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A Certain Villainous Laugh and Meandering Plot Line

Posted on November 18, 2018December 16, 2018 by Karandi

A Certain Magical Index Season 3 Episode Review Title Image

A Certain Magical Index Season 3 Episodes 6 + 7 Review

Episode 6 brings kind of to a close all the factions fighting for the tweezers, though they do throw out a new name of a new faction at the end and really there was no where near enough of an explanation for all the crazy going on from these people during these episodes or the lack of response from the city as they literally tore it apart. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t full of cool moments, because who doesn’t like a good screw-driver to the ear scene while listening to terrible puns, but it does mean the whole experience seemed relatively empty.

Even the reuniting of Accelerator and Last Order couldn’t really get me excited about what was happening here. Too little context and too little connection to any of the characters and too little care about Aleister and his secret plans, whatever they may be, just leads to all of this just being flash and noise on a screen and if I just switch off I can enjoy it enough but afterwards I just have to wonder why I’m bothering.

Then episode 7 switches us back to Touma and Index and what do you know, he’s being targeted by another Saint from some holy kind of organisation with a long name that I won’t remember, and another organisation is going to protect him. Wait, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen this story before.

Anyway, of course the best way to protect Touma is to send the girl in, even though she’s never once actually succeeded at protecting anything and is regularly rescued by Touma. And the best thing that back up crew can think to do is orchestrate a date sequence for them. Shouldn’t they be doing something like actually looking for the crazy guy?

Never mind.

Crazy guy found them and they ceased to be of consequence (assuming anyone ever thought they had any). Then crazy guy proceeds to beat up Touma and toss him off a bridge before telling him to cut off his arm and hand it over before the end of the next day and then he’ll be allowed to live.

What is it with villains doing stupid things like this?

I mean, the guy can’t fight back and you’ve taken out all the back up. Just cut the damn arm off and take it as a trophy. Done. Oh no. Let’s give them a whole day to rest, recover, rally some strength and have a bigger smack down that you are likely to lose.

Idiotic villains. I just want one villain this season that doesn’t suffer from a severe case of stupid.

Thanks for reading
Karandi James

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A Certain Magical Index Season 3 Episode 5: I’m Glad I’m Not The Only One Confused

Posted on November 5, 2018December 16, 2018 by Karandi

A lot of the dialogue this episode was taken up by characters either trying to identify or asking which group others characters were a part of (not helped by on the the groups being called GROUP) and it made me feel relatively happy that I wasn’t the only one lost as to who belongs to which random name. The real problem though is that even within groups there ends up being dissent so even if you didn’t remember their names you remembered who was working together, until they decide not to work together. So colour me confused on the specifics of who is helping who and who is fighting who.

That said, Accelerator, Tsuchimikado, the Aztec guy and girl wearing bandages (see, I’m paying a lot of attention) remain fairly much the main focus and more or less everyone is against them so whether you remember which party the opponent comes from becomes more or less an exercise in pointlessness.

And all of that might make Index sound like a terrible mess which, from a strictly speaking point of view, it is. However, you can’t tell me that watching Accelerator turn up the villain act to 100 as he squishes a bug who thought he could best a level 5 esper just because he’s a little off his game since taking a head shot isn’t entertaining. It is over the top, it is really cluttered and messy, there’s way too many characters, groups, and powers bouncing around the place to actually keep track of it in any meaningful way if you are only a casual viewer, and yet there’s so much fun energy here.

Now, the one criticism I’m not going to hand wave past because it was fun anyway comes back to the Aztec guy as he’s facing off against someone from his previous organisation. And after she pretty much loses the fight she starts unravelling, fairly literally, because apparently she took a grimoire into herself (apparently it didn’t matter as long as she killed the Aztec guy – so great thought process there). Now, it has been forever since we’ve heard about the grimoires and to be honest I forgot why they were such a big deal (seriously, the show is named after Index who houses a bunch of the things, they really should show up more often), but even that isn’t the problem.

The problem is, Aztec guy just says what he’s going to do to stop it and even admits he doesn’t know if it will work and then we cut scenes. Later, Aztec guy meets up with everyone else on the team.

So, what happened? Is the girl alive, dead, consumed by the grimoire, ran away, what? I mean, they might tell us later but whatever they do now it will be telling us about this confrontation rather than showing us and to be honest Index does a little too much stand around and technobabble at the audience to explain things that we could just as easily learn by seeing.

However, with that complaint out of the way, I had another very fun time watching this episode and amazingly enough we are still Touma free. From reading other posts from people familiar with the source it seems he won’t be appearing in the arc, so I guess we’ll see but to be honest I’m not actually all that upset with his absence.

Thanks for reading
Karandi James

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A Certain Magical Index Season 3 Episode 4: Ditch The Main Cast And Go For A Ride

Posted on October 29, 2018December 16, 2018 by Karandi

Theoretically we might have met a lot more of these characters before than I remember. I haven’t watched seasons one and two of this for awhile but I’m going to be honest and just say that I recognised maybe four characters in this episode. The rest of the time we were just blipping between groups of people and locations as everyone kind of went about either planning to do something or planning to foil someone else’s plan and lots of stuff went boom in between.

Part of me wonders if everyone just realised that Touma is a really boring character and that Index contributes nothing given the two of them were completely absent for the entire duration. Now, at first I tried to rationalise this by thinking that maybe they still weren’t back in academy city but that logic doesn’t really work when Tsuchimikado and Accelerator are both running around in this episode. Alternatively, Touma is probably back in hospital again but given Accelerator went by the hospital to harass the only doctor who ever appears in this anime at one point, we could have at least seen Touma in a scene to confirm that. So basically, Touma’s just vanished and apparently the audience isn’t supposed to ask why or where. I’m sure he’ll turn up later in this particular story and solve everything by punching something but in the meantime I guess all these characters are a lot more interesting even if I have no idea who most of them are.

The episode is very concerned with you not getting bored though. We’ve got one group taking some guy into custody before the truck gets bisected and the guy gets killed by another group who are apparently planning an assassination to act as a decoy for stealing some long titled widget from a lab. But another group are annoyed about that and are going after them as well leading to a wrecking ball going through a truck and a guy jumping off a roof. And there’s yet another group that blew up the apartment that belonged to a guy in the group that took the first guy into custody and then the guy who owned the apartment apparently used Aztec magic to turn himself into one of the group and infiltrated it and they are apparently trying to steal a computer virus (or something) as a decoy because they are actually after another lab that has something to do with a satellite.

Did I mention somewhere in there we also got a quick scene of Last Order being taken home from the hospital? I’m sure that is somehow important but can’t for the life of me figure out why.

Right, I have no idea what is going on. Or why. And for some reason I don’t really care because this was really fun to watch even without much of a context. I’m just going to assume eventually this will all make sense, and in the meantime the characters can all just keep running around and making things go boom.

Thanks for reading
Karandi James

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A Certain Magical Index Season 3 Episode 3: More Jargon, More Punching

Posted on October 22, 2018December 16, 2018 by Karandi

Part of me wonders whether there’s any reason why after two seasons of this show I firstly still like it and secondly am still watching it. Basically, while the plot continues to become yet more convoluted in the jargon they like to babble at the audience, every incident is resolved much the same way with Kamijou eventually punching whoever is responsible and destroying whatever mystic whosit they were chasing by touching it before getting somehow knocked out or injured to the point where the next time we see him he’s waking up in hospital, again.

A Certain Magical Index Season 3 Episode 3 — I love how the assumption is that there is definitely a weakness to be found.

Yet, the answer to the question of why I am still watching A Certain Magical Index is actually pretty clear. While this formula is repetitive, it is great fun and when accompanied by the music and the general intensity all of the characters put into climactic scenes, it is difficult not to get swept up even if we are just waiting for the right hand to nullify everything and call it a day.

The other reason is that this show continues to bring back ideas from each of its previous stories and continues to build a fairly complex (if at times nonsense) kind of world. This opening act delivers that beautifully with Misaka’s return as a reoccurring character and while it was nice in the first two episodes to see her hounding Kamijou yet again, the phone conversation that she overheard where she finds out that he has in fact lost his memory (something that I kept hoping someone would realise much earlier on) kind of brings things nicely together. We also get a return from Accelerator that really doesn’t add anything to Kamijou’s story but helps with world believability because even after his injuries he’s still pretty much a weapon of mass-destruction.

So while A Certain Magical Index has done nothing to address its problems, three seasons in there’s probably little inclination to fix them because more than enough people are on board with the story as it is. There’s a lot of fun to be had with this cast and the overblown nature of everything is just par for the course.

Although, one of these days it would be nice to meet a villain who isn’t a complete psycho.

Thanks for reading
Karandi James

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A Certain Magical Index Season 3 Episodes 1 + 2: That Time Something Happened to Kamijou

Posted on October 15, 2018December 16, 2018 by Karandi

I’ve previously reviewed season1 of a Certain Magical Index and at the time I kind of made it clear that while I had fun enough with the show, I preferred the Railgun spin-off, in a very rare case of preferring a spin-off and that Index has some real issues. I never did review the second season individually because really it was jut more of the same. Well, back for a third season, eventually, and the first episode finally available for people in more regions and the question is what are we in for?

There’s a simple answer though; nothing has changed. We still have Kamijou wandering around Academy City harmlessly going about his business and being just really unlucky in the events and encounters he has during episode 1 of this return. On the brighter side we’re reminded quickly of the key players in the academy and they even throw a shooting into the mix just so we’re reminded that despite looking like a goofy school club anime this show actually does have some darker ideas and fight sequences in it so just wait around.

Yet they don’t make the audience wait long, or even let the plot and exposition even catch up, as we scene change to France in episode 2 where Kamijou teams up with another girl from the previous seasons, and I’m really struggling with my memory to place her, to destroy some mystic pipeline and instead they get attacked by a guy who claims to be the right seat of god.

Yeah, they haven’t eased up on throwing every term and idea they can drag out of any theology book on the planet at the audience in great big exposition dumps either so it really is business just as usual for this show. The fan-service is also plentiful with panty shots, blushing girls, and other revealing outfits coming thick and fast in these two episodes.

So pretty much if you’ve enjoyed this before, it gets right back into the same tone we left off at and it is still just kind of fun. A little head scratching at times with some of their ideas about religious organisations and the way they use some of their terminology, but still fun.

Thanks for reading
Karandi James

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Vatican Miracle Examiner Series Review: This Show is in Search of a Miracle

Posted on November 4, 2017November 4, 2017 by Karandi

Overview:

Hiraga and Roberto are a pair of priests sent by the Vatican to investigate numerous miracles around the world. The story is broken into several mysteries that the priests investigate while also carrying around a lot of personal baggage.

Review:

After the first mystery in this anime finished, I moved it very firmly into the ‘They Made This’ category. It was so over the top and full of every potential cliché you could fling at the Catholic Church, and it was like the writers were having a competition to see who could pack the most stupid idea into the story. The Hitler Clone remains my personal low point, though the pedophile comes a close second.

And yet I continued watching. Partly this is because I have a thing for episodic supernatural stories with lead characters that are a little more stoic (Ghost Hunt and the like) and partly this was because, in spite of its silliness, at its core Vatican Miracle Examiner seemed to want to be taken seriously. So I gave the show some more time.

What I gained from this is that each mystery after, while still excessively over packed with events, characters and ideas, seemed a little more solid and grounded. It was as though that desperate plea for attention of the first arc had gotten the sillier notions out of the way and done and the story started to find its feet. We also slowly got closer to the two priests at the centre of the story who at first seemed fairly generic and replaceable.

Now the argument that it gets better later is a trickier one, because you do have to sit through some of that awful writing and pacing but by the second last mystery, I have to admit I was pretty into this story even if there were still a number of issue. And the last episode really nailed the tone I’d been searching for throughout the whole series. I don’t know that I can recommend a show on a final episode, particularly when the episode in question doesn’t make a lot of sense unless you’ve seen the lead up to it and built up some relationship with these characters, but that last episode was exactly what I started watching this show to see.

Kind of a shame it took 11 episodes to get there.

There’s also the issue of Lauren, who seems like an interesting character but remains strictly side-lined. I’d have loved to see him more involved in the story and in some of the cases. Yet the story has ended with little to nothing being done with his set up. Julia as well kind of remains a loose end that serves a valuable purpose but without news of any kind of sequel it just leaves us without any sense of closure on his story.

I do have to discuss the appearance of this show though. It is very brown. Like, really and incredibly dull to look at. Plus a lot of scenes happen at night or in dimly lit rooms with an excess of shadows. They were really working on a particular atmosphere but with the writing not quite holding up its end, mostly it just looks dull. Which is a shame, because aesthetically it could have worked quite well.

The opening theme is also ridiculously intense for the pretty low key tone of the show. Really, you would think you were going to watch something where the priests are kicking in doors every episode and banishing demons back to hell after watching that opening. If I recall correctly, in the entire series the priests attempt one exorcism and then realise the kid isn’t possessed but drugged (honest mistake that one).

Basically I am not recommending this anime. I ultimately enjoyed the final episodes and to be honest, I’ll probably rewatch it at some point because this is still very much the type of show I like rewatching (I know, I’m weird), but it isn’t objectively very good and even from a pop-corn entertainment point of view there’s better out there.

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Thanks,

Karandi James.

Vatican Miracle Examiner Episodes 4 + 5: Not One Original Thought

Posted on August 8, 2017August 4, 2017 by Karandi

Review Episode 4:

Right, so this show just kept piling mystery upon mystery in the first three episodes, hitting almost every cliché about Catholicism that it could in the process and then we get to episode 4 which technically resolves this arc. Yep, virgin birth is actually artificial insemination using Hitler’s sperm because… well, my theory is that this story was written by a teenager who is overly impressed at their own cleverness and of course Hitler was evil so why wouldn’t he be at the centre of all of this mess.

So yeah, not impressed with how this wrapped up, but not surprised either given the past three episodes. I’m guessing they’ll start a new case in episode 5 and I’m still kind of tossing up whether I’ll bother. I don’t really care about either of the examiners and they’ve given me no reason to. The writing in this mystery was pretty ordinary and the resolution was pretty immature.

About the only thing this show has going for it is it doesn’t look or feel like anything else I’m watching this season. And that isn’t saying a lot.

Review Episode 5:

This episode takes us back to how Hiragi met Lauren and how they built up their relationship (also, how that weird game mentioned briefly in the first arc factors in).

During their game they discuss an unsolved case of a man who was given 1000 wishes and I kind of enjoyed the story as it unfolded. It wasn’t as cluttered or as desperate to show off as the previous mystery. The fact that it remains unsolved is neither here nor there as it really is just aiming to make you think and that it does quite well.

Still, the very nature of this episode plays into my initial though of why does he even have a partner for his examinations. Other than a gush at the end of the episode about how good Roberto is at ironing there is no mention of him in the story and he doesn’t appear at all.

While this was a better episode, this series is really not doing so great so far. It remains watchable, it has some ideas that might be interesting, but hasn’t really done anything I could recommend at this point.

Thanks for reading.

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Thanks,

Karandi James.

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