Review for A Certain Magical Index Complete Season 2 Collection

Introduction

Eighteen months. That’s all I needed. Eighteen months either way. Animatsu released the respective first seasons of the Raildex franchise two years ago, A Certain Magical Index and A Certain Scientific Railgun, two of the most popular light novel adaptations in anime. If the season 2 releases had happened eighteen months ago, the stories and the characters would have still been fresh in my mind to appreciate. Had the releases happened eighteen months from now, I would most likely have got around to re-watching the first series again. But the second season releases are here now, when my mind is a total void when it comes to these shows. As I turn my attention to A Certain Magical Index II, I really do have no idea what’s going on. Hopefully it won’t take me that long to re-familiarise myself with the story and the characters. Thankfully, the Certain Magical Index movie is only a month behind the second series.


Academy City is one of those sprawling metropolises that we often see in anime, devoted solely to education. Its remit is to educate, and develop science to the point that it manifests esper abilities in students. So it is that when Toma Kamijo interferes with a couple of yobs hitting on a cute girl in a cafe, he’s not coming to the defence of the girl. It’s the yobs that need protecting from Misaka Mikoto’s Railgun ability. So naturally she comes after Toma for spoiling her fun. Toma might not have any special abilities in the conventional sense, but he does have the ability to negate other people’s powers and abilities with his right hand, which is why he survives long enough to get back to his apartment.


And that’s where he finds a young nun hanging off his apartment balcony. She’s confused, she’s hungry, and she’s on the run. Her name, Index is apt given that she’s a walking repository of 103,000 magical tomes and grimoires, and there are a whole lot of sorcerers and magicians hunting her down for that arcane knowledge. But there’s no such thing as magic, at least that’s what Toma believes, brought up and educated to believe in science alone. But it turns out that his right hand can dispel magic too, when it dispels the magical vestments that this Sister is wearing. When magic and science collide, the world’s about to get a whole lot more interesting!

The story continues in Season 2, A Certain Magical Index II with 24 episodes split across 4 discs, this time on the Manga Entertainment label.


Disc 1
1. The Last Day (August 31st)
2. The Book of the Law
3. The Amakusa Church
4. Sheol Fear (Voice of the Magicbane)
5. Lotus Wand
6. Remnant (Wreckage)
7. Move Point (Coordinate Relocation)
8. The Daihasei Festival

Disc 2
9. Route Disturb (Pursuit Inhibited)
10. Shorthand (Stenographic Sourcebook)
11. Stab Sword
12. Belvedere (The Observatory)


Disc 3
13. Croce di Pietro
14. City of Water
15. Queen’s Fleet
16. Rosary of the Appointed Time
17. Penalty Game
18. Serial Number (Specimen Number)
19. The Researcher (Amata Kihara)
20. Hound Dog (Hound Squad)

Disc 4
21. Testament (Learning Device)
22. The Divine Retribution Spell
23. Prewar
24. Skill Out (Armed Gang)

Picture

A Certain Magical Index gets a 1.78:1 widescreen transfer at 1080p resolution. The image is clear, colourful, and comes across without any signs of compression or noise, bar the typical digital banding that I’ve come to expect on most HD anime. It’s not present to a degree that engenders complaint though. The futuristic design of Academy City certainly comes across well, while the character designs are appealing and imaginative. The animation is fluid, and the energy and dynamism of the action sequences speaks of a high quality and high budget animation production. That said, A Certain Magical Index looks like one of those shows that were animated at somewhere less than full HD, and I never felt that the show was making full use of the Blu-ray format. There’s certainly not the detail and clarity that I’ve come to expect from current HD anime, and I would guess that there’s been some degree of scaling up involved here.

The images in this review have been supplied by the PR and aren’t necessarily representative of the final retail release.

Sound

You have the usual Funimation options of Dolby TrueHD 5.1 Surround English and 2.0 Stereo Japanese, with translated subtitles and signs locked to the appropriate tracks. I enjoyed the Japanese audio as usual, with voice actors suited well to their characters, the dialogue clear, and the action represented well. The subtitles are timed accurately, and aside from one spelling mistake, are clear of typos. I gave the dub a try and found an enthusiastic and quite listenable dub from Funimation. The show gets some nice theme tunes, and the incidental music works well with the comedy and drama.

Extras

These look like the Funimation discs, with the logos replaced and the trailers also stripped back.

The discs present their contents with animated menus.

Disc 1 offers audio commentaries, with Monica Rial (Index) and Rob McCullom (Stiyl) on episode 2, Alison Viktorin (Kuroko), and Bryn Apprill (Musajime) on episode 7.


Disc 2 has the textless credits.

Disc 3 has an audio commentary on episode 14 with Micah Solusod (Toma), and Mallorie Rodak (Orsola).

Disc 4 has an audio commentary on episode 22 from Marcus D. Stimac (Kihara), and Austin Tindle (Accelerator).

You’ll also find two textless openings, two textless closings, and the U.S. Trailer.

Conclusion

A Certain Magical Index has just one thing going for it, the quality of the writing. That was true for the first season, and it’s just as true for this second. Once you start watching it’s hard to stop, the anime equivalent of Pringles. There’s something compelling about the way its story unfolds, the need to watch one episode more, the compulsion to uncover its secrets, get to all of the reveals, see the action sequences play out, root for the good guys, boo and hiss at the villains, and relish the antiheroes. It delivers in terms of fan service, it has some entertaining comedy, and it has a rich abundance of characters. That’s almost enough to distract you from just how vapid and unrewarding those characters are, distract you from just how weak and unsatisfying the story is, no matter how well it is told, distract you from the sense that A Certain Magical Index falls into the same trap as most other light novel adaptations, in that it says a lot, but when it comes down to it, it saves all of its meaningful information for that never to be published final volume in the series, and that you’re always left with more questions than answers. It’s almost enough...


By far for me the biggest problem with the show is the protagonist, Toma Kamijo, who early on the first season lost his memory, which made not the slightest difference to his character. He’s a meddler, someone who gets involved in dangerous situations for no particular reason that makes sense. He’s a hero, apparently through choice. His ability to dispel magic, to cancel out esper powers with his right hand is the only weapon that he needs, which despite some creative animation, and even more creative writing, boils down to him sticking his hand out. And when it comes to fighting, it’s his right hand again which does the talking in the form of a fist to the face. Given that most of his foes in this collection are villainous women and girls, and the animators take great pain in showing his fist’s impacts in face crushing and twisting, slow motion, it makes Toma seem like a misogynist toe-rag for the most part, or worse, if he’s a wish fulfilment character, it makes the writer seem like a misogynist toe-rag. When your main character is as unlikeable as this, it becomes hard to recommend a show.


Then there is Index, a walking repository of countless magical grimoires, but who fulfils the cute, quirky girl quotient, apt to glom onto Toma at the drop of a hat, either that or bite his head. She’s little more than a mascot character who plays surprisingly little part in this collection of episodes, certainly less prominent than she was in the first season. There are a couple of characters that redeem the show however, even if they are supporting roles. Once again it’s Misaka Mikoto who steals whatever scene or story she is in, and given that we have multiple iterations of her, beginning with the original, tsundere who inexplicably falls for Toma, but who has enough character to light up any scene. This time around, Kuroko and Uiharu have slightly expanded roles as well. Then there are the deadpan Misaka clones, and Last Order, the child Misaka (Misaka) clone. The latter hangs out with one of the season 1 villains, Accelerator who is the other standout character in this collection. He’s on a journey of redemption of a sort, still obnoxious and with a bad attitude, but it’s his refusal to admit his affection for Last Order that makes him a more endearing character.


The first season was a mix of stories, alternating science and magic, or in Magical Index’ vernacular, espers and religion. The second season focuses more on the religion side of things, with the Roman Orthodox Church a constant thorn in Toma’s side, while their foes, the English Puritan Church are somewhat abrasive allies. What that boils down to is a whole lot of psychopathic nuns get punched in the face by our hero.


One problem is that you really need to find the time to re-watch the first season before embarking on the second. It has been so long that I had no idea who half of the characters were, even if they had significant roles in the first season. So when it came to the end of the show, with Toma fighting to save Kazakiri, I just wasn’t invested in it as I should have been. The second thing is that while Season 1 ended at a good point in the story, a decent and satisfying conclusion, Season 2 on the other hand spends its runtime building up the antagonism between the various groups, particularly Academy City and the Roman Orthodox Church. The penultimate episode title is an indication of the direction of travel, and it’s all heading for some sort of apocalyptic showdown. Only it doesn’t happen in this series. The final episode is something of a standalone featuring Accelerator again, but the series as a whole leaves us hanging. It will become clear next month if the forthcoming feature film release will address that, although I doubt it. As for whether a third series of Magical Index will be made, your guess is as good as mine at this point.


Not that I can get behind the idea of more Certain Magical Index. It’s the kind of show that really infuriates me. It has astounding, brilliant, stellar storytelling, but the stories it tells are weak, and the characters are mostly obnoxious. It’s the weirdest kind of marmite in that I both love and hate it at the same time.