English Dub Review: A Certain Magical Index “The Governing Board”

I’m BOARD senseless, AHAHAHAHAHA

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Hamazura tries hijacking a helicopter to get to a building Takitsubo’s in. When pulling a gun on the pilot doesn’t work, he tries turning on the waterworks while on the phone…which is enough to at least get them to drop him off, at least! But it turns out he’s not the only named character involved as Accelerator has also arrived to eliminate the remaining members of Spark Signal. He’s also unexpectedly helped by a stern man named Sugitani, who wants to help protect Academy City but never wants to see him again. Hamazura arrives soon after, assuming Accelerator is trying to kill Takitsubo like the last Level 5 they had to fight, but he just leaves them to their own business after roughing Hamazura up a bit. Saiai Kinuhata finds the commotion outside the building but is attacked by Stephanie Gorgeouspalace.

GROUP starts putting things together on DRAGON, with Accelerator realizing it might have to do with the experiments that created Last Order and the Misaka clones. As they think on this, their bus is attacked and explodes, but everyone survives…somehow??? Though possibly not for long, as the electricity goes out in the area, meaning the machine Accelerator uses to make his calculations and control his power shorts out and he can’t think. Luckily, he’s saved by the student of a pregnant teacher he saved in last episode’s hostage crisis. He and the rest of GROUP begin planning to take down the member of the Governing Board that’s out to get them, Shiokishi, by calling upon the one dove member in a group of hawks, Oyafune.

Despite having received threats to her family due to her obstructing other board members, Oyafune decides to help out GROUP to take down Shiokishi, eventually finding his base of operations and bringing her in with them to negotiate with him face to face. They’re soon separated, with Oyafune going to him while Accelerator and Misujime face Sugitani, who knocks out Musujime quickly. The negotiations between the board members also quickly crumble, but in reality, Oyafune was never there, just her face used as a mask by Etzali. Still unwilling to give up information about DRAGON, Shiokishi orders his security in, only to find they’ve also been replaced. But this time, they’re two other Aztecs who have come for Etzali.

OUR TAKE

At the very least, I can safely say that the story this time around is not AS MUCH of a jumbled mess as the previous GROUP outing…but not by much. There are some things that I’m glad to see continue to have relevance, like Oyafune being basically the only “good” board member and Hamazura’s kinda sweet love story with Takitsubo, but both of those things seem hitched to such a weak bigger plot that I can’t say for sure if it was worth it. Spark Signal (assuming this is the last of them) were such a non-entity that I’m pretty sure just having some cardboard cutouts would have served as better enemies.

Likewise with Gorgeouspalace, who seems to just be there to fill the cute girl quota because she doesn’t seem to have much of anything interesting going on with her aside from maybe her design. Putting her up against Kinuhata doesn’t do much to flesh out either of their characters, since the former’s goal is already so tertiary to everything going on and the latter is only really worth having around as the snark generator next to her two friends, not because her powers or personality are all that compelling.

The mystery of DRAGON is actually given almost not enough time to really be in the forefront, as the transitional whiplash from GROUP fighting Spark Signal to being on the run is so fast that it took me a second to gather what was happening. Likewise with the stranger who saves Accelerator’s life as thanks for helping his teacher last episode. I couldn’t find any info about him on the show’s Wiki, but his dialogue seems to imply he grew up in the same conditions as Accelerator, whatever that means. I mean, cool to see his good deeds are paying off, but this seems to be a bit hamfisted.

And now we’ve got even more new characters to keep track of in Sugitani and the two new Azetc magicians, as well as whoever may be in DRAGON when that’s revealed. I still have no idea how much of this mishandling has to do with either the source material or the adaptation, but regardless, what I’m seeing is not renewing confidence in seeing this season end on a strong note.

Oh, and we also finally got a new Ending Credits sequence! What’s weird about Index and how these come out is that the second EDs of each season always seem to come near the end of the first arc of the second half, while the second OPs wait till the beginning of the arc afterwards. Maybe to prevent spoilers? Anyway, this new ED is a very welcome change from the last one. While there does seem to be not as much new animation, its visual and stylistic choices bring back a lot of the energy of the EDs from the ones in first season or the second one of the second season. It’s also another Touma and Index focused ED like the last two with no other characters in sight, so that’s a shame, but I’ll take what I can get in visual variety. And apparently the next OP will be here in a couple weeks, so I look forward to talking about that when we get it.