General
After finishing Index, I was not too eager to see what happens in Index II, I'll be honest. I was expecting more of the first season as the writer seemed really incompetent and only interested in fan service and furthering his power-fansty through his obvious self-insert in Touma, the main character.
But I decided to give it a go, see if it perhaps gets better, and I was pleasantly surprised that it did. There were still massive issues with the story and the characters, but in certain regards it was better than the previous season.
Story - 5/10
To put it simply, the story is still a jumbled mess. It's still cut into 4-5 episode arcs while each arc's plot feels like it'd take at least twice that many episodes to meaningfully be flshed out. There's still a barrage of random stuff and jargon that is usually completely inconsequential.
In certain ways, the show is even more formulaic than before, as it sticks even more strictly to the "new villain appears, some random stuff happens, Touma punches the villain in the face" formula. This time he's mostly punching girls rather than guys, but their motivations are just as laughable as in season 1, so not a whole lot has changed there.
But at the very least, the arcs are no longer self-contained. There's some degree of cohesion between them and they affect the larger plot. For instance, the events of the end of the first arc are the basis of the events of the last arc. A fairly small event in the first arc actually has some impact in another subsequent arc.
And for once, the worlds of magic and science actually interact with one another in a meaningful way. It's not much - the beef that so and so villain affilitiated with the church has with Academy City is usually incredibly dumb and convoluted - but it's something.
The pacing of the story remains its biggest obstacle, as things happen way too quickly generally for them to have any impact on you. After a while it becomes boring because you just don't pay attention to the story. However that's generally massively improved in the last 2 arcs - featuring Accelerator once again, what a surprise - which manage to be the highlights of this season with their solid pacing.
Characters - 3/10
The side characters of this show were its biggest crime is what I said in my season 1 review, and this is still true here. There's still too many of them, and the show keeps introducing even more, all with really silly motivations and not enough screen time to be fleshed out at all.
But at least there's some cohesiveness to them. Generally, after Touma punches the villain, they now join his team instead of being completely forgotten, giving them a small albeit real sense of importance within the plot, as they're usually back with a minor role in subsequent arcs.
Index once again has a very minor roles in every arc, but at least she's featured in all of them for more than a couple of minutes. Her character is relegated even further into being #1 in Touma's harem, however, which is unfortunate.
But that's a problem with mostly every female character in season 2 as they REALLY lean on Touma's harem there. Even characters that previously had some decent plot significance, like Kanzaki Kaori, have now been sidelined to simping for Touma. The villains all fall in love with Touma after being punched in the face. It's honestly pretty annoying.
Art & Sound - 8/10 & 7/10
The art was season 1's strongest point and it remains true here. Fights scenes, wide panoramic shots of the city, solid animation, all very defining of this show.
The scale of the battles is now even larger than before, but the fight scenes still manage to convey a sense of action and urgency that's just right, despite the comical motivations of the villain usually making them fairly silly.
The sound quality has been improved for the largest part, too. It's not particularly noteworthy, but it mostly helps build up hype when the fight scene is coming, suspense when things are getting difficult, etc. It's subtle, but it's very much there.
Enjoyment - 6/10
I'd honestly rate my enjoyment of the first 20 or so episodes as 3/10 or 4/10. It was more of season 1, with annoying jargon that mostly went nowhere, confusing explanations for things that don't matter, villains with hilariously bad motivations and annoying personality quirks that just end up being tsundere for Touma's attention, etc.
In many ways it got worse than in season 1 because the pacing was so off that I just lost interest in what was happening. The various plotlines are so convoluted that even if you miss a large part of them, you haven't missed all that much in the end, anyway.
But the final 4-5 episodes delivered on the promise of the first 2 episodes of season 1. They were very well paced, with exciting action scenes, interaction between the worlds of magic and science, and actual character development for multiple characters, most notably Accelerator once again. I'd honestly rate these last 2 arcs as 8/10 to 9/10.
It's a shame that it took so long for it finally get on course, but at least it did. I am hoping season 3 and the Accelerator spin-off keep up at this pace and don't revert back to the same formulaic nonsense that was season 1 and the first half of season 2.
Overall - 5/10
