“The Document of C”


「C文書」 (C-Bunsho)

Taking on Terra

At the last supper, Jesus poured some wine and called it his blood, then tore some bread and called it his flesh. This important belief is known as transubstantiation, and acts as the basis of Terra’s light execution technique, working on the assumption that bread is constituted of flour. Although flour sounds like an underwhelming medium to channel magic, the way Terra leverages it to interact with reality makes it extremely potent. Even then, it seems like God’s Right Hand doesn’t seem to have anything on Touma’s right hand. Initially, Terra gave Touma and Itsuwa a lot of trouble. Yet he was quickly unraveled once they figured out how to work around his powers. It’s a causation power along the lines of ‘X happens, Y happens’, and if you can prevent the X from happening, then Y doesn’t take place. Once they realised that the precedent could be interrupted, by introducing a variable into the mix that had not been named, Touma negated the outcome with a shotgun and wallet before swiftly bringing down Terra with two justice punches.

Shoutouts to Tsuchimikado, who was definitely an unsung hero. He stalled Terra and also held back the armoured suits, allowing Touma and Itsuwa to accomplish their mission. And it seemed like Accelerator served as insurance policy for guaranteeing the document’s successful destruction. While he came a bit too late to the party, at least his intervention to focus on destroying the Papal Palace prevented innocent lives from being lost, sparing those who hadn’t been evacuated in time.

Ideological Split

During the confrontation between Touma and Terra, Terra dropped intriguing hints suggesting that there was potentially more to the Imagine Breaker than we all knew. In spite of this factual morsel, it didn’t distract me from what looked like the series painting everything black and white in terms of characterisation. Touma seemed to be the only one pointing out how Terra’s actions were messed up, and I wondered why the Roman Catholic Church approved of such heinous conduct. Well, turns out they didn’t approve. They also really disliked the fact that Terra carelessly used innocents to advance his so-called salvation — and this culminated in Acqua killing him off (with blessing from the Pope to boot). And who wouldn’t be fed up if they had to work alongside a psychopathic nutcase? I appreciate this turn of events, because the factional in-fighting spiced things up, and it showed that the Roman Catholic Church wasn’t morally bankrupt to the core. Even if an important figure crosses the line, it doesn’t seem like they’d tolerate such transgressions, swiftly meting out divine providence.

Concluding Thoughts:

Now that the Documents of C have been dispelled by the Imagine Breaker, I have to questino the exact purpose of this mission. If it was to prevent the Roman Catholic Church from manipulating truth to turn the world against Academy City, our scientific institution might still have dug out a hole for themselves. They launched an unwarranted attack, an absolute no-no from a global perspective, onto foreign soil. Consequently, I’m getting the impression that Touma’s efforts to prevent global conflict were for naught — the state of global politics in the Raildex universe is heavily veering towards a cataclysmic war between magic and science. We have only been back for three episodes, but things are already becoming extremely crazy. Honestly, who wouldn’t be excited?

Given how we’ve seen Academy City launching a politically unjustified invasion of Avignon, we currently have these two morally grey institutions squaring out to gain an upper hand against each other. Which begs the question – what interest is so vital that they need follow high risks to take each other out? Meanwhile, Touma and friends get caught up in the middle of this conflict. You know, I wouldn’t be surprised if they end up being third party arbitrators, if not an outright trump card in the hands of Academy City. Aleister Crowley is clearly playing 400 IQ 5-dimensional checkers, and I’m personally curious to see if there’s any figure on the magic side who can match up to his keen intellectual prowess.

Incidentally, I’m glad we got a glimpse of Acqua’s powers. Seeing how the members on the Right Seat of God can’t use normal magic, these folks were starting to look like a bunch of one trick ponies, who had no alternative course of action once their abilities were countered. But I can’t imagine that Touma and Co will steamroll the remaining two members. Acqua looks extremely powerful, and even though the faction has lost a significant portion of manpower, they are still proceeding with the invasion without a hint of hesitation. Such confidence could only suggest that either the Roman Catholic Church have another trump card up their sleeves, or both Acqua and Fiamma wield wield incredible powers far beyond what Vento and Terra exhibited. But can they prevail over the Imagine Breaker and friends? Now that matter would be rather contentious. They might seem stupidly strong, but who hasn’t Touma managed to overcome? Anyway, that’s about everything I wanted to discuss. Thanks for reading my post, and see you next week for some more Raildex goodness!

Note: This episode cut out a lot of content from the novel. Here’s a list of useful explanations behind certain moments in the episode, courtesy of u/Razorhead!

Preview

56 Comments

  1. if i remember correctly, it was described that a saint has the equivalent power of a magical side of a nuke and there are only a dozen of them? Kanzaki being one of them and Aqua is another? Doesn’t that just mean Aqua is on a whole different tier than everyone Touma has faced? He’s basically like the Accelerator of the magic side.

    Azalea23
    1. Show Spoiler ▼

      Zaiden’s Edit: Remember to tag spoilers in the future!!!

      qwert
    1. The significance of Touma’s memory loss and what he may have known about his power beforehand is a question that still hasn’t been answered over twenty volumes after this arc. For Misaka at least it’s more a personal matter, since they had several encounters before he lost his memory and has just been playing along that he remembers her.

      qwert
  2. I nearly forgot Touma lost his memory back in Season 1. So will this revelation be the catalyst for Touma to understand or better to say regain his understanding of his Imagine Breaker and his place in his world?

    Avignon’s counter attack seems kind of random, there is no lead up. Avignon’s response with force is similar to someone is responding to an unsatisfactory tweet on a poster’s Twitter feed.

    RenaSayers
    1. Forgetting that Touma forgot his memories. Forgetception. And I completely forgot that the Roman Catholic Church already attacked Academy City at the end of S2. But I thought the outside world didn’t know this, which would mean people wouldn’t necessarily pinpoint this connection between incidents.

    2. He didn’t know how he obtained Imagine Breaker before the memory loss, for him it was there always and just thought it was a shitty power with no use, hence all the weakest esper in Academic City thing is always stated about him.

      cvb
  3. “Aleister Crowley is clearly playing 400 IQ 5-dimensional checkers, and I’m personally curious to see if there’s any figure on the magic side who can match up to his keen intellectual prowess.”

    *Forcibly suppresses urge to draw on knowledge from NT*

    Oh, I can think of one, at the very least…

    Veltharis
  4. https://randomc.net/image/To%20Aru%20Majutsu%20no%20Index/To%20Aru%20Majutsu%20no%20Index%20III%20-%2003%20-%20Large%2020.jpg
    https://randomc.net/image/To%20Aru%20Majutsu%20no%20Index/To%20Aru%20Majutsu%20no%20Index%20III%20-%2003%20-%20Large%2021.jpg
    Sigh, why can’t girls like this be the main heroine? T_T This girl is Touma’s dream girl who is a great beauty that wouldn’t abuse Touma. I don’t understand why most anime wants abusive girls as the main heroine, in most cases. Most girls, that are kind and obviously like the main character, are usually childhood friends that are tossed aside later.

    Anyway, I hope Touma gets a romantic kiss in this season. This anime has a lot of action, which I can’t complain about, but not much romance for poor Touma.

    Greed
    1. I said it before and I will say it again. Itsuwa needs her own arch. Instead of Railgun we shall have Amakusa-gun…the three cell party will consist of Itsuwa as the main, Kaori Kanzaki as support and Saiji Tatemiya also as support.

      RenaSayers
      1. Regarding the Necessarius story: it’s only a single LN side story volume, so it hasn’t been animated, unfortunately.

        Itsuwa will have a fairly major role for at least one more arc in the near future, though (and a cameo or two after that, I’d imagine).

        Veltharis
  5. > They launched an unwarranted attack, an absolute no-no from a global perspective, onto foreign soil. Consequently, I’m getting the impression that Touma’s efforts to prevent global conflict were for naught

    Religions, Faith and other Nature Gods believers do not care about Solid ground borders, they do not exist when it comes down to Religion. It is not an Power you can grip, it is an power inside the Heads and Hearts, and sadly even this power can be exploit. Actors that show us their “faith” and such, but acts all dark

    Like this Guy here

    Like in the ancient. Roma is far away and are not here.

    Worldwidedepp
      1. Interesting…

        But to be honest, this is the first time (beside Indiana Jones) that Humans want to forcefully become Angels… I do thing this is just an One Way path.. Because we Humans look like “God” (You surly know the text in how God created Adam and Eva), but just the looks. There where no text (as far my brain not betray me) that his Angels look like us or him.. beside having Wings of Feather. The Pictures so far are created out of Humans minds Imagines

        Well, sorry for pack an Bible punch, but this anime arc here is based around Catholic stuff.. Illuminati, and other secret origination inside the church is an force here

        Worldwidedepp
      2. But this Right Seat of God origination want to use it for their own to control Humanity.. So they are not doing it for the sake of mankind, no for themselves.. and let me guess to “stop all Wars, killing, Sadness and blablabla” on the World… Little critical point here is… God gave us Humans an own free will..

        so in short these “good will” evil doers want to bring back Humanity into Paradise.. No care of anything just enjoyment and such.. the counterpart of “Sodom and Gomorrah!”?

        Then why are we where born into this World? to prove if we are worthy?… combine it with the free will, and voila!…

        Ups.. again sorry for this Bible right One Punch men fist

        Worldwidedepp
  6. And once again, Touma saves the day. It’s always the same thing. I’m really sick of him getting glorified like this, and defeating enemies that are so much stronger than him that they could end him in a snap if they only had half a brain.

    Lily Nadesico
    1. Here’s the thing. None of Touma’s enemies have every treated him as a threat or someone who can truly challenge him. When we finally meet one, it’ll be the fight of Touma’s life.

      Dorian S.
      1. “None of Touma’s enemies have ever treated him as a threat”

        Nothing highlights that point more than the fight with Accelerator way back when. He was literally mocking how “weak” Touma was and couldn’t possibly grasp how he could hurt him. To Accelerator, Touma was like an ant beneath his foot, and he learned the painful way that he really wasn’t.

        Lyfe
    2. Magicians and espers wield powers way beyond the capabilities of normal humans, but what do you get if you strip away that power? A normal human? Aside from a few exceptions, they are even weaker than that.
      This why Imagine Breaker is an universal counter to magicians and espers.
      Basically, as long as they arrogantly believe in their superiority they cannot win against Touma.

      Arkenshel
      1. Yeah, and by some contrived coincidence, Touma did nothing but encounter arrogant idiots. That’s why I say that he’s got some annoying plot armor.

        But that’s not all. I hate how he’s always right, and how everyone who disagrees with him is portrayed as evil, stupid, or misguided at best. He’s a Gary Stu of the highest order.

        Lily Nadesico
      2. Exactly. Accelerator would have destroyed Touma had he took the fight seriously. His ability meant that he never had to physically touch Touma or get in his range to be touched. He choose to engage Touma through his own arrogance. The fight would have been over quite quickly had he kept his distance and pretty much crushed him.

        Lyfe
  7. Can I just talk about the [Earth Blade] that the goddamn Anime just gloss over without dignity? A giant blade of rotating iron sand accelerated to speeds over 10000km/h to create molten metal and super heated gas that could carve out a path of lava over any terrain, hence it’s name. Such a cool piece of sci-fi weaponry depicted as just dumping napalm is a terrible sin.

    Chaos2Frozen
  8. So, if the Anime here use the “This is my Body” = Wheat “This is my Blood” = Whine
    of Jesus.. i wonder if these Guys also use his Miracles.. like “Water into Whine”, “multiply Bread and Fish”

    Let’s see

    Like i said, as if these Guys forcefully follow Jesus paths to his father connection… They slam these Holy Path with an crowbar open

    Worldwidedepp
  9. Sound effects accompanying Touma’s imagine breaker has changed. Even Kuroko’s teleportation in the first episode has changed. Wonder what sound effects they will use with Mikoto’s railgun.

    Yuhsaku
  10. Although the transubstantiation is an important part of the Execution of Light, I wouldn’t say it was the basis for it. After all, he can change priorities of anything, not just his weapon of flour. The flour merely acts as the symbol for the magic, but the basis is the contradiction that the son of god could be murdered by a normal spear wielded by a roman soldier. accordig to Terra, Jesus was able to die because he altered the natural priority betwenn his divine body and the spear, allowing for him to die and then take the original sin with him.

    Bryan Delmond Silva
    1. accordig to Terra, Jesus was able to die because he altered the natural priority betwenn his divine body and the spear

      If that was what Terra believes then he needs to check his theology. Jesus had a human body, which was the whole point of the Incarnation, but nevertheless he was not killed by being crucified or by being stabbed. As John 10:18 puts it, “No one takes [my life] from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.” So there was no contradiction at all when the “lance of Longinus” came into play.

      Angelus
  11. what i don’t get is why would he even dress himself like that? more like, why does many of the magical side of the villains just look… well, the way the do. what exactly are christians in the toaru universe? they seem pretty messed up

    Azalea23
    1. Terra did dress in green, because it represents Earth, that has something to do with the Idol Theory that was introduced in Volume one or the first Arc.

      Haimura did say: “Simply put, I designed God’s Right Seat to look like strangers mixed into the Index world. Vento was the same. Since the Index world has a lot of highly characterized people, I had to make them intentionally extreme on the design front … His look is completely ripping up a certain baron, but just overlook that. Ha ha.”

      1993espada
  12. Yep. While Touma beat Terra and destroyed the C Document before it could be used further, Touma completely failed the original objective of diffusing the tension before things escalated.

    You could say the bad guys won depending on who you view as good and bad.

    RPG_Fanatic

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