English Dub Review: A Certain Magical Index “Dark Matter”

And it’s so easy when you’re evil…

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Last Order, the 20,001st clone of Mikoto Misaka (long story), flees from a boring cab driver who forgot to lock his doors. She is found by Uiharu, a close friend of Misaka who somehow does not notice their strong resemblance.

Back in the main plot, Accelerator runs into another agent of a rival organization, but he isn’t from BLOCK or SCHOOL or ITEM, but MEMBER. Members of…MEMBER also confront Kakine, seemingly cornering the two strongest Espers in Academy City. That is, until you realize how dumb that sounds and both MEMBER members are defeated before they become DISmembered.

Meanwhile, Unabara continues following BLOCK in their plans to take over the city’s main surveillance satellite, though once he learns what he needs, he blows their cover and discards his disguise before several unmanned attack helicopters come in and knock BLOCK’s block off. They’re now down to 100 men, with one being captured and interrogated by GROUP. Turns out their next target is a juvenile hall full of Musujime’s friends, and are planning to hold them hostage in order to get her help teleporting into the “Building Without Windows”, where the head of Academy City resides. What they didn’t count (on top of everything else) on was her being part of GROUP.

GROUP arrives at the hall, which is using tech to make Esper abilities unstable, only to find it blocked off with BLOCK’s dead bodies. They’ve all seemingly killed themselves, though it’s really been done by magic (what, it’s some kinda…Suicide Spell?) The actual culprit is another MEMBER member who has to clarify they’re from MEMBER because who’s going to ‘member a group like MEMBER? THIS member of MEMBER is Xochitl, another Aztec magic user who has come specifically to fight and retrieve Unabara, AKA Etzali. She’s also made use of a forbidden Grimoire for extra power, which shows why it was forbidden when it starts literally unraveling her.

Inside, Musujime stops BLOCK from harming her friends, thanks in part to some internal conflict in BLOCK. We also learn why at least one of their members is fighting against Aleister Crowley, though mainly for vague reasons of wanting to know more about unexplained tragedies.

Elsewhere, Kakine beats up Frenda, a member of ITEM, for information on her team’s whereabouts, which she quickly gives up.

OUR TAKE

Something I forgot to mention last week was how GROUP’s roster is actually pretty well constructed for a team like theirs that’s meant to go on special missions. Tsuchimikado is the plan guy who coordinates the rest of the team and keeps a level head, Unabara is a master of disguise and stealth while also having some unique abilities up his sleeve through his magic, Musujime can easily transport people and things to the team so they can move around quickly, and Accelerator (despite technically being crippled) acts as the group’s muscle with his abilities. As our ostensible protagonists for this arc, it makes sense they are the most balanced of the teams and are our viewpoints for how the situation changes rapidly, which forces them to improvise.

This is also why they get some of the more noticeable moments of development, especially in this episode. Unabara and Musujime, who were initially one-note villains from earlier arcs like Accelerator, each get blasts from their pasts to flesh them out and make their relevance as characters more apparent. We don’t learn a WHOLE lot other than Unabara left his organization after losing to Toma (and seems to be glad he did it) and Musujime has friends in an internment center who she is protecting by having the job she has now, but it’s appreciated. Tsuchimikado’s whole thing is a mystery, so I guess I can roll with him not getting any development, and it looks like Accelerator will get his turn for the arc’s climax next week, so I can wait for that.

But the more cramped aspects of the last episode regarding the five-team pile up rear their ugly heads again, though the blame is mostly on MEMBER’s involvement. Of the three times people from MEMBER have shown up to fight someone else, it’s been with them needing to state they’re not with any of the other three groups, meaning that either MEMBER must be so insignificant that no one cares about them, or even the story is admitting they added too many groups and can’t keep track of them all. I know fans like their faithfulness to the source material in their adaptations, but for the sake of time, I think MEMBER should have been cut out entirely. The only member of note is Xochitl, who could’ve easily been folded into SCHOOL or BLOCK as a member who just went rogue when she spotted Unabara, her true objective.

Though at least this means that BLOCK and MEMBER are out of the running, and we can get down the final showdown between GROUP and SCHOOL…and ITEM, who has really not been adding much of anything. But even that can’t stop the hype of Accelerator going up against Kakine for the ultimate fight 1v2. At least I hope.