Summary:

As summer vacation comes to an end, Mikoto has some free time and decides to go to the convenience store to read some manga. However, outside her school, she’s approached by a boy named Unabara Mitsuki, and he insists on going wherever she goes. Mikoto finally figures out how to get rid of him when she sees Touma with his friends, so she pretends that she was meeting with Touma there. After tackling him because he ignored her, she forces him to play along and drags him off. The plan is for them to stick together today and hope that it makes Mitsuki stop following her around. The problem is that Mikoto starts to get embarrassed around Touma, especially when he points out the mustard on her nose and when their food gets mixed up. Mikoto does get a chance though to tell Touma about the fate of the Sisters and how most have been sent outside the city. She also helps Touma with some homework that he has to do and then leaves to buy some drinks.

While Mikoto is gone, Touma sees Mitsuki help a boy catch a runaway dog, and he comes over to chat afterward. Mitsuki doesn’t try to hide his feelings for Mikoto, and he also ends up helping Touma with his homework. When Mikoto finally returns and sees the two together, she drags Touma off again and lectures him against becoming friends with Mitsuki, but Touma now sees Mitsuki as a good guy. Mikoto ultimately decides to end the farce of Touma as her boyfriend, however she decides to treat him to something to eat first. Mikoto thus runs off to a fast food restaurant, and Touma encounters Mitsuki again while she’s away. What surprises Touma is that, shortly thereafter, he sees someone who looks exactly like Mitsuki dash into the fast food restaurant. What Touma isn’t able to observe is that the goal of this person – the real Mitsuki – is to warn Mikoto to run away. When Touma tells Mitsuki about what he saw, Mitsuki notes that there are espers who can change their appearance, so Touma goes to investigate. However, right as Touma starts to walk off, he’s punched in the back by Mitsuki.

This fake Mitsuki turns out to be a mage with a black dagger-like item that lets him fire off destructive blasts, so Touma runs away. While he’s on the move, he calls up Index to make sure she’s okay, and she gets him to describe the person who’s chasing him. She’s able to identify the obsidian weapon to be a replica of the lance of Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli, an Aztec god, and she explains that Aztec priests have a technique where they can appear like someone given a piece of that person’s skin. After hanging up on Index, Touma runs into a dead end inside a construction site, so he’s forced to face the fake Mitsuki. He’s able to stop fake Mitsuki from using the weapon with cement powder, and he follows it up with a punch from his right hand that cracks fake Mitsuki’s face.

When Touma demands answers, fake Mitsuki points to how Touma controls the 103,000 magical texts inside Index and to how there is a powerful group forming around Touma consisting of his mage and esper friends. Fake Mitsuki claims that this is threatening the power balance of the two worlds, and his target was not just Touma, but everyone involved with him. The two then resume their fighting, and fake Mitsuki is now able to use his weapon again. He’s not able to hit Touma though before Touma destroys the weapon with his right hand, however fake Mitsuki does get off a blast that dislodges some steel beams overhead. During a subsequent pause in the fighting, Touma wonders if what fake Mitsuki said about Mikoto was fake too, but surprisingly, fake Mitsuki actually has real feelings for her. The two then resume their fight, and it ends only after fake Mitsuki gets buried under several steel bars. Realizing that he’s lost, fake Mitsuki warns that the attacks aren’t over, and he wonders if Touma can protect Mikoto. Touma promises that much, and what he doesn’t realize is that Mikoto had arrived on the scene moments earlier and had overheard all this.

Preview

Well I think the highlight this episode has to be all of Mikoto’s blushing and her growing feelings for Touma. I was wondering after the first half if this episode would consist entirely of that (which I certainly wouldn’t have been opposed to), but lo and behold, something magic happened and there was a good deal of action after all. What I found interesting, aside from Mikoto, was that Touma and company are seen as a threat to the balance of the science and magic worlds, and that would seem to imply that the story might involve both sides more from now on.

I was also a little surprised at how standalone this episode was. The series thus far has been made up of multi-episode arcs, and this is the first time we’ve seen something start and get resolved in the same episode. Granted, I’m sure that there’ll be more to all this in the future with whatever organization fake Mitsuki belonged to – in other words, this was probably a harbinger of things to come – but for the time being, the story is turning instead towards Accelerator and the young Misaka sidekick that he appears to be getting. On that note, a bad guy getting paired with a young girl to (I suspect) rehabilitate the bad guy’s image? I’m reminded of Sesshoumaru and Rin from Inuyasha

38 Comments

  1. For a second there, I thought Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli was made up. The actual image looks pretty messed up. I’m glad they drew a spear instead. The Inuyasha thing also sounds plausible, but I really do enjoy Accelerator’s bad boy streak. Although, considerring his viewpoint isn’t necessarily all evil, it’s more like he’s been used and experimented like Misaki. So, he basically wants out. Mini-Misaki is like, but in hyper-mode.

    The whole Touma is disrupting the world thing really made me perplexed. Up until now, we have been give the idea of heroism, but I like the direction it’s heading. It’s probably because Touma and his “Touma Occult Group” might be used secretly by the church Index is in. I don’t know, just guessing.

    The To Aru Majutsu no Index-tan OVA 01 just released with subs. Show Spoiler ▼

    soyahoney
  2. good lord Touma’s life is like a dating sim every few episodes or so he gets introduced to some new girl who takes a liking to him, although i think misaka already liked him earlier

    asian182
  3. well thats one way to start of an arch. I’ve been waiting to see if there was any thing gonna happen between those two. Did any one else notice the crackle of energy on the I beams as they fell? Also what happened to Aisa Himegami? She hasn’t been seen since her cameo appearance in the Mikoto clone arch.

    As for the minisode, they seemed to just poke fun at there past/current works. Which were pretty funny, but the Mikoto “spark” thing between each scene got annoying. The “mark” on indexes face kinda reminded me of Allen from D. Gray-man.

    Azar
  4. I’m surprised how little we see of Index at late. I’m sure this will change but for now I’m really looking forward to the upcoming episodes, especially if fake!Unabara’s prediction comes true.

    Blue
  5. That was just the beggining of the arc of Accelerator, like an introduction of how the overall story is slowly changing… and then we move on to the main arc. Next is another filler i think.

    Show Spoiler ▼

    Xanathos
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    few;feqw
  7. Mikoto helps Touma with his homework, which makes him really embarrased because he is a 10th grader and Mikoto is a 8th grader. If that homework were of some esp study, it might be more acceptable to him but as it is of old Japanese literature class(it’s like English speaking students studying Shakespeare), he has to accept the fact Mikoto is truely one great student, not just a great esper, while he himself is quite a lousy student, esp or not.

    calde
  8. Since Touma is not a stupid, useless, indecisive wimp like so many harem-anime lead characters, he deserves the biggest harem he can lay his hands on. The man has earned it! 😀

    ninja penguin
  9. Oddly enough, for someone who keeps saying “such misfortune”, he becomes what many people deem is the luckiest guy on Earth. He gets a Show Spoiler ▼

    magnumslinger
  10. All Mikoto fans will be yelling “HELL for Touma!” Heh. He does deserve the biggest harem IMHO! And Accel seems to be leaning to the “dark side”, not that he was far from the dark side to begin with….

    The Enigmatic Moondoggiebuiscuit
  11. Well Bagarovski there were many before you who choose to hate an anime and watch it (cough…. Hudson…. cough….)! But IMHO an anime isn’t for anybody’s judgment since an anime targets a specific audience. There are bound to be haters out there but that’s just them…^^

    Anyway the anime is a lot of fun for me.

    moondoggiebuiscuit
  12. I really liked this episode for more reason than one. I first read the spin-off manga: “A Certain Scientific Railgun” and then later read “A Certain Magical Index.” When I first began watching this series, I was confused because I thought that focus was going to be Mikoto. I went back and found the other series and read it. Although there is fandom for both Mikoto and Index, I’m on Mikoto’s side probably because I read the spin-off first where she is the main character. So this was an enjoyable episode for me. I believe that it is as the review says: “this is a harbinger of things to come.” What makes me believe this is the sudden interest Touma and his friends. Before, he was neglected for the greater problem, Index. Now, Touma is the target, and his friends are becoming endangered. I know that “A Certain Magical Index” and “A Certain Scientific Railgun” are stories that run parallel with slight deviations, but I believe we will start to see a shift were the two become one.

    P.S. Did some linux explode above? Because I was like whoa!

    s1lence

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