First Impressions / To Aru Majutsu no Index

「女王艦隊」 (Joou Kantai)
“The Queen’s Fleet”

They say payback’s a bitch, but from my perspective, I was happy seeing Touma take a right punch to the face for a change. Granted, Agnese’s punch didn’t quite have the same oomph as the one she received during the Book of Law arc, plus Touma returned the favor by shredding up her nun habit like only he can. First Index, now Agnese, and later Lucia and Angelene in his sleep. Touma’s an animal! Can we get some more safety pins over here?

Amidst the lighthearted humor, this episode had an abundant amount of explicative dialogue detailing the magical spell known as the Queen of the Adriatic Sea. After Touma was dragged into this mess last time and we were taken along for the ride, the time spent clearing things up and changing my perspective on Agnese’s character was actually appreciated. While I’m still pretty indifferent to the fact that the story’s done a quick reversal on us and suddenly made her out to be the victim of the Roman Catholic Church’s schemes, namely using her to activate the aforementioned spell due to her affinity with the Rosary of Appointed Time (Kokugen no Rosario), the extra focus on Lucia (Ise Mariya) and Angelene (Kataoka Azusa) is a nice fallout from it. My initial impression of them in this series was that they were just another pair of psychotic religious fanatics, yet I was admittedly anticipating some more depth to their characters given how they stood out from the crowd. So far, this arc’s provided just that, along with flashbacks of a childhood of poverty to elicit some compassion from the viewers. Personally, it wasn’t enough for me to feel sympathetic towards their situation, but it did make me more understanding of why they’re desperately trying to save Agnese.

In contrast, the one girl who I’m completely supportive of in her endeavors would be Itsuwa. Her repeated hot towel attempts to put herself under Touma’s radar are rather cute and show just how patient she is with him. It’s as if she took a page out of Keima’s book about sowing the seeds in a relationship by increasing the number of encounters. It’s just too bad she fell in love with such a dense guy who may never pick up on all the hints she’s dropping and actually start a conversation with her. How Touma’s able to ignore her tight tank top and low-rise pants is beyond me, especially when he got up close and personal with both. I guess he must have some sort of a sister fetish after all.

In terms of production quality, consistency looks like it’s returned in a good way this arc. The character designs are a lot better proportioned, even in the case of Agnese’s anorexic figure, though I can’t really say much about the animation side of things since there simply hasn’t been that much movement. The battle at sea between magical ships doesn’t exactly count, leaving most of the actual action on the tail end of this episode when Touma boarded the flagship of the fleet with the help of Tatemiya and the rest of the Amakusa members. In lieu, there were quite a few panning shots for me to spend time putting together, which look nice but come off as an inexpensive way to fill up time. Hopefully the next episode will continue on with the pace that this one left off on, as we not only have battling sisters but also a bishop by the name of Biagio Busoni who could use a punch or two to the face. Best of all, he’s voiced by a veteran seiyuu, the one and only Wakamoto Norio.

* There was a tweet on the official site saying the new opening sequence will be included with episode 17.

 

Preview

53 Comments

  1. Yeah Norio Wakamoto.
    hahahaha. Touma is an animal alright.
    though not much to see in this episode except for the destruction of Agnese and the “Hey guys, attention pls”.

    ♕Croosboy♕
    Reply

  2. lesson of the week: don’t TORN girl’s cloth, especially sisters’ cloth, in front of a semi raging loli sister… XD
    I love the facial expression of the small sister when she flipped the other’s skirt 🙂
    can’t wait for more actions, and more punch in the face (hopefully this time it would be male victim… for gender equality’s sake)

    jrj
    Reply

    1. Reason being is that this particular arc will only be a 3 episode one. There is more in-depth story on the novels. You can read up on the English translated version which this arc starts on volume 11.

      SilentCid
      Reply

    2. Of course, it ain’t the first time Norio Wakamoto voiced someone from a militant faction of the Roman Catholic Church (case in point), but yeah… (ALL HAIL BRITANNIA OPPAI!)

      Wakamoto’s performance as Father Anderson in Hellsing Ultimate still haunts a small corner of my head.

      Might as well consider this my most favorite arc of Index season 2. Wakamoto voicing the big bad of this arc is topping on an already tasty cake.

      Incognito
      Reply

  11. Im sorry guys. But this anime is getting Monotonous.

    Problem Arises —> Touma declothes/walks in on someone —> Add another girl to Harem —> Touma gives shit speech —–> Touma punches someone.

    And repeat. I mean…it seems the anime is at its best when its not focused on toma/index and his harem, which is probaly why i enjoyed Railgun and Accelerator’s arc. immensely. The main reason being, I DIDNT KNOW WHAT THE HELL WAS GONNA HAPPEN” Those 3 preview shots? Thats the entire episode right there.

    OrinX
    Reply

  12. For some reason, any character voiced by Wakamoto Norio instantly elicits a LMAO reaction from me. XD

    Looks like Saten-san has met her match in the Index-verse in Sister Angelene for the title of Best Skirt Flipper. 🙂

    Itsuwa, you go girl. But could you try giving Touma something else besides wet towels?

    https://randomc.net/image/To%20Aru%20Majutsu%20no%20Index/To%20Aru%20Majutsu%20no%20Index%20II%20-%2015%20-%20Large%2036.jpg

    BTW, in this screencap, isn’t that Agnese’s staff Orsola’s holding? How did Index get her hands on that when she gave it to Orsola in the first place?

    Kinny Riddle
    Reply

  14. If Mikoto ever finds out What Touma did to those nuns in his trip to Italy, he consider himself death. By the way someone could tell in what episode is going to start the new opening.

    haseo0408
    Reply

      1. Quite the opposite, after it’s creation the ship doesn’t have any magic running through it’s walls and floors. Only select areas have magic running them like the ice golems and the cannons and possibly the sails.

        Chaos2Frozen
        Reply

      2. Next episode will tell the reason why those ships protecting the main one just doesn’t crumble by the Touma’s right arm. If you want to know more in detail just read volume 11.

        SilentCid
        Reply

  24. Anybody ready to make AMV “Sisters are doing it for themselves”?
    Didnt know Imagine breaker works in sleep too…
    Index biting Touma while repetitive never fails to entertain me.
    Poor towel girl Itsuwa, she deserves more attention from Touma. And she looks better than all those half-starved sisters…
    Agnese punching Touma was laser guided karma!

    ewok40k
    Reply

  25. For those of you still curious about the ice and imagine breaker, here’s the part from the novel explaining it.

    “It’s something similar to ice, the skin sticks to the surface upon contact. It’s not cold; it’s slightly warm like plastic…but ice freezes at 0 degrees Celsius under atmospheric pressure, which is common knowledge. Under several conditions however, the freezing and boiling point can be changed. There exists ice at 20 degrees Celsius and steam at 80 degrees Celsius. So even if it’s ice, the floor isn’t slippery. The reason why ice is slippery is because the surface of the ice would melt into water, reducing friction. By changing the melting point, even if the ice touches human skin, it won’t melt, so there won’t be any water on it.”

    That would imply that those Ice ships wouldn’t need magic to keep it’s body.

    Chaos2Frozen
    Reply

  28. Jeez by the end of this arch, Toma will have as many new new additions to his harem as he did at he end of the first season nearly doubling it…well tat is if you don’t count all the BriBri clones.

    As for the episode, it went by rather fast and ended rather abruptly. Then again if an episode in this series didn’t end on a cliff hanger, then someone isn’t doing there job. However it looks like thing arch is probably going to end in the next episode or so.

    Also im relieved that i wasn’t the only one who thought that guy will the curvy sword looked like Mugen from Samurai Champloo.

    Snicket
    Reply

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