English Dub Review: A Certain Magical Index “Wings”

He’s not a monster or a man. He is something that you’ll never understand.

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Hamazura continues to look for Takitsubo (in a way that made me think for a second that I’d repeated the last episode), but find her just in time for Mugino’s handlers from Academy City to drop in and retrieve her. But using some deception catches them off guard long enough for the reunited ITEM to kill them all.

Accelerator and Misaka Worst work on deciphering the “song” that could cure Last Order. It’s essentially working as data transferred through mediums like sound and electronic signals in order to get it all out through the right channels, which is why he’ll use the conversion parchment to make sure it gets to Last Order in the way that matters. Well, that, and whatever strange “law” that he has inside him that allowed him to face Gabriel earlier. With that, he’s able to properly use the song, but the action soon begins tearing at his body, staining his white clothes red with blood. While this happens, Accelerator reflects on his mission to become a “villain” for Last Order’s sake, but realize that he doesn’t have to anymore now.

Above that, on Bethlehem, Toma and Fiamma continue their battle. Toma continues to lay into Fiamma about the massive flaws in his plans when his Holy Right is dependent on his opponent’s strength, so he forced this war to show how awful mankind can be simply to give his Holy Right the power to impact the laws of reality. Only, as Toma points out, mankind is actually good at heart and fight for what and who they care about, and if they’re reminded of that, Fiamma’s power would diminish.

As this is happening, giant hands burst forth around the world, all likely hoping to get the biggest high-five possible. But the previously battling forces of Academy City, Britain, France, and Russia come together to give a collective “down low, too slow”. And also, this flying little girl is there, apparently from a group called “Dawn-Colored Sunlight”! Neat…? And in the midst of this, the Russian Church leader is rescued, connected with the former pope and Laura Stewart, and they all get to work retrieving Index’s library by dissolving Fiamma’s Bethlehem. Though he doesn’t seem to mind since all the power that it took to put it together will still do his job for him when the island crashes and explodes, killing most of mankind.

OUR TAKE

It’s the penultimate episode of the season, which means resolving subplots and building everything else towards the final battle. In this case, we more or less wrap up the reforming of ITEM with Hamazura, Mugino, and Takitsubo, as well as the completion of Accelerator’s edgelord character arc of choosing “villainy” for the sake of his loli. With the former, I have my issues with how it’s shaken out overall, but it was at least nice to see how them back as a team…or rather, properly as a team for the first time? I know they were acting together in the Battle Royale, but this feels less like a return to form and more like the creation of a new team, considering how much all of them have changed since then.

The Accelerator plot was definitely the highlight of the episode, however, given how surreal the “singing” sequence was and how much self-reflection it required that truly felt like a culmination of everything this guy has been through throughout the series so far. In addition to gaining more of a conscious looking over Last Order, he’s also been slowly learning more about how his powers connect to magic, but only now finds a way to make full use of that. I’ll get more into this in the Season Review, but it does feel like Accelerator’s arc was one of only a few that felt like it was meant to play out over this whole season.

Then there’s the Toma/Fiamma fight which feels…actually kind of boring. In terms of actual fighting, it’s pretty down to “Fiamma shoots a laser, Toma blocks it with his hand, Fiamma throws his Holy Right, Toma blocks it with his hand, etc.” So the substance of it comes down to each of their talking points, which are essentially Fiamma saying that humanity sucks and that he needed to get them all to fight to give him more power to change reality, whereas Toma thinks humanity has the potential for good and the world will turn out fine. Putting aside that we’ve never seen much in the way of things to back up Fiamma’s argument besides what he directly put into motion, this, unfortunately, seems like a type of evil plan that I’ve come to be pretty bored with. That being wiping out all of mankind in one way or another to start things over from square one a la “Evangelion”, the first “Kingsman” movie, “Kill la Kill”, and so on.

But anything I could say will probably feel incomplete without knowing the big picture, which we will hopefully find out in the season finale next week. Though what was up with those giant hands?