First Impressions / To Aru Majutsu no Index

OP Sequence

OP: PSI-missing by 川田まみ (Kawada Mami)
Watch the OP! Mirror 1, Mirror 2, Streaming

Summary:

In the middle of an academic city, Kamijou Touma finds himself on the run from a group of delinquents after trying to help a girl in a restaurant who was getting picked on. He eventually manages to get away from them, but he then gets confronted by the very girl he tried to save after she took care of the delinquents herself. She uses her railgun ability on him by firing coins at him, and despite his low ability level, he’s able to stop the blasts with his right hand. The girl ends up blasting him with a lot of electricity, and the next day, Touma wakes up to find that none of his electrical appliances work because of the subsequent power outage. In fact, everything seems to be going poorly in his life. When he goes to air out his futon however, he finds a girl hanging on the railing. She is dressed in a nun’s outfit, and the first thing she says to him is that she’s hungry. Touma decides to feed her some spoiled food, but she eats it happily and claims that it’s delicious. Afterward, she explains that she fell onto his balcony while trying to jump from one rooftop to another because she was being chased. She also introduces herself as Index – the name stands for an index of forbidden books – and reveals that she’s being pursued for the 103,000 magic books that she has.

Touma is surprised to hear that Index is being chased by a magic society because he doesn’t believe in magic even though he believes in supernatural powers. He himself has a power that allows him to negate other powers by touching them with his right hand. Unfortunately, Index can’t use magic in order to prove that magic exists, so she instead decides to demonstrate with her special protective clothing. This means that Touma should be able to negate it if he touches it with his right hand, and that’s exactly what ends up happening: the clothing shreds into pieces. It leaves Index naked, and after biting Touma for what he did, she spends some time pinning her clothes back together. Touma then realizes that he has to go to his supplementary lessons at school, so Index decides that it’s time for her to leave as well. On his way out, Touma accidentally steps on and breaks his cell phone, and when Index sees this, she suggests that Touma’s right hand erases good luck as well. Although depressed from hearing this, Touma changes the subject to if Index has anywhere to go, and Index’s answer is simply that if she stayed there, then enemies would come. Touma doesn’t want to let her go out in these circumstances, but he’s left speechless after Index asks him if he’d follow her to the depths of hell.

At school, Touma worries about Index and what she told him. After class, he gets stopped by the same girl who had the railgun ability. She finally introduces herself as Misaka Mikoto, and she’s ready to fight him again, but Touma isn’t interested. When he gets home, he finds Index on the ground in front of his apartment surrounded by cleaning robots, and he soon realizes that she’s got a bloody wound on her back. To make matters worse, a mean-looking mage suddenly appears behind him and takes credit for what happened to Index.

ED Sequence

ED: 「Rimless～フチナシノセカイ～」 (Rimless ~Fuchinashi no Sekai~) by IKU
Watch the ED!: Mirror 1, Mirror 2, Streaming

I commented in the Fall Preview that the way this show was being animated reminded me a lot of Shakugan no Shana. And since the OP is sung by Kawada Mami, my immediate reaction upon hearing it was that it might as well be the OP to Shana 3. Still, it’s a pretty good song – the ED is as well – and it’s back up by some very well animated visuals.

Preview

Wow, out of all the shows I’ve seen so far this new season, this has left me the most impressed, at least production-quality-wise. Kudos to J.C.Staff on that. They managed to jump back and forth pretty well from the comedic to the more serious styles, and there was a lot of detail, especially in the shots of the city. The strength of the production quality alone has me wanting to blog this. The characters meanwhile turned out to be pretty much how I imagined them, with Mikoto being appropriately spunky, Index being very cute, and Touma acting like the average male lead in this kind of series. Fortunately, there’s nothing about him to dislike, unlike a certain someone.

Story-wise, the pacing was a little faster than I expected, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing since they got all the way to the appearance of Stiyl, past what I consider to be the most boring parts of the exposition. I probably shouldn’t even call it boring though because it’s only boring when compared to what happens afterwards, so if you’ve never read the manga or novels this is based on, you probably won’t feel that way. In any case, the fire battle next week looks really good in the preview, and I’m going to keep watching this for at least a while longer.

49 Comments

  26. lol, that’s true he looks like ikki but the light novel was before air gear
    im so happy jc staff is making an amazing job and have a lot of material for not
    making this series boring
    the manga is online too you should read it

    friki guy
    Reply

  36. the manga is already one of the better ones and indicates a good story with some nice comedy so far. but the most surprising thing in here is still.. “wtf” kawada mami? xD

    Nightflame
    Reply

  37. i didn’t thought that this was gonna be a nice show cus i read the manga and it didnt quite interest me. i guess well spent animations make the series more appealing to alot of ppl.

    the_amazing_squiter
    Reply

  43. Too bad you mention him helping the girl in the café, since he was trying to help the delinquent. It’s such a nice parody on the normal cliché openings that it won the series for me right there 🙂

    SpacyRicochet
    Reply

  48. This is starting off great. But I found a continuation error (if thats what it is). At the seen where Index leaves Touma’s apartment the end of the corridor is open up. When he returns home near the end of the episode it looks to be closed off. Lol

    Shadow
    Reply

  49. While a Really goo anime, with a really good story and characters which is very enjoyable to watch… I had to spend a rather long time just laughing, simply because of the complete crap its premise is based on, as far as Christianity is concerned. By episode 3 it’s just hilarious XD Apparently The Church of England is puritan, and more than that, is arm in arm with the Vatican XD

    Chibi-Kibou
    Reply

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