I like the premise: normal guy with a Story Breaker Power versus a World of Badass. I like how Toma ends up immune to reality warping, but still has his weaknesses.
But the series really loses traction when people like Accelerator and Izzard can't kill him, while people like Kanzaki can. Kanzaki can because she's fast. Izzard and Accelerator have abilities that can negate Anti-Magic by simply using projectiles... yet, Accelerator is beaten because for some reason, Toma, an untrained street fighter, can pound a guy who can fling trains and cause whirlwinds with a thought. Izzard loses because... well, he doesn't believe in himself. Rather than "make Toma forget everything" or "reverse time so that Toma was never born", Toma scares Izzards into submission.
The entire point of the series seems to be, "Just because you don't have power doesn't make you unimportant". The subtext of this is, "Because you don't have power, that makes you smarter than everybody else". Toma is a natural street fighter, despite having no visible training, gets away on luck, despite constant proclamation of "bad luck", and for some reason, none of his enemies realize his Anti-Magic or think, Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?. In this setting, it should be easy to obtain a regular firearm or a knife, which Toma can't block with his Anti-Magic/Esper ability... but nobody he ever faces will ever be that observative.
Index is a little girl who gets away with abusing the main protagonist because Extreme Doormat is a common trait of the standard manga protagonist. Her only purpose in the anime is to be Toma's Morality Pet and to complain about everything he does. She gets one fight scene where we finally see why she's not totally harmless. This character could've been played as a realistic, teenage girl who unashamedly induces stress into Toma's life by squatting at his house - but instead, she eats his food, chews him out for being an Accidental Pervert, and attracts attention for fans interested in Loli fanservice.
Also, dang it, the anime is called "A Certain Magical Index", but how much of the plot has anything to do with Index?
Misaka, while showing early signs of Tsundere-ness, is at least competent and skilled, and isn't simply a constant annoyance to Toma. And if you ignore her spin-off franchise, she isn't there for fanservice either.
The setting is great. The characters are not.
Another thing to harp on briefly: the constant allusions to religious and scientific principles, factions, and concepts is about as significant as it is in Hellsing Ultimate. Which is to say, name-dropping the Vatican for your story about super vampires killing other super vampires working for super-Nazis makes the Vatican a rather insignificant, insignificant among several other Acceptable Targets.
-
I can see the plot, themes, and sheer over-the-topness of this series appealing to teenagers with heavy atheist beliefs, or to those who strongly believe a main character must be inferior to their foes in order to make their struggle worthwhile. The main character has a power that outright defies any ability considered holy, and it is the main character's pure stagnancy, his pure "humanity", that defeats his genetically or holistically superior opponents, who rely on the same tired, consummate tactics.
Akira Toriyama (April 5 1955 - March 1, 2024).Leave a Comment:
My Favorite Series
To Aru Majutsu No Index is flat out my favorite series for a few reasons. The setting is very unique; it's an Urban Fantasy that take place in a Twenty Minutes Into The Future world (far enough that it's stated there have been 3 Hispanic presidents of the United States) that takes place mostly (at first) in a city called Academy City that's 30 years more technologically advanced than the rest of the world.
In this world there are two ways to gain supernatural powers. The first is to become an esper by going through the Power Curricular Program in Academy City which gives you a single power level 0-5, where a level 0 has so little power it's not even visible to the naked eye and the seven level 5's have the power to destroy entire city blocks. The second is through magic where you turn your soul into mana, and use magic based off of stories and legends which can break the laws of physics and get really really powerful. It's impossible for a person to be both a magician and an esper at the same time or else the hybrid will self destruct.
The main character of the series is Kamijou Touma, who wields the Imagine Breaker in his right hand, despite being labeled as a level 0 by Academy City. His power can negate both kinds of supernatural powers, at the cost of negating his own good luck. He gets drawn into the secret world of magic after a nun named Index lands on his balcony, who claims to have 103,000 grimoires memorized and that she is being chased by hostile magicians.
From there the story expands all over the world showing the various factions of the world of magic, and the darkness buried deep in Academy City.
Eventually two new protagonists are introduced; Accelerator Academy City's strongest esper who is seeking redemption after murdering more than 10,000 clones in an experiment, and Hamazura Shiage an actual level 0 trying to survive in a world where people can destroy entire armies by themselves.
The series spans a light novel series currently 26 volumes long, two anime seasons, and a spin off manga based around Misaka Mikoto, which got it's own spin off anime.