English Dub Review: A Certain Magical Index “The Alliance of Independent Nations”

In Soviet Russia, this joke isn’t dead yet!

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Fiamma of the Right continues his plans against Academy City, going as far as colluding with the Russian president (and he didn’t even need to be blackmailed with a pee-pee tape!). The narrative is that Academy City’s unusual technology will lead to the eventual destruction of the planet, so unless they stop being so…academic, Not-Putin will proceed will get all “Red Dawn” on their butts.

Toma begins his search in Russia for Index and Fiamma…with some unexpected assistance. Seems Lessar of the True Light group has tagged along. Why did she do this? How did she find out he was going? All very good questions that are answered solely with her aggressively trying to seduce Toma and him not being the least bit interested.

Meanwhile, Kanzaki and Necessarius take to the seas, but meet résistance from incoming French forces trying to take advantage of Britain by freezing their ships in place. Luckily, the group is saved by the timely arrival of Second Princess Carissa, following the series’ long standing tradition that, if you’re a villain from a previous arc that’s a cute girl and got punched in the face by Toma, you get to come back later as a good guy.

Toma and Lesser do find Fiamma pretty quickly, but can’t make a move just yet, instead settling for eavesdropping on what his next target will be: The Elizalina Alliance of Independent Nations, who are hiding Sasha Krushev (another former villain). They track down this alliance…somehow, and talk with its leader, Elizalina (shocker, right?), who turns out to be a sorceress that is already caught up with the situation. She plans to use them to smuggle Sasha out of the country for an operation against Fiamma. That is, until Fiamma himself crashes the party and destroys the building they’re in, the group only being saved by Toma’s right hand. The three barely hold their own against him, leading to the late arrivals of Sasha herself and Vento of the Front (yep, another former villain).

Meanwhile meanwhile, Hamazura and Accelerator both have to take care of sick girls as they wander through Russia on their own. Hamazura ends up taking Takitsubo to a nearby village, while Accelerator protects Last Order while fighting off French sorcerers. As he fights, an approaching plane gets ready to drop a new, and familiar sounding, opponent.

OUR TAKE

The beginning of the end is upon us as we reach the culmination of not just the past season, but everything that’s come before it. This very much feels like the start of a series finale arc, where all the old plot points and fan favorites come together for one last big showdown. I say SERIES finale because…well, it TECHNICALLY is, seeing how this is the last arc of the original series in the light novels. The main story doesn’t actually end with this, but I don’t know if the next series will even be getting an anime adaptation within the next decade, so we might as well just hope this one does things right.

Already, we’ve got returning former baddies from the first (Sasha), second (Vento), and third (Carissa) seasons joining the fray to show how far reaching this will be, so for people like me who have been watching this since the first season aired in 2008, this feels pretty rewarding. Not that we haven’t had that be done before, but now it feels especially appropriate. Though I feel like Carissa should have had a bit more buffer time, but it’s all good.

And that’s not to say the obvious budgetary issues that have plagued this season don’t rear their ugly heads once again, particularly in the odd transitions during Toma and Lessar’s travels and their choppy battle with Fiamma near the end. Speaking of Lessar, why exactly is she here? I know the novel this is based on was published almost nine years ago, so the story was locked in for awhile, but I seriously have to wonder why this minor character, even relative to the minor character group she was a part of, was chosen to show up again just to throw herself at Toma. There’s not exactly a shortage of options there, so what does SHE bring to the table? But hey, why have standard explanations for things when you can get some shots of a middle schooler’s panties?!…look, after twelve weeks of reviewing “Conception” and “Ulysses”, my standards for Japan’s depravity couldn’t really get any lower, but this does not help.

But I can’t end this review without talking about the insanity of the new Opening, which took all my expectations and blew them away with a railgun. I guess all the budget that was for the previous OP and the cleaning up the rest of the season’s animation went into this, because it’s taking me back to how polished and crisp the old seasons’ OPs used to be. And to be fair, given the gravity of this sort of arc, you need a real baller OP to set the mood, which this does in spades. It’s once again waiting a bit longer than most shows do to show their second OP, but it was well worth the wait.

Overall, this episode sets the stage for things to come while also hitting the ground running, though not without some stumbles as it begins its acceleration. And when it comes to losing momentum, it looks like next week is going to be the WORST.