A Certain Scientific Railgun | Nefarious Reviews

Japanese Title: Toaru Majutsu no Index

Related: A Certain Scientific Railgun (spin-off – included in review)

Similar: Strike the Blood

Guilty Crown

Shakugan no Shana

Watched in: Japanese & English

Genre: Supernatural Action Science Fiction

Length: 48 episodes (Index – 2 seasons), 48 episodes (Railgun – 2 seasons), 4 OVA, 1 movie

Positives:

Nothing.

Negatives:

Won’t shut up about character names.
Talks more about abilities rather than using them.
Insufferable characters.
Moronic through and through.
Almost all dialogue is useless.

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So close. So close! We were this close to peak stupidity. We have idiotic characters, some of anime’s tropes at their worst, and fantasy mechanics so lazy that you could shuffle a fantasy/sci-fi deck and pick at random to create something better.

A Certain Magical Index is set in Academy City, a place where magic meets science and most citizens have a supernatural power. Kamijou is unique among the populace, for his ability cancels out the abilities of others. He doesn’t need it though since he keeps his nose out of trouble. This easy life changes when a nun girl called Index Librorum Prohibitorum containing over 100,000 magical texts in her brain comes under his protection. A powerful organisation of psychics would love to crack that skull of hers and see what knowledge comes tumbling out.

The first issue the author should have nixed in the planning phase was Kamijou’s tension nullifying ability – sorry, I meant his ability to nullify others. The most powerful enemies throw everything they have at him and he flicks them away as if it’s nothing. What’s the point? Nullifying characters aren’t new and have worked in other fiction. Usually, the character has to hold onto the enemy to nullify their power, thus limiting the range and giving a counter (throw him off), or the nullification puts them on even footing but the character still has to win a standard sword fight (a.k.a. No Items, Fox Only, Final Destination). For Kamijou, it’s a free win. So again I ask, what’s the point?

Needless to say, the action sucks.

Then we come to the characters, each of which are insufferable from the first meeting. Where to start? The eight-year-old girl we’re supposed to believe is a 30-year-old teacher? The 25-year-old guy we’re supposed to believe is 14? The character who thinks being able to tell the time without a clock is the coolest skill ever? Or each character’s obsession with secret names? Every fight, half the dialogue is about their stupid names, as if anyone would care. If it revealed some secret identity or twist that changed the flow of battle, sure, but it doesn’t.

What I said about the 8-year-old looking teacher and the middle-aged teen is serious, by the way. Index takes anime tropes and cranks them up to the max unironically. It’s possible the author was trying to be ironic, but I suspect he just copied from all other supernatural high school anime like a hack. Wouldn’t it be cool if allies fought each other for no discernible reason?

Oh yeah, I haven’t talked about Kamijou himself. There’s nothing to say. He’s the generic “nice guy” protagonist of this genre. Meanwhile, Index is a typical moe genki girl that should have taken a shotgun to the jaw in episode 1.

The worst aspect of Index has to be the dialogue, which is almost entirely exposition to explain the awful mechanics and lore of this world. We aren’t watching a story. We are hearing the author read aloud his world-building diary (a bad world build at that) instead.

There is so much useless dialogue. It doesn’t get any worse than when it introduces the Misaka clones that talk in the third person with dialogue tags. Not only is it overused, but also makes no sense. And just when you think the clones are finally gone, one returns as a naked loli – still narrating in the third person – with the added twist of saying her name twice each line. Yay! (If ISIS ever takes me, all they need to break me is her dialogue on repeat.) And she has clones!

The audience has no reason to care about anything. Characters talk and talk instead of having personalities and development. They even talk about their abilities more than they use them! Not that it really matters. The abilities are unimaginative and as mentioned previously, don’t affect the protagonist.

Yet with all that said, this isn’t as bad as it could be. The abilities look alright and I’ve seen worse animation. The pacing is fine as well. I wish they had put more effort into making A Certain Magical Index so bad it’s good. It’s just bad.

In the end, I only have one question. How in hell did this garbage get multiple seasons and spin-offs?