English Dub Review: A Certain Magical Index “Document of C”

You won’t be C-ing this on VRV after today!

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Toma and Itsuwa face Terra of the Left, member of the Right Seat of God. Neither of them can get one hit in with his “Precedence” ability, but notice that his weapon of choice is the flour covering his jacket. Terra explains that his power comes from the idea of someone as holy as Jesus (who they refer to as “the Son of God”) could be killed by mere humans, and yet he was. Therefore, there had to have been holy precedence for the death over his being holy, therefore flour, is the flesh of God in Catholic blessings, can be used as a weapon that can have precedence over other objects! Makes perfect sense!

Tsuchimikado shows up to save them, though he’s injured by his use of magic (long story). If that wasn’t bad enough, Academy City mech suits begin invading the city under the pretense of looking for a WMD. Terra flees in the confusion, so Toma and Itsuwa head to the place to find the Document. Toma calls Misaka and finds out the events in France are all over the news, but drops the phone when Terra attacks them, Document in hand. They fight again, though Terra mentions that Toma’s Imagine Breaker should be capable of more than he’s using it for, correctly guessing that he’s lost his memories. Toma figures out Terra’s weakness: it won’t work on more than one target. With this knowledge and a big heroic declaration, Toma lands two of his patented punches square in Terra’s jaw but accidentally destroys the Document.

But before Terra can explain more about the Imagine Breaker, the palace is bombarded with fire from Academy City forces, Accelerator among them. Though Styil’s prisoners seem to know how it connects to the Right Seat of God’s plans to become more than angels. Terra flees and meets up with Acqua of the Back (Rear?), and reports of the failure, but is happy about the news that the Russian Orthodox Church will be joining with them in battle. However, Acqua is aware Terra used innocent children and tourists in his schemes with the Document. And if there’s one thing Catholics won’t stand for, it’s holy men messing with kids, so he kills Terra with a giant pillar. Now, Acqua will get involved himself.

Back in Japan, Misaka reflects on overhearing through the phone about Toma’s amnesia.

OUR TAKE

It’s hard to tell because of the long gap between seasons, but these Right Seat guys really seem to be dropping like flies. As I mentioned last week, the arc before this had Vento of the Front getting beat by Toma on a similar level of difficulty, although he did have a lot of help at the time. Terra (who I’ve been informed had his English voice changed to Garret Schenck, who played Gowasu in Dragon Ball Super) seemed to go down just as easily, if not more so, and he didn’t even get a forced tragic back-story to make him seem distinct. In the end, he just turned out to be a glorified sharp-toothed mook who would probably be better suited for a lethal bake off than fighting, so I can’t say I’ll miss him now that he’s gone. At least fighting him meant we got to see more of Itsuwa (who I was also told is actually voiced by Amanda Lee).

Though the other big plot point drop is the reintroduction of Toma’s memory loss as something important, which I’m thankful to see. Losing his memory was a big part of the first arc’s climax, but after that, it seemed to fade more into the background as something that was inconvenient but mostly inconsequential for him. Sure, he’d lost accounts of times before the story began, but we’d never seen them either, so it didn’t factor in much. Now, there seems to be a bigger power to his right hand the Right Seat might want, so we may get to find out just what the old Toma was up to. Gonna be awkward to explain to Index, though.

But yeah, that’s one arc and one book adaptation down, and at least five more of each to go! For all its faults, it did its job of reminding old fans of all the things about this series that they’ve been waiting to see more of in the past few years…in a broad sense. We still haven’t really seen much of Academy City yet this season (though the preview seems to indicate that will change next week), not a ton from tritagonist Misaka and almost nothing of title character Index! Basically what I’m saying is that this first arc isn’t a great reintroduction to the story, but it’s a hurdle we were going to have to jump over eventually since it was next in line to be animated. Next time, we take a walk on the Dark Side.