English Dub Review: A Certain Magical Index “List of Prohibited Books (Index)”

Starring Index as “A-Certain-Magical-Index-Not-Appearing-In-This-Episode”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Accelerator, a fading Kazakiri, and an injured Misaka Worst put their brains together on how to retrieve a “song” that could help cure Last Order’s condition. While that’s happening, Hamazura seemingly finds Takitsubo in the snow, only to find out it’s really a vengeful Mugino. She then pops some ability crystals and goes on a rampage with her melting lasers…for a little over a minute and a half before collapsing. I’m beginning to think those crystals just aren’t good for anything. But in her weakened state, Hamazura decides to call a truce and try to get her to remember the good ol’ days of their time in ITEM, despite the fact that the only time we saw them in that group together, they never really seemed to get along. Just in time for them to face an incoming Academy City plane.

After another brief check-in with the ongoing battle between Stiyl and a mind-controlled Index (okay, she appeared PHYSICALLY in the episode), we head back to the Star of Bethlehem. Sasha comes across Lessar, who is once again inexplicably there to explain that the island has escape pods that will probably come into play later. Toma continues to face Fiamma, whose plan of realigning the four elements has apparently worked, with the only step remaining being taking Toma’s Imagine Breaker. Fiamma’s own Holy Right can change its power to match whatever it faces, including an Academy City orbital satellite that tries to strike him. That leaves an issue of facing Toma, whose ability is only to cancel out moves without any power of his own, which is where the access to Index’s spells comes in.

But Fiamma then makes the common villain mistake of announcing his plans to the hero in the middle of their fight, explaining that he just needs to show a big enough force to get people to obey his laws about not messing with the order of things anymore. Toma retorts with that this is a pretty short-sighted plan, to which Fiamma responds by finally cutting off his right arm and absorbing it into his. Only things don’t quite work and…SOMETHING gets it back to Toma. But with that, Toma realizes the main flaw in Fiamma’s plan: he doesn’t believe he has the power to save the world.

Also, Misaka and Misaka look for a way to fly up to the island.

OUR TAKE

We are racing to the end of the season from here on and already some of the parts are starting to come off. While I’m already way too invested in everything to really dislike much of what’s going on, I can’t help but notice that we’ve suddenly returned to this season’s habit of cramming way too much stuff in at the expense of pacing. I get that we’ve still got a lot to wrap up here, given that this is the culmination of several subplots, but a lot of the choices here end up feeling like they’re raising MORE questions than settling the ones they had.

For one, Hamazura trying to resolve things with Mugino feels pretty undercooked for a few reasons. Whether it was because of how the anime handled the Battle Royale arc poorly or not, I never got a sense that Hamazura was ever really much more than an errand boy for the rest of ITEM, who themselves didn’t seem like much of a team considering how they fell apart so quickly. You could point to how they were handled in the Railgun spin-off, which would be a better example of them acting as a unit, but Hamazura sure wasn’t there then, so this resolution between him and Mugino ends up falling flat for me. We’ve seen her try to kill both him and Takitsubo multiple times now with very little in the way of sympathetic qualities, so I’d have just put one between the eyes and call it a day based on that, but I guess that’s not where we’re going with this. Again, could be better in the novel, but I’m not reviewing that.

Then we have the constant check-ins with Stiyl facing Index which don’t seem to get much progression aside from “now the building is on fire”. Given that he’s supposed to have a history with her prior to the show starting (even if it’s one she apparently doesn’t remember), this seems like a good opportunity to go more into that, especially as a good bookend for how this story started with him and Kanzaki trying to save her in the first place, but…nothing. And then there’s Misaka’s little contributions that are so brief that I can’t quite bring myself to get invested in, despite me being a fan of her character.

But lastly, there’s Toma and Fiamma, who are stepping into the final stages of their world-changing battle, and things are slowly but surely stepping into pretty standard moments of speechifying for that. Fiamma says that he needs to impose his will on the world to get it to work right because humanity can’t handle it on their own, so Toma says that people are fine and it’s actually stupid to try to enforce your will on others like that. Though what bugs me the most is the seeming payoff to all the planning by Fiamma and the Right Seat people trying to get Toma’s arm…which is immediately undone with little explanation. I get the feeling that this should feel like Cell absorbing Android 18 in DBZ or Thanos getting the Mind Stone in Infinity War, but we aren’t given a chance to really absorb the dread before it’s undone. At least give the red-haired bastard a chance to try out the damn arm! Or maybe actually explain what the hell is in it that would allow Toma to get it back so quickly? Please?

While most of the build up of this arc has worked for me for the most part, I’m starting to get really worried that we’re about to burn up upon re-entry, but maybe the final two episodes will stick the landing well enough.