Toaru Majutsu no Index III (A Certain Magical Index III)

Touma Kamijou can't catch a break. After the invasion of Academy City, political tensions continue to rise as both the science and magic factions collide head on. It appears that Academy City intends to declare war against the Roman Catholic Church, consequently plunging the whole world into global warfare. Touma soon finds himself on the front lines once again, striving to protect his friends and allies.

Toaru Majutsu no Index III serves as the last installment of the original franchise as Touma, Accelerator, and the true Level 0 Shiage Hamazura continue their separate journeys, leading up to the final act of the original light novel series.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Background

Toaru Majutsu no Index III adapts novels 14 to 22 of Kazuma Kamachi's light novel series of the same title.

Episode Videos

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Related Anime

Adaptation:	Toaru Majutsu no Index
Prequel:	Toaru Majutsu no Index II
Spin-off:	Toaru Majutsu no Index-tan III

More characters

Characters & Voice Actors

Accelerator

Main

Okamoto, Nobuhiko
Japanese

Kamijou, Touma

Main

Abe, Atsushi
Japanese

Hamazura, Shiage

Main

Hino, Satoshi
Japanese

Misaka, Mikoto

Supporting

Satou, Rina
Japanese

Shirai, Kuroko

Supporting

Arai, Satomi
Japanese

Last Order

Supporting

Hidaka, Rina
Japanese

Index Librorum Prohibitorum

Supporting

Iguchi, Yuka
Japanese

Kanzaki, Kaori

Supporting

Itou, Shizuka
Japanese

Uiharu, Kazari

Supporting

Toyosaki, Aki
Japanese

Tsuchimikado, Motoharu

Supporting

Katsu, Anri
Japanese

More staff

Staff

Cook, Justin

Producer

Kananiwa, Kozue

Producer

Miki, Kazuma

Producer

Isogai, Noritomo

Producer

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Opening Theme

	1: "Gravitation" by Maon Kurosaki (eps 1-5, 7-8, 10-13, 15)
	2: "ROAR" by Maon Kurosaki (eps 18-20, 22-23, 25)

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Ending Theme

	1: "Kakumei Zenya (革命前夜)" by Yuka Iguchi (eps 1-8, 10-12, 14-15)
	2: "Owaranai Uta (終わらない歌)" by Yuka Iguchi (eps 16, 18-20, 23)

Reviews

Nov 5, 2021

robert788

Recommended

Toaru Majutsu no Index III (2018-2019)

I know it is normally unheard of but this really needed like 32 episodes or perhaps even a season 4 or a part 1 and part 2 because they really did rush it towards the end. I mean the final episode crammed so much in you don't even get the happy return to the normal scene you normally expect in Academy City.
That said the season is absolutely watchable and great in many aspects, just it did let the team down with being so crammed.

Notably good things:

- Misaka sisters and the way they speak in phenomenal still.
- Imagine ...

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Jul 29, 2021

UnorthoDon

Mixed Feelings

**REVIEW MIGHT CONTAIN SPOILERS; CONTINUE AT YOUR OWN DISCRETION**

A Certain Magical Index III was a major letdown from its predecessors. It was promising at first but as the season went on, it starts to get more and more confusing to the point to where I almost forgot what I was watching. Now, with my personnel experience out of the way, let's get into an actual review

Story: 4
The story overall was interesting at first. As we got more and more into the show, the story becomes a confusing mess. However, it is not because of plot holes, or at least from what I can tell. ... No, it is because of the lack of explanation of what is happening in the plot that makes it confusing and at times, unwatchable. With other anime, you make the plot confusing and still have it be a good anime. But Magical Index is not that kind of show. You need to understand what is going on in the scene first, but this season hardly does any of that. That is a shame since all of the arcs seemed very interesting, but completely flopped because of the execution of them.

Art: 5
Now the art is a wild one. In order to talk about this I am gonna split into two parts: the animation and everything else...
-Animation: The animation was all over the place in this season. There were some points were superb and absolutely amazing and other times, it would seem lazy and pretty choppy (there were huge points of time where the "animation" was literally a frame of that character that was moving from left to right... so annoying). A good way to understand this is by looking at the two OPs of this season. The first OP had some good animation but at times it was super choppy at times. However, the second OP was abosolutely beautiful. It was crisp and clean and the coloring was... WOW! But seriously, consistent animation is better than incosistent animation almost 99.9% of the time. One of my favorite animation failures was when Touma just watched on his allies fall from a pretty high height and his face looked as if he was annoyed rather than scared for his ally that she fell high enough to kill anyone.
-Everything else: The CGI in this season was par to all of the other seasons. Nothing say about that. But what really shines is the amount of detail that went into the backgrounds! Every fricken background in this show is absolutely STUNNING! There was obviously so much time and care that went into everything single bit of each and every background. Whoever did the backgrounds deserves a massive pay raise or something because it was just that amazing!

Sound: 9
The sound was absolutely amazing. Music and voice acting were really good. Both of the OPs slap. EDs are fine; not great just fine. There is nothing to really say about the sound other than that though.

Character: 5
Here is where is starts to go down hill quite a bit. In this season, a lot of side characters from both A Certain Magical Index and A Certain Scientific Railgun come back into play with bigger parts for the overall arching story. The probably is that there wasn't enough time in the season to flesh out all of the side characters and even some of the main characters. A lot of growth for characters were rushed feeling pretty jarring. However, I did like there was an arc involving a pretty insignificant character. It was a very nice character arc that suprisingly liked.

Enjoyment: 3
This show really didn't entertain me. It was so confusing with a lot of what is happening not being explained. It seemed like they did this at the last minute. I found out later that they were trying to catch up with light novel since they were behind quite a bit. They tried to put too much into one season and I hate it.

Overall: 5
What saved this show from being rated less was literally the sound and the backgrounds, both of which were amazing. Other than that, everything was wildly inconsistent with me being confused from more than 3/4 of the season. It was way more confusing than like 90% of ACTUAL mystery series. Such a big letdown. If you wanted to get the full picture, read the light novel. I haven't read it yet, but from what I heard, it is better than the show. However, I am still looking forward to the next season. It better be good.

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Mar 18, 2024

Babineaux

Not Recommended

I want to make it clear that I am a Railgun fan. I like Railgun. Railgun S & T in particular are fantastic shows. Which makes it all the more baffling as to how a spinoff show like Railgun came to be hundreds of times better than the original source material, which is Index.

Here's the TLDR short answer: This season of Index is bad. But a lot of the problems with this show are actually the same as they were for seasons 1 and 2 of Index. Many corners are cut on the animation (unlike with Railgun), the direction is terrible (unlike with Railgun), the ... writing is lazy and nonsensical (unlike with Railgun), there is noticeable filler dialogue where the characters repeat themselves or shout a bunch to pad out the runtime, the characters are underdeveloped and are mostly token baubles, so much happens and yet it is mostly just filler and serves no purpose outside of bloating the number of characters in the cast. The reason why people are making a fuss about this season more than the others is that in addition to being bad (which is a given apparently), the studio also butchered the source material this time around, to the point where the "Battle Royale Arc" - which I gather is well regarded in the books - is made into an indecipherable garbled mess.

Otherwise, the show has some parts that are better than past seasons, and parts that are significantly worse. If you liked previous Magical Index seasons and haven't read the books, you will probably like this show. It's fine to like the idea of this show, I think. But if you think that it's actually unironically good, might I recommend that you watch something more like Railgun S & T (if you haven't already) to get a better grasp on what the genre can offer when it's firing on all cylinders.

Now for some HOT TAKES:

- Index shouldn't be in the show. She's not a character, she's not likeable, she does nothing, she's utterly pointless. She's what the show is named after, yet you could remove her from the plot and almost nothing would change. And the author makes no effort to remedy this at any point. She is "I'm hungry" and "I bite you when I'm angry ('cause get it, I'm hungry)" the character. It was a case of a joke that was never funny and never will be funny. Random "towel girl" crush Itsuwa is just the superior character and arguably what Index should have been from the outset. The time we get with Itsuwa is one of the bright spots of this season, even though it's relatively pointless and she will probably be demoted back down into being little more than a cameo again in future. Imagine if we wrote Itsuwa out of the script for this season, and instead gave all of her character development and character moments to Index herself. It would fix so many problems with the show, and make Index more human, but the author doesn't care, why would he care? He's too busy adding in horny middleschooler jailbait number #55 as a pointless throwaway cameo, he can't sacrifice that to work on his actual characters.

- Misaka Mikoto shouldn't be in the show. She's not a character, she's not likeable, she does nothing, she's utterly pointless. She's the number 2 girl and number 1 waifu in the show, so popular that she got her own spinoff title, yet she is entirely sidelined in Index and is just turned into a mindless simp for Touma (the MC). Compare that to Misaka in Railgun, who is genuinely an amazing character, a nuanced and relatable protagonist with an incredibly interesting and versatile powerset, and who has meaningful character development and heartfelt relationships with the people around her. Utterly wasted in this show.

- Touma is an asshole. In Railgun, things are different: he comes across as an apologetic bumbling average nice guy who's trying to do the right thing while muddling through life, and he is hot enough and helpful enough to attract Misaka's attention, but he manages to make her feel flustered and embarrassed, leading to her overreacting and being a bit of a Tsundere. It's a solid dynamic. Unfortunately, if you watch Index, this is recontextualised: the only reason why he achieves this likeable impression is because we don't get to hear his whiny self-righteous inner monologue, which upon being exposed to, quickly makes him come across as being a bit insufferable. He's painfully generic as a protagonist, and spends his entire time using very basic logic to demolish the hilariously nonsensical worldviews of (insert villain of the week). The author sets up a strawman and then has Touma beat it down with one punch. Every single scenario that Touma gets involved with has him giving a self-righteous lecture, which is usually just common sense that everyone in the audience was already thinking upon analysing the villain's laughably stupid worldview, that is resolved with the same stock standard punch to the face. And it happens over and over and over and over and over again. As a formula, it was stale during season 1, it was stale during season 2, and it is even more stale now in season 3. I guess they thought it would be like a running gag, in that it gets funnier over time because of how ridiculous it is? Or maybe they are just appealing to the domestic violence fetish crowd, punching them ladies in the face.

- Hamazura shouldn't be in the show, yet he is elevated to co-protagonist status in this season. He's basically just Touma, but with a sleazy criminal past and no powers. This arguably makes him more interesting than Touma in some small ways, as him being a normal guy means he has to be smarter than just punching his problems. But the thing is, he isn't different enough to be his own thing, and you could remove him from the plot completely and nothing about it would really change, he's just off doing his own mediocre filler content. He was also always the least interesting person in ITEM, so putting the focus on him rather than the girls that people liked is not good. ITEM are the characters most affected by the butchering of the Battle Royale arc, and it's extra painful to watch them as a result of that after the arc has concluded.

- Last Order is underserved. It was a real highlight in previous seasons that after Accelerator gets brain damage, he is tied into the MISAKA network so that he can think more clearly and use them to perform the complex calculations he needs to use his powers. It was also supposed to be a nerf that gave him some interesting limitations. Unfortunately, in the Accelerator show and also in this season, they just ignore these limitations entirely and he's basically just as strong as ever. That is lame. It would be nice if Last Order (as the control tower of the MISAKA network) could be more proactive in helping him use his powers. Even if it's just her having to concentrate real hard when he's doing some particularly monumental feat. She also needs more moments of actually contributing to the plot, she's basically just a little cuteness bubble that floats around vaguely nearby Accelerator now and again. Her and Accelerator are two more characters that are greatly affected by the butchering of the Battle Royale arc, which is deeply disappointing, as they get so few moments together as it is.

- Magic shouldn't be a secret. If there is a cold war between the forces of Magic and the forces of Science (plus the English weasels who side with Science against Magic even though they themselves are a Magic faction, although in fairness that's totally in character for the real life C of E, and I'm allowed to say this because I'm English) then have everyone in the world know what the stakes are, even if they don't know the full scope of what is going on or how any of it works. It's ludicrous to have had Accelerator interact with magic users in depth on multiple occasions prior to this, and then make a plot point of Season 3 that he has no concept that magic even exists still. It's a ludicrous proposition.

- The morality in Season 3 is utterly mad. It's out of control on drugs, while having a seizure. That's the only way I can describe it. Multiple instances where characters get to murder people and/or attempt to murder countless innocent people and yet they are forgiven unconditionally just like that. Characters get to torture people and that's just swell. But lie to protect someone's feelings? Damn, man, that's just unforgiveable, how will you ever live with yourself? Hold on, I've just got to sacrifice my life to rescue this mass-murderer over here, maybe that'll help make up for my lie. Utterly bonkers.

- Teenagers are horny. It is okay to portray teenagers as being a bit horny if it is within character and makes sense within the fiction, because yes, it is true to real life, for better or for worse. It is not okay to have 13-year-olds randomly perform strip-teases directly to the audience for no in-character reason, just because on a meta-level the show wants to declare: "And this is for all you sweet beautiful paedophiles out there!" I don't like the show consistently treating me like a paedo, it's gross. Now, this has always been a problem with Index/Railgun, it has always walked uncomfortably close to that line and even crossed it occasionally before now, but Season 3 of Index walks waaaaay over the line multiple times. Author, you can include "fanservice" without making it this genuinely creepy (and downright lazy to boot). Please desist.

- I'm gonna be vague about this last one, although maybe don't read it just in case if you haven't watched the show yet: Characters should be allowed to die occasionally. Without the prospect of death (or at least severe consequences), there are no stakes, and if there are no stakes, the audience has no investment in what is going on. There has always been some death in the show, of course. But it isn't utilised at all well. To the point where people make it out alive from situations where logically they should 100% be dead. This harms the credibility of the show, and this season is particularly guilty of that. Although as has been mentioned above, it instead lectures to you that "you're a bad person for thinking some of them probably should die" while it does it. And when there is death, it tends to be incredibly arbitrary and is done without any adequate explanation or fanfare. It's like: "People might have liked that character. They were cool. And yet you just did that to them out of nowhere and moved on. And you also let all of those other cringe characters survive ridiculous situations, or deliberately spared them, when people don't like them nearly as much. Huh. What a bizarre creative decision that was."

I sincerely hope this show gets better. Three seasons and a movie, and it's not done it yet. But as one of the other reviewers put it, I'm clinging on for dear life, even though it seems like there's no hope. If you've come this far into Index, either you're like me (in which case, what we are doing is questionable, but I guess stay strong), or you are somehow able to look past its problems, in which case, you may yet get some small joy out of it (and I suppose to be generous, I hope you do).

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Toaru Majutsu no Index III

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Accelerator

Kamijou, Touma

Hamazura, Shiage

Misaka, Mikoto

Shirai, Kuroko

Last Order

Index Librorum Prohibitorum

Kanzaki, Kaori

Uiharu, Kazari

Tsuchimikado, Motoharu

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Toaru Majutsu no Index III

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Synopsis

Background

Episode Videos

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