「英雄達」 (Eiyuu-tachi)
“Heroes”

What’s this, Pancakes popping up and blogging Index? That’s right boys and girls, since Zaiden has decided school is more important than anime for the next few months (utter blasphemy I tell you) I get the pleasure of covering the series’ titular chomper and her fist of justice sidekick. And what a point to pick the show up too. We all knew Index was rushing like a madman to get to the WW3 arc and now that pacing looks set to start paying off. From this point forward things are going to get serious.

Given how some of the previous fights have gone last season it was pleasantly surprising seeing how much attention (and orchestral soundtrack) was lavished on dealing with Carissa and her reverse tesseract swordplay. Damn near everyone got a piece of this action, from everyone’s new favourite maid Kanzaki to Knight Leader, Acqua, and even Miss Hungry herself. I got to say Queen Elizard takes the cake for me though, between that hilarious nonchalant attitude (which is still funny as hell the second time seen) and the Totally Not a Spirit Bomb conclusion that provides a decent idea how loved the monarchy still is in Britain today. Oh and of course Touma doing the thing as usual, but at this point I think we all know to expect the fist to the face—it’s just his signature trademark. I honestly think the bigger surprise was the kid not winding up in the hospital from his actions this time, because if there’s one thing defining Touma’s existence, it’s waking up to teeth on his arm and blushing girls in his face. Don’t deny, you know you want more maid shenanigans too.

Probably the biggest lack of surprise though rested with the truth behind this past arc. Carissa wound up being just another pawn in an even larger game, a decisive hothead manipulated into open rebellion for the sake of letting one new opponent stealthily acquire something important. Not that it’s unrealistic mind you: true patriots are often the first victims in any sort of geopolitical power plays, useful pieces who will do almost anything out of an honest love for their country and hardly question the reasons why. Carissa for example wasn’t wrong in her beliefs—i.e. a strong and united Britain will stand up to threats better than a seemingly complacent and lethargic one—but she never asked why Britain was under attack now and for what specific reason. Doing so could have led to different answers, different solutions, and a conclusion preventing destruction to a good swath of historical architecture. Sure the girl may have seriously wanted the throne, but there’s always more efficient ways to go about such goals, especially when faced with outside attack. Just ask Prince Charles—the guy is still waiting for his chance to be king.

In the immediate future though it’s off to Russia as Index is once again under threat and Touma will do whatever it takes to see her return to normal. It’s going to be an interesting fight considering what Fiamma has shown himself capable of, but if there’s one thing you can bet on it’s that the fist will be the thing ultimately saving the day. Get ready peeps, it’s about to get crazy.

 

Preview

23 Comments

  1. Pretty good conclusion, but where was Laura Stuart?
    So is the next arc the WW3 arc everybody has so much praise for?
    Just to make sure because seeing those characters from eps. 4-6 in the preview makes me remember an arc that I’d rather forget. Not too keen on another arc without Touma/Biribiri

    boingman
      1. More like, the first punch to the sword was Anime original and that shouldn’t have happened. But you could also explain it with: he punched the dimensial rift that the blade would have opened.

        1993espada
  2. Do Touma need to punch always the Enemy or Item to cancel the effect, or do just touching it with the hand would be enough?

    Perhaps the Punch is needed to shake the “Magic molecules”

    Worldwidedepp
  3. If any ever wondered back near the beginning on this series why the Church was okay with Index living in Academy City with the person who messed up their security measures, you now have your answer. The Church and Royal Family have a literal remote control for Index. I am a bit sad this episode didn’t put more emphasis on how messed up it is like in the novel.

    RPG_Fanatic
  4. People have become so numb because of this show they think the animation, the fight’s blah blah… have improved.

    Any other series would be trolled and criticized hard but somehow Index II have made people care so little that they think this anime is improving every time there is a fight. All the plot in index is a non-stop spam of arcs with after other arcs as if there was no end and worst all are equal:

    -Someone wants to take over something.
    -Touma and her girls try to stop it.
    -They beat them up, someone stronger comes to help.
    -He also takes a beating.
    -Touma defeat him with a punch in the face.
    -Another bad guy one comes out worse than the previous one taken out of nowhere.
    -And defeats him again with a punch in the face.

    The worst thing is that the warriors facing Touma are supposed to be forged in hundreds of battles and are obviously stronger, but still they are defeated by a punch in the face of a high school boy who has never trained to fight nor does he have super strength, seriously his blows seem like a superhuman.
    NO, the worst thing is the grandiloquent and misplaced discourse that always releases touma, which has been repeating dozens of arcs with the same theme as always, about breaking their illusions blah blah…

    Say what you about railgun, but at least this has a sense of cohesion and development, the characters have a better relationship between them. Pity that it has no more ambitious arcs.

    Fede 5000
    1. From what i’ve observed, those who’ve read the light novels seem mad at the way things are being handled. I totally get it since I get mad when my beloved manga series get poorly adapted. Fortunately, I’m not particularly in the vogue with Index’s light novels, meaning I don’t really have any prior expectations and I don’t need to entertain a slew of what-ifs that could have made the anime better.

      1. I’ve never touched the LNs either, but I definitely feel like they’re doing a much worse job of hiding how rushed S3 has been. There’s a distinct feeling of “we don’t have time to do this right, so please live with it” throughout the whole thing that they at least tried to hide in the first two seasons. Even the talk-fu feels phoned-in at points.

        Aex
      2. This problem is due to the lack of depth in the plot and the characters have been dragging since the first season, the difference is that before you could forgive because the series just started so one assumed that later they could develop them better and explain more the context, but right now it has taken a point where it has released an enormous amount of plot points and characters making it something unnecessarily complex and dense

        Fede 5000
    2. Actually that’s a standard plot for most action animes though. What I can’t stand is the exposition that is way too long and complicated that will soon be forgotten after the arc ended anyway. And no matter how strong the magic was, it was always #toumawinslol in the end anyway.

      PS2kid
    3. I think you are misunderstanding the type of opponents that Touma has been facing. Only a couple of people Touma fought are warriors with battle experience. None of the espers Touma has fought are warriors, just humans with a supernatural power. Most of the magicians that Touma fought are not warriors either, just people who rely on their magic.

      I would say Kanzaki, Aqua, Tsuchimikado, and Oriana are the only opponents that could be called warriors. The first three all dominated Touma is a straight fight and the last was reluctant to fight/hurt him since she considered Touma a civilian.

      RPG_Fanatic

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *