Toaru Majutsu no Index

Academy City, Japan, is at the forefront of science. Besides being 30 years ahead of the world technologically, more than three-fourths of this peculiar city's population consists of students developing their psychic abilities as espers in various institutions. Among these students is Touma Kamijou, a high school boy with the lowest psychic rank of zero, but with a mysterious power no scientist can understand: "Imagine Breaker," which allows him to negate other supernatural abilities.

This, however, doesn't affect Kamijou's life in the least as he plays his role as a regular teenager; that is, until he meets the strange Index Librorum Prohibitorum, a young girl who has memorized the entirety of the forbidden grimoires, and now a dangerous organization is hunting Index down. With several magicians looking to harm the girl, Kamijou will defend his new companion at all costs as he discovers a strange new realm of the supernatural.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Kamijou, Touma Main

Abe, Atsushi Japanese

Index Librorum Prohibitorum Main

Iguchi, Yuka Japanese

Misaka, Mikoto Supporting

Satou, Rina Japanese

Accelerator Supporting

Okamoto, Nobuhiko Japanese

Shirai, Kuroko Supporting

Arai, Satomi Japanese

Last Order Supporting

Hidaka, Rina Japanese

MISAKA 10032 Supporting

Sasaki, Nozomi Japanese

Kanzaki, Kaori Supporting

Itou, Shizuka Japanese

Tsuchimikado, Motoharu Supporting

Katsu, Anri Japanese

Crowley, Aleister Supporting

Seki, Toshihiko Japanese

Cook, Justin Producer

Nakayama, Nobuhiro Producer

Kawase, Kouhei Producer

Miki, Kazuma Producer

Reviews

Mar 13, 2013

Nateal

Recommended

*to those who are too lazy to read and just want a quick summary, skip to the final paragraph*

One of the greatest battles that mankind has ever witnessed is the battle between science and religion, a battle that is still being fought today. So just imagine, what will happen if people with supernatural abilities existed and both these sides got hold of people whose special abilities that are nothing short of miraculous? So how exactly does this relate to To Aru Majutsu no Index? Well I suppose a short summary of the story is in order.

Now To Aru Majutsu no Index (which I would just ... refer to now as Majutsu no Index) is set in a world where both science and magic coexist. Kamijou Touma, you regular high school kid lives within a place called Academy City, the so called “utopia of science” as well as an utopia for a new type of people known as ESPers, people who can have supernatural abilities by controlling the laws of science. Kamijou Touma, being a student in the Academy City, has a strange power called “Imagine Breaker”, a skill which allows him to dispel anything magical or is a product of ESPer powers. On the other hand, there is Index Prohibitorum Librorum (or Index for short), a nun who has the superhuman ability to remember virtually anything and has memorized in her mind 103,000 grimoires concerning magic that is prohibited by the church or is otherwise just far too dangerous to be used. One day, Touma found a starving Index hanging in his balcony after being chased by mysterious men, begging him for food. This is where the story starts as Touma finds himself in the middle of all the problems concerned with letting a walking manual for destruction live in his house.

Now, you gotta admit, the idea of science and magic clashing against each other is a pretty freaking good concept, and a good concept always mean a good anime right? Well, Majutsu no Index had pretty much everything that a good anime has: a good concept, interesting premises, and a recipe for romance. Unfortunately, it failed to use its full potential as an anime because of certain mistakes made by the producers of this anime.

So let’s start off with the story. As I’ve said, Majutsu no index is set on interesting premises yet it failed to fully utilize all of its hidden potential. You see, one of the biggest problems here is, or the lack thereof, of a main antagonist because what happened is that the anime was split into two sides : the magic side and the science side.

The magic side is the side concerned with magic aspect of the anime. The plots concerning this side usually just revolves around people who are relentlessly trying to kidnap Index to learn the secrets in her head and wreak havoc upon the earth, those who want to save Index from her perfect memory, which they claim would kill her if they don’t brainwash her every year since she would remember every detail she sees and ultimately overload her brain, and the church which is responsible for pretty much all of Index’s problems. And obviously, it’s Touma’s job to protect Index which he usually does by talking and punching the said magicians into submission. Though that way of solving things isn’t really all that bad, what really makes the magic side so terrible is that it’s quite episodic when it comes to plot. The plot from one arc to another just doesn’t add up and that makes it quite terrible: the fact that it has no continuality.

The science side on the other hand, is a heck lot more interesting in terms of plot than the magic side. It revolves around the concept of leveling up ESPers. You see, the thing with ESPers is that they are ranked using levels, starting from level 0 (which is by the way, Touma’s level) and above. This is done in order to measure how strong an ESPer is with level 0 being weakest, virtually having no powers, and those with higher levels having stronger powers. The current highest level ESPers have been able to attain is level 5, a title which seven different people in Academy City hold. The story focuses on two of these level 5 ESPers, namely Misaka Mikoto, who was the ability to control electricity and is a friend to Touma, and The Accelerator, who can control and redirect vectors at will. What happened is that Academy City decided to create the first level 6 ESPer, and there are only two ways to do it: Either have a level 5 ESPer kill roughly 128 other level 5 ESPers, or to have a level 5 ESPer kill 20,000 level 3 ESPers. Seeing as they only have seven level 5 ESPers, they opted for the other method: have a level 5 ESPer, namely The Accelerator, kill 20,000 level 3 ESPers. Now the question is where do they get 20,000 level 3 ESPers?

If you haven’t noticed by now, yes, I am biased towards the science side of the story but there is a good reason for that. As I’ve said, what this series lacks is the presence of a main antagonist, and what the science side gives is just that, along with a solid plot. On the other hand, the magic side is, as I’ve mentioned, quite episodic in nature, jumping around from one antagonist to the other and having no clear goal as to where it would lead the story next after one conflict is solved. This is one of the biggest downfalls of Majutsu no Index and is one of the main reasons as to why it fails to live up to its potential. Another problem with this anime is that the magic and science side of the story almost never crosses each other, despite the fact that they should be two sides of the same coin. This is especially annoying from time to time because it causes quite a few plotholes in the story.

Another one of the problems with Majutsu no Index lies in its characters. I’m not saying that they are bad, it’s just that they are so cliché it hurts. We have Kamijou Touma, who’s definition of unlucky is seeing naked chicks and getting “in touch” with the ladies (gee, I haven’t seen that before), Index, who is your regular hyperactive loli, Misaka, nicknamed biribiri, who is your run-of-the-mill tsundere, and others who would take too long to mention. But of course, that isn’t the real problem, as cliché characters can still be interesting despite the fact that they are, well, cliché.

The real problem is that the makers of the anime desperately try to make Touma, the main character, look badass when in fact, he’s not. And for the sake of doing this, they pretty much confine most of the other characters to the sidelines. This becomes very apparent during the latter half of the show, when pretty much every problem ends up being solved when Touma punches the antagonist in the face.

But of course, not all of the characters are bad. Take Accelerator for example. Aside from being the main antagonist for the majority of the science side plotline, he is also the one of the few characters that received a noticeable amount of character development. As the story introduced him as an evil psycho who is willing to kill tens of thousands to gain power, he was later shown to have a softer side who cares for others more than he seems .Other than him, most of the other anime characters just receive minimal amounts of development, maybe aside for one more character though discussing her here could spoil the story.

So far, the only redeeming feature Majutsu no Index has is in its animation and music. The Art was just the way I like it, clean, smooth, and shiny just like most of the newer animes today, though there are times when the movements seem a little bit choppy but this is barely noticeable and doesn’t really affect the overall experience of watching this anime. The music on the other hand is just plain freaking awesome. The first and second openings, both J-pop songs, where sung by Kawada Mami which are in my opinion, just perfect for the theme of the anime: fast-paced and somehow had a futuristic tune to it.

So overall I’d have to say that To Aru Majutsu no Index is more or less an average anime. It’s an anime with a good concept and interesting premises, it just happened to have been unable to fully utilize its full potential. Still though, that doesn’t mean that it’s a bad anime. It does have moments where it shines and shows some pretty amazing scenes. Unfortunately, it couldn’t maintain that level of goodness throughout which becomes one of its downfalls. So this isn’t really something that I would personally recommend, but if you’re stuck with nothing to watch, or maybe you’re one those who have a liking for shounen animes with a little bit of romance here and there then why not give this a shot. Who knows, you might come to like it more than I did.

So to provide a quick summary, here are a list of pros and cons:

+ It has a good concept: Science against Magic
+The openings, both sung by Kawada Mami, were awesome J-pop songs
+The art was clean and smooth
+The Science side of the story had a good plotline
+The Accelerator is just a badass antagonist

-The anime was unable to use its full potential and due to half of the story, the magic side, being terrible
-The makers of the anime were trying too hard to make the protagonist of the story, Touma, look badass despite the fact that he was not
-The animation can get a little choppy at times, though this isn’t too noticeable
-The characters are quite cliché

~First and foremost, thanks for reading my review. If you have any comments regarding my review or just want to have a discussion, then leave a comment at my page. I will greatly appreciate it. =)~

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Mar 26, 2009

midgarmerc

Mixed Feelings

To Aru Majutsu no Index (or TAMI for short) is the very definition of a generic anime. Theres nothing good here but its not necessarily bad. Some characters are likeable and entertaining but that makes up such a small percentage of the enormous cast that its just not worth it. TAMI is about a guy named Touma who lives in a city thats entire purpose is being a school for Espers (see: Psychics) although nobody actually reads minds and its more they all have a certain power. So nobody is psychic at all. Touma discovers a young girl hanging on his balcony whos a magician ... being chased and he helps her. They become friends and have adventures. Thats TAMI in a nutshell, they tried having some main story throughout the whole thing but nothing important was revealed and the series couldnt keep a story arc going past 3 episodes. And thats where this show really falls to mediocrity. By constantly changing the focus of the story to some new threat and introducing 1-4 new characters every 3-5 episodes you lose the whole point of this series.

The characters themselves are just so two dimensional and uninteresting that you dont care for their story at all. Not to mention they all have to have some gimmick to distinguish them from another character.

As far as genre goes TAMI is a shonen type action show but thats being too generous in my opinion. TAMI's action scenes never go past 1-3 actions before they have to talk for 90% of the fight about something that wont even matter once the conflict is resolved, and all the main character ever does is punch people.

TAMI isnt necessarily bad but its just so plain that you find yourself wondering why you're even bothering with it? It tries to be funny but always throws the same gags at you that you just dont care for them. I think theres some wasted potential here and thats a shame because I really wanted to like this show
5/10

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Feb 2, 2013

Masserati_

Not Recommended

"Such misfortune!"

It's somewhat apt that I happened to choose that as the opening quote to this review, because it really does sum up To Aru Majutsu no Index rather nicely - that is, an anime filled with misfortune.

Initially, Index got off to an...interesting start, it wasn't particularly bad, nor was it particularly good either, it was just interesting. We are introduced to our main character Touma, rather interestingly, Touma is not the stereotypical useless protagonist so often seen in shows like Index; don't get me wrong, at his core, he's just a variation on the plain nice guy, but this nice guy also happens to ... have one of the most overpowered abilities in the history of fiction: the ability to negate literally any form of supernatural ability that happens to come his way with his right hand.

However cool it is to have a main character who has an ability that, in most cases, is reserved for the most powerful of powerful enemies, having this power also presents a couple of immediate problems for the show, the first of which being that there is near enough no risk whatsoever when Touma fights; it doesn't matter what the situation is, Touma will undoubtedly get out of it using his hand of God (a rather ironic statement if you've actually seen the show), as shown during the Accelerator and Sherry Cromwell fights, you could quite literally throw the most powerful supernatural abilities at this guy and he will negate them instantly. Consequently, this also makes none of his fights remotely interesting if they have anything to do with supernatural abilities, as he will just spam his Deus Ex Machina ability repeatedly in order to get out of whatever predicament he's in.

Our other main character is Index, and the moment she is introduced to the show, things immediately go downhill, and it's not just her character (which I'll get back to later), the show itself breaks two rules of writing that should never be broken:

1) It throws out lots of random terminology.
2) The story doesn't go anywhere.

That first one is a trap the writer fell into all too fast, right from Index's introduction we are suddenly given an influx of terminology that we are supposed to remember, things like "Necessarius", "Dedicatus545", "Johann's Pen", "Imagine Breaker", "Judgment", "Esper" and "Anti-Skill" just to name a few out of the dozens of terms that populate Index's world, there is literally no point in trying to remember them all, especially not the magic spells which are frankly ridiculous in terms of naming length. Now, as you no doubt know, throwing out random terminology in the hopes that some of it will stick does NOT make a story, frankly, they're nothing but a bunch of meaningless words that are, at most, given a three line explanation as to what they actually mean. Worse still, the terminology doesn't stop, and we are continuously hammered with terms that make it seem like the show is ridiculously complex and would take nothing short of a quantum physicist to understand everything that goes on. Don't get me wrong, there are shows that have done exactly what Index did, Haruhi is guilty of it, Shakugan no Shana is most definitely guilty of it, but the major difference between those two shows and this one is that Shana and Haruhi actually made progress in their story.

Which brings me onto my other point.

The biggest problem with Index is that the story doesn't go anywhere - at all. The first series does nothing more than introduce certain characters, and give out lots of random side stories that do nothing but hinder what little progress the story makes; there are literally only three arcs in Index that actually serve to deliver something that's beneficial to the story at all, those being the first arc, the Sisters arc and the finale. Admittedly, the character development that Accelerator received in his own little stand alone arc was rather good, but one character getting developed when there are more characters and terms than the writers can keep track of is nothing but a minutely small achievement when there's so much that the story has to tell. Honestly, it's hard to tell what exactly is going on in Index half the time, there are arcs in which characters that were key in the beginning are totally swept aside, arcs in which characters I thought were nothing more than minor extras are reintroduced and are suddenly given total importance (with absolutely no foreshadowing whatsoever), and, of course, a beach episode.

None of this is helped by some of the worst writing I've ever seen. There's bad writing, then there's bad writing and then there's To Aru Majutsu no Index. There are several times in which a character is delivering a monologue that not only seems completely out of context, they're usually random and worse still, they don't make sense. An example of one such monologue is in the first arc of the series, Touma happens to be engaging in life or death combat with a character who happens to be hunting Index, Touma, our ever rational hero, then proceeds to start a speech about friendship that not only doesn't make sense, but somehow wins over said villain; it's one moment of utter stupidity amongst hundreds of others in Index. The lapses in logic in Index only get worse as the series goes along, this is not helped by the plot holes that the series induces upon itself later on in the series (especially in the beach episode), and we're left with a series that certainly seems to want to do something with all its terminology and characters, it's just abstaining vehemently from doing so.

On the flip-side of this, Index does at least look okay, which is surprising considering that this is J.C. Staff animating here. The character designs look good, the spells and abilities look pretty decent, and the fights look nice as well; it's definitely not perfect, there are several times in the series in which the quality of the animation dips drastically, and several abilities lack the impact that they should considering how powerful they're meant to be, which is more along the lines of what I've come to expect from J.C. Staff. Oh and the fan-service, it would most definitely not be complete without the fan-service.

As for the sound, the main themes are generic and utterly forgettable at the end of the day, and the rest of the OST is passable at best, there's no major stand-out themes in it so I won't dwell. The voice actors do nothing more than an average job, the already bad writing delving further into horrible melodrama due to some of the female seiyuu coming out with really hollow performances at times; the only two voice actors who deserve a mention are Yuka Iguchi as Index and Nobuhiko Okamoto as Accelerator, both of which are here for very opposite reasons. Iguchi is mentioned because she manages to turn Index from a generic loli-tsundere, into a horrendously annoying one; her performance as Index is tantamount to taking pieces of broken chalk and scratching them down a chalkboard. As for Okamoto, he manages to deliver a performance as Accelerator that captures his sadistic personality rather well, and also manages to act well in the scenes when Accelerator isn't finding new ways to deflect people with his vectors.

One last thing about the voice acting, try listening to the many Misaka clones keep repeating "Misaka Misaka" all the time, I guarantee that you will never want to hear that name ever again.

And now the characters, they're a rather interesting bunch, each having some form of cool ability or special magical power that's almost interesting enough to make you want to see what it does.

Nearly every single one of them is characterised horribly.

As mentioned before, Touma is a variation on the stereotypical useless hero, but don't let that "variation" part fool you, he's just as idiotic and naive as nearly every single other character in this archetype. Fueled by his idiotic need to save every person around him regardless of the risk to his own life - oh wait, that statement is redundant considering who he is - Touma's only real saving grace is that he can actually do something rather than get overshadowed by a far superior female lead.

Accelerator is hands down the best character in the show; he is after all the only character to receive some good character development, and manages to be as sadistic and twisted as I first imagined him to be. He's deeper than he actually first appears, has a cool ability, and watching his stand alone arc made me think that somehow Index was about to improve.

There are many people who believe Mikoto to be the best character in the show; unfortunately, I cannot agree with this statement as Mikoto doesn't remain the focus of the show anywhere near enough to warrant the term "best character", not to mention she's somewhat inconsistent, developing tsundere characteristics whenever the plot feels it to be appropriate then dropping them as the story demands only for them to appear again at random intervals. Her characterisation in Index is nothing more than very mediocre at best and if you really want to have a better opinion of her, it's much easier to watch To Aru Kagaku no Railgun (which is actually much better than Index anyway).

The rest of the cast (aside from Index who I'll cover in a moment) are a random bunch of almost remotely interesting characters, and most of them hit the stereotypes rather well, there's plenty of loli's in the show, a lesbian, big boobs, blonde haired delinquents...nearly every single stereotype is hit at some point by Index.

And the titular character in the title is the biggest offender of them all.

Index is not just a bad character, she is the worst type of loli-tsundere around. My argument for why I think tsunderes are bad would have to be Index, she is perhaps one of the most ungrateful little brats in animation, whose only real purpose is to make the main characters life worse, and more than likely win in the harem that he forms (I neglected to mention that, but oh well). There are very few characters I want to see die more than Index, in fact, if I had the chance, I would personally ensure that she does get killed off - and I would be the one doing the killing. She somehow manages to make every episode she's in worse (this isn't helped by her appalling voice actor) and I saw her turning into a loli-tsundere 5 episodes before she actually did. Index is the kind of character that needs to be slapped repeatedly until she understands that she's a bad character, then slapped some more for good measure; frankly the one redeeming thing about the random side stories is that she doesn't feature prominently in them (if at all).

I will admit, To Aru Majutsu no Index has its moments; the way that the story is structured means you can marathon through an arc and come back to it without really forgetting where you are in the story - wait, that statement is redundant too. And despite my major gripes with the writing and characters, Index is hugely enjoyable, if I was to base my score for this series based off enjoyment, this would be a very different review.

It's just a shame that isn't the case.

In summary, Index is an anime that suffers from poor writing, an extreme lack of story and poor characters (as well as characterisation), and manages to carve itself into a level of anime that's usually only reserved for travesties like Mars of Destruction - it has its moments sure, but then again nearly every anime does.

What a waste.

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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