English Dub Review: A Certain Magical Index “DRAGON”

Dragon punch!

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

As Etzali fights off more members of his old group, Accelerator fights and talks morality with Sugitani before defeating him as well. With that out of the way, GROUP confronts Shiokishi about DRAGON, which he says they can find…right behind them. Everyone except for Accelerator falls unconscious as he faces DRAGON’s true identity: a radiant, floating being that calls itself an angel and goes by the name “Aiwass”. Seems he’s here to talk to Accelerator about possible ways to mess with Aleister Crowley’s grand plans, which are apparently already coming apart but will also cost Last Order her life. When hearing this naturally sends Accelerator into a rage, Aiwass’ body reacts by stabbing him through the chest with special wings even the “angel” didn’t know were there. Since Accelerator can’t lay on it, its plan of dying to interfere with Aleister will have to wait.

Kinuhata wraps up her fight with Stephanie Gorgeouspalace (in a way I didn’t catch upon watching this episode the first or second times), but finds out she’s not the one behind the helicopter attack. Turns out that was the new team made up of old members of former Dark Side teams, who arrive on the scene to retrieve Hamazura of all people, apparently because him surviving his fight with Mugino turned him into a wild card in Aleister grand plans for Academy City. He and Takitsubo are chased into a tunnel and get cornered by men following them only to be saved by…Mugino! Who still wants to kill Hamazura, so not much better. She (and Kakine) have apparently been kept alive and experimented on by the governing board into the monstrosity she now is. So, Hamazura ends up taking her to an area full of giant tubes that shoot fire but he is protected from by a sealed cockpit in the middle of the room, which supposedly fries her…but then apparently don’t, as she survives. I am certain there is an explanation for this in the novel, but the way it’s handled here is just plain bonkers.

But anyway, Accelerator cuts ties with GROUP and takes Last Order to Russia for help at Aiwass’ suggestion, specifically the “Elizalina Alliance of Independent Nations”. Hamazura and Takitsubo steal a jet to parts unknown and become Facebook Official. Aiwass discusses the future with Aleister. And Toma walks through a snowy field, presumably in Russia, looking for Index.

OUR TAKE

I’d say this was a disappointing sequel to the first GROUP arc, but that would imply that arc set me up to expect anything good. It’s almost like this was “Men in Black 2”, almost solely made up of callbacks and references, but if it were the sequel to a previous “Men in Black 2”. What I mean by this is that it basically felt like it was hitting a lot of same beats as the last arc, even essentially repeating the same climaxes, without feeling like much more than a callback to those precious moments. Etzali fights members of his organization…again! Hamazura and Takitsubo face a crazed Mugino…again! Accelerator faces another major component in Aleister’s plans…again! And so on.

And I wouldn’t mind it being a follow-up to that story if it had added enough of worth, but just like then, it’s too filled to the brim with plots and characters that it comes apart at the seams. New enemies that seem like important figures swoop in and out of the story with barely a chance to understand why they were here or what they were doing things (looking at you, Gorgeouspalace and Sugitani). What seems to have been a plot about a covert team working for a shady government slowly uncovering a dark secret (GROUP) alongside a plot about three former agents trying to recover and find a new life (the ITEM reunion) turns into a slow, plodding, and sometimes incomprehensible mess.

What’s worse is that I like the idea of the GROUP plot as a concept, being about a group of “bad” people with good intentions working for a group of “good” people with bad intentions to make up for past crimes (at least for everyone aside from Tsuchimikado), but learning that while they’re following the law, they might not be doing the right thing, and maybe that’s what they were going for, but it is handled SO poorly. Tsuchimikado and Musujime don’t even seem to get much of anything to do this time and Etzali’s fight seems tacked on, then we get to the ending and no one aside from Accelerator gets a wrap-up…not that we’re given much reason to care, assuming we can parse together what the hell was going on with how frenetically paced this whole thing is.

The biggest revelation would probably be the introduction of Aiwass, which is appropriate since this is what everything in the GROUP plot was building towards; finding the identity of DRAGON. And to the story’s credit, this encounter did feel like it had the most going on, emotionally and plotting-wise. Things discussed directly link to so many other deep cuts across the story thus far that it really does start to feel like everything’s linked together and part of a bigger plan. And he’s so otherworldly and surreal and has mysterious plans of its own that he tries to use Accelerator for, but then is surprised to find he’s still being controlled by Aleister, which both underscores Aiwass’ unfathomable potential as a threat AND Aleister’s for how that control is done. I guess if you have to pick one thing about this to be handled well enough, the title character of the arc is a good pick.

But that alone is not even remotely enough to make up for how much of chaotic clutter these past three episodes have been. I feel like I need a support group just to get over GROUP. Thankfully, it seems like we’ve seen the last of them, as we enter the beginning of the end next time for the start of World War 3.