I watched all of "A Certain Scientific Railgun" up to T, before going back and starting this, and I consider myself a fan of the Railgun series. Therefore, I have certain biases present that are very difficult for me to overlook when I came into this.
I won't get into any specifics about the Railgun shows here, and I won't give any actual spoilers for this show either, but I will use Railgun as a broad comparison in terms of this show's general flaws.
PACING PROBLEMS
If I want to be fair, we can say that this (along with the first installment of Railgun) is some of the author's early work, and they are still clearly finding their feet. You should watch it with that in mind, knowing that this series will get significantly better over time.
- The problem with the first Railgun installment was that more than half of it was pointless filler, and significantly more than half of that pointless filler was bad pervert jokes, with a few good action-packed arcs mixed in (S and T focus almost exclusively on the best bits of the first installment and thankfully fix all of the problems with it).
- By contrast, A Certain Magical Index has the opposite problem, with it being overloaded with too many payoffs with not enough setup, as we are thrown from one setpiece story idea to another, with very little connective tissue between them other than our protagonist, Touma, doing his standard shounen protagonist things.
The rushed pacing and disjointed nature of the show will cause issues for a first time watcher, although in a way it is probably more palatable than the first few episodes of Railgun to a casual viewer simply because so much stuff is happening, even if most of it doesn't really matter (whereas in the first Railgun, a lot of it does actually end up mattering, with Chekov's guns being sowed around everywhere waiting to go off, but the pacing is initially really slow, likely in part due to the author overcompensating for how rushed Magical Index was).
CHARACTER PROBLEMS
Another problem for this show is the characters.
- One of the strengths of Railgun was its characters, which is not something you would believe from the first five or so episodes of the first installment. But, while the entire supporting cast are at first very tropey and exist mostly to make bad pervert jokes, this changes over time and we get a lot more development and nuance in their performances that leads to them becoming very well-realised and enjoyable. You will learn to love them.
- Unfortunately, because Magical Index was a rough first attempt, it's basically a reverse-flanderisation of all of the characters that you enjoyed from Railgun. All of them are significantly less likeable, lacking most of their nuance and feeling far more generic in their personality. Misaka Mikoto in particular suffers greatly from this, which isn't helped by the fact that she resets to generic tsundere mode whenever she talks to the main character, and that's all she ever does in this show, so we never actually get to see her being a proper character. Our main boy Touma also loses a lot of his charm, having a much more generic shounen protagonist feel, where thanks to his inner monologue we come to understand that he is in fact much more of an asshole than he came across as when we didn't have that.
And what about the title character of the show herself, Index? She is nothing more than a fleeting cameo in Railgun, after all, so surely this is her time to shine! Well... Disappointingly, she might as well not be in it, even though the show alleges her to be the key to everything. To call her a McGuffin is to massively overstate her importance. She exists to be ineffectual, to be hungry, and to occasionally get angry at Touma and bite him as a "joke". Yes, this author has a problem with understanding that his "humour" is just built differently from everyone else's. Some people like the fact that Index isn't in it very much, because they find her annoying, but that goes to demonstrate just how inferior this show is to Railgun, which has actual deep and likeable characters in it.
THEME AND WORLDBUILDING PROBLEMS
There isn't enough of a difference between the magical aspects of the show and the scientific aspects, which is unfortunate, as the biggest promise of the show is how Touma and Index will shape the outcome of a cold war between mages and scientists, with him being the Scientist Romeo to her Mage Juliet. Runes are the primary differentiating factor, along with ritual locations, which at least does provide a certain amount of potential for interactivity in fights, but it still all ends up feeling very formulaic and sciencey in presentation, with Index herself talking like a robot when possessed by a spell.
For this first outing of this particular show, almost all of the episodes involving magic are underwhelming compared to the science ones, which is why the author takes so naturally to doing Railgun in the future, it just suits the way they like to structure things better. While there are the seeds of a lot of excellent worldbuilding regarding Academy City itself, the mages are far less fleshed out at this stage, when it really feels (given the title) that they should be taking centre stage. Hopefully it gets better in later installments, but for this one, it was pretty underwhelming.
HIGHLIGHTS
The highlights include everything to do with Accelerator, although the first arc that involves him was much better realised when it was remade in Railgun S. Otherwise, the show does have a lot of good standalone ideas that, had they been given a bit more room to breathe, a bit more refinement and polish, as well as some improved interconnectivity (as in the later Railgun shows), it could have been something really good. Unfortunately, it falls significantly short of that initial promise.
ANIMATION
The animation quality is serviceable and nothing to complain about, but it is little more than a pale imitation when compared to the jaw-dropping polish and expert direction of Railgun. I assume this will improve significantly in later Index entries.
SOUNDTRACK
The soundtrack is also solid, with the first OP being one of the best (if not the best) in the wider franchise.
LAST WORD
I'm gonna keep watching because I'm invested in Railgun. It should get better, as the author really gets into their stride in other shows, and even here, they flirt with moments that are conceptually brilliant, even if the execution is lacking.
Hope this helped.
