s sorry intersects with Railgun’s storyline, which I loved. It really annoyed me that Index has no real purpose in the story after the first few episodes. Her name is in the title for goodness sake! They just did not create the characters well enough to make me care what happened to them. I liked Touma well enough, his power was kinda cool but I wasn’t rooting for him like I should for a main protagonist. Your review is spot on.
Yeah, Index does have a few stories built around her in the second season but she really is just a victim of the week character and acts as occasional comic relief. At least Railgun is about the character who use Railgun.
I didn’t particularly enjoy this one. The characters are one dimensional. Touma seemed boring to me and Index too was no better than him. One of her roles is biting him every few episodes I guess? If you ask me, my favorite character would easily be accelerator. I agree that the fight scenes are good but I feel like this anime had a lot of missed potential. Also, the two opening themes are pretty good.
The magic part at the start of the anime was pretty dope. The science part is better though.
There are a lot more shows similar to this so there’s also that.
Accelerator is also one of my favourite characters. I know he’s a bit of a jerk but I still sympathise for him and then in Railgun I want him to pick himself up again.
I always root for underdog protagonists. That being said, Touma doesn’t neatly fall into that category. As you said, it’s a wonder his opponents don’t just shoot him.
It’s a bit hard to come up with reasons the pros and cons of the series at the moment since I am at work, but I think the series kind of struggled with pacing (JC Staff strikes again).
Pacing is definitely an issue. Some of the arcs really drag whereas other we’re racing through and don’t get nearly long enough to take in all of the story.
The Index series was one of the first anime series I ever found myself really enjoying and one of a handful I’ve actually gone and re-watched. If I had to reason out why I enjoy it so much despite the goofy, out of place fan-service, and the sort of one-dimensional, white-knight protagonist it would probably be because of the reasons you listed. The show’s world-building and lore is absolutely fascinating and each new detail and faction that arises only accentuates this. I enjoy a good many of the characters as well and the sisters arc (which was done even better in the Railgun spinoff) I always thought was a ton of fun. Throw in some occasionally fantastic animation sequences, a markedly better second season (imo), and a pretty fun soundtrack and you arrive at a series that it’s hard not to love despite its glaring imperfections. I don’t recommend the movie though…
I definitely liked the Sister’s arc and the spin-off which I will eventually review kind of improves on a lot of the issues here though it does introduce some of its own issues.