First Impressions / To Aru Majutsu no Index

「使徒十字（クローチェディピエトロ）」 (Shito Juuji (Kurooche Di Pietoro)
“Cross of the Apostle (Croce di Pietro)”

All the jostling between Touma and Stiyl this episode may not have been just to throw Oriana off, as our righteous protagonist (except when it comes to hitting girls) looked like he was purposely prolonging Stiyl’s suffering. It was rather hypocritical, given that Touma was telling Oriana to place more value on other people’s lives. I guess that doesn’t apply to the guy behind him swimming in a pool of his own blood. I try not to dwell on Touma’s preaching tendency since it’s a core part of his character, but he continues to amaze me with how much time he spends trying to get his point across. Granted, my understanding of what actually constitutes a severe wound may not apply to magicians, and Touma was well aware that Stiyl wasn’t in that bad of a state after taking three large icicles to the abdomen and curling over. Regardless, I think it’s fair to say that Stiyl wasn’t looking so hot, and it’d be shame if his final moments were spent listening to Touma try to reason with the big-breasted religious fanatic who put him in his miserable state instead of seeing him try to avenge him. In light of that, it’s good to know that Stiyl’s a good sport about it, cracking a smile when Touma finally knocked her out and thwarted the Roman Catholic Church’s plans by sheer luck.

Now I’m all for moments where protagonists are pinned against the wall and miraculously saved by some unforeseen event, but the sight of the festive fireworks lighting up Academy City’s skies felt like a huge cop-out considering the series we’re dealing with. After all the twists and turns this arc took with its plot feints, wild goose chases, and surprising lack of support from the Anglican Church, it doesn’t sit well with me to learn that Academy City saved itself and that Touma and his crew were just running around the city for the past six episodes. I thought to myself, “Really?”, and it sure didn’t help when Touma was rubbing it in to Lidvia like it was all planned from the very beginning. I’m willing to overlook the cheap humor when Stiyl tripped on a rock in the middle of an airfield, plus how Touma miraculously survived the explosion from Oriana’s trump card attack and mustered up some amazing willpower to stay on his feet — a scene that I just wasn’t feeling the emotions behind — however, I can’t say the same about how this conclusion made all the suspense I felt along the way feel pretty moot.

Much like the Stab Sword’s importance was played up, the lengthy expositions about the Croce di Pietro simply kept me thrilled in my mind in anticipation of something that never happened. It seems like there was never any intention to have its powers enacted in some form and have our heroes overcome it. Instead, we’re simply told about this major catastrophe that will upset the balance of magic and science in the world, only to find out that it was completely prevented in the end like it was a dud. Nothing that was mentioned and highly feared manifested itself on screen in any way whatsoever, and we’re only left with three scuffles with Oriana, who only served as a decoy in the end. The decoy part was like an extra kick while I was down, and seriously felt like the writers were mocking me. To put it into very crude terms, it’s as if I watched a series about a looming alien threat and never saw a single alien. “Croce di Pietro what now?”

I admittedly lost interest in the wrap-up for this arc after that happened, especially in light of how Lidvia turned out to be a much crazier than she originally let on. After the fireworks saved the day, the revelation that Stiyl tagged all the planes felt like another tacked on piece of plot with no prior build-up, and one I just couldn’t be bothered to get hung up on. The only thing I did take away was how ruthless the Anglican Church can be in response to the Roman Catholic Church’s actions, as Laura sent Lidvia flying out of a plane and more or less toyed with her while she plummeted to her death with the Croce di Pietro. In terms of plot, I just hope this means the “crazy bitch” is dead. Given how this arc went, I’ll have to retract my statement about it being nice not having Index as the focus for a change, because the goofy interactions at the hospital quickly reminded me that more screen time for her would’ve made things more enjoyable.

Generally speaking, I always feel this series has great production values, but it tends to suffer from plot progression too dependent on heavy exposition. While it may work well as a light novel since everything’s left up to the imagination anyway, the same can’t be said about overusing it in an anime as far as entertainment is concerned. This is one of the main reasons why I enjoyed Railgun a lot more. In any case, I’m just glad that we’re done with this arc and can start anew with the next one. Hopefully we’ll get to witness the upcoming problem in some form.

 

Preview

79 Comments

      1. i suppose, but at the same time it gave the whole arc a certain sense of pointlessness because the Catholics ended up not being thwarted by Touma and the hero brigade, but by their own incompetence.

        in fact, arguably Oriana won.
        she successfully delayed them until Lidvia could do her thing.

        the Catholics were thwarted by poor planning on their part.
        essentially the plan never would have worked to begin with…

        Talbot
        Reply

      2. They could still use the same trick, but since the fireworks would last 1.5 hours, her choice was to either give up or get caught in a chase and get busted with her ass handed to it. That’s what the end pretty much was.

        Michael Chandra
        Reply

  7. this show is starting to get annoying all the arcs are the same …science and magic fight ..Touma gets in the middle ..religion ppl hurt ppl close to Touma..Touma gets mad and punches a chick…lilo nun bites him ..arc over

    adgettin
    Reply

  9. i want more index (the nun)! the final part of the ep was my favorite, since that’s what i love most about toaru majutsu…the fun and endearing interactions between the characters. the first ep of the second season i enjoyed because there wasn’t TOO much build-up, and index and touma were cute as always. when touma gets to be by himself he gets too long-winded. here’s to hoping that the next arc will feature more index and less monologue :f

    ruthie
    Reply

  12. This episode has completely reminded me of the only two things that made the show worth watching: BiriBiri and Accelerator. I’m probably gonna drop the show entirely if they don’t get some attention soon 😛

    Lee
    Reply

  16. Reading the novel, I think it ended the way it did because the author wanted desperately to equate the festival to the normal and free lives of the people in academy city.

    He wanted to end it in such a way to show that what we, the viewers, considered insignificant in the fight (hard work of people like Seiri in making the festival, desire of normal people like Himegami to just have fun, the parents wanting to see their children etc.)is what actually beat the villain. Something like a karmic twist for people like Orianna and Lidvia whose plan was to basically ignore the sentiments of the normal people (kind of what the viewers did when they expect the hero to solve everything).

    Cronus
    Reply

    1. I was hoping for a complete ass pull by having Touma find the location of Croce di Pietro and have Mikoto railgun it… It would have been totally aweshum… like what happened in Transformers.

      Suppa Tenko
      Reply

  17. if Kamijou left the bad guys alone, they would fail anyway; what irony that Academy City was in the brink of danger, while actually saving itself.

    I didn’t even need to watch the subs what was happening too.

    I hope they intoduce Itsuwa soon; she’s the one reason why I keep coming back for this series.

    Karis
    Reply

  18. Irony in it’s greatest form; personally I think Aleister Crowley knew all along that the Night Parade would cover the the sky and prevent the Croce di Pietro from activating, and purposely left Touma (as well the guy working for him and Stiyl) to challenge them.

    Gaze of Providence
    Reply

    1. It’s more like he wanted his greatest weapon Touma to get more experience in battles. Kind of what he was saying towards the end where says something about the Image Breaker is developing nicely yet still unstable. He has a keen interest in Touma and will use him in any way possible. As for Stiyl and his people back in season one. Aleister Crowley wanted magicians to be involved otherwise it would break the balance of truce that everyone sort of has right now. You can reference back to season one beginning of the deep blood arc.

      SilentCid
      Reply

    2. Besides Touma being turned around in circles by Aleister and Laura, the same can be said for Lidvia, as she had no idea she was being goaded by them into executing such a plan, not knowing she was merely a pawn used to level up their most powerful trump card – Touma.

      Otherwise I cannot think of why Lidvia would not have anticipated the fireworks when setting the activation time for the Croce di Pietro.

      Kinny Riddle
      Reply

  22. one day a scene like this will happen

    ~styl gets injured by random antangonist~

    Touma says to antagonist “I hate seeing people hurt etc etc”
    Antagonist says ” I have a goal to accomplish no matter what etc etc”

    10 mins of monologue later

    Touma says to antagonist ” I will end you here! etc etc”
    Antagonist says ” your friends dead btw”

    Touma yells “styl NOOOO!!!”
    ~Touma falcon punches random antagonist and proceeds to another 5 min of monologue of how he could have saved Styl

    End of Ep XXXX

    CommiE
    Reply

  23. This series started good but it ended up like horrible. They dragged the episodes too much like Haruhi’s endless eight. And they made Toma use too many cliche lines over and over again and yet hardly was able to convince the message (although we already knew the message).

    banzemanga
    Reply

  24. It was an interesting episode, but why the hell did she do that https://randomc.net/2011/01/07/to-aru-majutsu-no-index-ii-13/, i mean she had the clearly advantage, and should have figured out by now how the power of Touma works = its pointless. Given how it all ended it wouldn’t had made any difference if Touma had lost ( as if 🙂 or time were running out.
    I don’t like it when Touma or any protagonist wins because of the stupidity of the enemy.

    Eldaron
    Reply

      1. Oriana actually had Touma cancel that ball of light just so it would cause a backlash effect (as is the reason why he is reluctant in touching magic related stuff if someone other than himself is involved, like Stiyl and Seiri being affected by the counter-spell in the 9th episode) and explode all over him, you can obviously see Touma nearly fainting because of this and with Oriana going in for the kill.

        Gaze of Providence
        Reply

      2. I wasn’t clear enough sorry, i meant i don’t understand why she sacrificed all her “magic note” for a final attack. No one would do that (except in anime i guess). She had the upper hand (whit Stiyl down) so why risk everything?
        What you said makes sense tho, i knew Oriana planned him to use imagine breaker there, but i thought the explosion was an other spell. (she is like a mesmer in Guild Wars btw xD)
        Anyway i was just pissed of how little effect it had on Touma, and so it seemed kinda pointless to sacrifice everything.

        Eldaron
        Reply

      4. The simplest answer to that is Touma broke her illusions, by explaining to her that she gave up on bringing a perfect world to people by allowing someone else (Roman Catholic Church) to force their own standard of a perfect world.

        Basically, she was pissed at herself and probably didn’t want to fight anymore.

        Gaze of Providence
        Reply

  25. so when will mgic and religion cross? As much as I love this series, Im getting tired after this many episodes…. I just hope something better happens and Mikoto is actually used as a main character or something. Looking at the comments from the LN readers it doesnt seem that she’ll ever stand side to side with Touma when fighting.

    ahelo
    Reply

    2. For the last time, Mikoto is not a main character in Index. That’s what Railgun’s for.

      This entire season is for building up tensions between the magic and the science side.

      Suzushina Yuriko
      Reply

      1. Actually, she is. She’s a protagonist from the science side, otherwise we wouldn’t be getting both sides. And why would someone who isn’t a main character in Index even be allowed a spin-off if that were the case?

        Da5id
        Reply

  26. With friends like those, who needs enemies… Touma getting into the way of Styil’s Innocentius, wasting time on speeches, WTF?
    Oriana’s spell implosion bomb was nice touch.
    Double falcon punch for the stubborn enemies who refuse to yield to oratory?
    As much as Catholics were remorseless in their attempt to conquer Academy City, I think Laura out-matched them with final plane sabotage. In real world such actions would lead to brink of the war, BTW…
    And it seems Mr Crowley is out to make Touma’s Imagine Breaker into something even more powerful.
    It seems post-action antics of the haremettes was most fun part of the episode. And it does speak volumes in the words of such fighting action scene addict like me.
    2 words: Love bites!

    ewok40k
    Reply

    1. Styil made it clear there would be a blood bath. Face it Touma is Superman with Batman’s no kill policy. Unlike A Certain Accelerator. Touma also having a Spiderman sense of responsibility. He doesn’t have a ambition to save the world and such but he’ll protect those around him and for those asking help. Various organizations are assessing Touma as threat not only with his hax ability to render the super natural moot but also the allies and friends on both sides he is gathering.

      ReddyRedWolf
      Reply

  28. I can’t decide whether I’m still enthusiastic about this series or not. On the one hand, Touma’s typical cliched shonen-speak is rapidly approaching unbearable levels; on the other hand, he channels this energy into hilarious punches that make me believe the series’s writer/director has serious wifebeating fantasies.

    So, is annoying dialogue and pointless exposition worth sitting through for the chance to see an angsty teenager wallop more bitchy women?

    caramel_cod
    Reply

      1. No, if you go back to all the earlier episodes; Touma never used cliche lines until here. Touma is supposed to be the “I don’t care, i will do what is right” type of person who speaks less and do more. The wizard woman was supposed to be way stronger than Touma like Accelerator but it didn’t fell like that. Rather, it felt like Touma got weaker. And unlike the fight with Accelerator, Touma punches are comboless and wimpy and only using his right fist here when he should be using strategy.

        banzemanga
        Reply

  32. Touma just wants to see Styl bleed, I know it! and to be honest I’m not much a fan of Styl myself… hate the “If you make her cry I’ll beat you” type of characters.

    Poor Oriana but she earned it. Just stay still biatch!

    Lectro Volpi
    Reply

  33. Lidvia is probably still alive (and very happy).

    If she was able to create a Holy See by stabbing the pilot with the Croce di Pietro in free fall, it would have changed the territory in question (a corpse falling at 55 m/s) to be beneficial to the Roman Catholic Church both spiritually and, more importantly at the time, physically.

    CannibalTree
    Reply

  35. The problem with the Night Parade is that we only got a foreshadowing that it could happen because of Himegami. Now, unless I missed it in the past episodes, there was no indication that the Night Parade was a bunch of fireworks. If that had been stated at any point, and perhaps a few more hints of what it was about, then I think the ending for this arc would’ve been acceptable.

    And I’m kinda disappointed that they didn’t animate Touma and Miss Festival Breasts having the girl walking in on the naked guy scenario. I like her and want her to have more screen time.

    Dorian
    Reply

  37. Really, I’m not even going to try and attempt to convince people to change their minds because they’ll always be complaining about SOMETHING in Index. Even though I know the last arc will be incredibly awesome, I’m sure people will complain about it then as well.

    I thought this was an excellent arc that ended great. I liked the irony that the Daihaseisai they were wrecking ended up thwarting their plans in the end. Lidvia got her just desserts even if Touma didn’t punch her – I think being thrown out of a plane and being forced to choose between saving a magical artifact of immense power and saving a life is a pretty just punishment.

    The only thing I didn’t like is that they used Stiyl’s runes for the plane scene, and even that I can overlook.

    Suzushina Yuriko
    Reply

      1. Her intention was to save both, since Laura pretty much challenged her that she could not save both the cross and the pilot. This is because she also has this fetish where she desires greater obstacles to face her, as she delights in conquering that said great obstacle.

        Splat effect is an exaggeration, though completely justified since the cross pretty much very hard and could apparently crack through concrete.

        Show Spoiler ▼

        Gaze of Providence
        Reply

    2. I was like that with High School of the Dead.

      “There is too much fanservice” You were warned beforehand.
      “Characters behave in an unrealistic way” really? in “live movies” they act as if they never saw a freaking zombie movie/book/legend before! “He was attacked by a zombie. We must try to heal him and keep him close to us!”. At the very least in HSOD they are like “It is like in that movie/book/manga”.

      But I realized I was a whiner myself with my: “Why you don’t you like it? it’s the best show!” kinda thing.

      Lectro Volpi
      Reply

    3. One cannot please all, that is human nature after all.

      Anyway, loved this arc to death, ESPECIALLY the massive trolling by Touma (in essence it was Aleister’s doing) on Lidvia, Laura on Lidvia and of course the author on the readers.

      Gaze of Providence
      Reply

  38. Has anyone else noticed that despite the whole “Science meets Magic” premise that they mention in eery preview, the ONLY character that we have ever seen interact with both science and magic is Touma? Not once have we seen Misaka vs a magician, or kuroko, or the sisters, or for that matter Stiyl vs anyone with an ability. We’ve basically got two separate casts with a small overlap of one character in action. The closest we have seen Misaka or Kuroko or anyone with an ability to anyone who’s a magician was that funky dodgeball game, and it’s not like she knew what it was, she was just there. I want to see Kuroko or one of the sisters have an embolism because they are seeing magic, but it can’t exist, etc. Or Anti-skill getting their asses handed to them by a mage, having no idea how this is happening because the person isn’t in the ability database.

    Void
    Reply

  39. quote
    “The only thing I did take away was how ruthless the Anglican Church can be in response to the Roman Catholic Church’s actions, as Laura sent Lidvia flying out of a plane and more or less toyed with her while she plummeted to her death with the Croce di Pietro. In terms of plot, I just hope this means the “crazy bitch” is dead. ”

    That was the only part I totally enjoy in this entire arc, crazy bitch deserve to die, I totally hate religious frantic like that, saying they act in the name of god, trying to change ppl when no one as them to, what give them the right to change how one live their lives. If I have a say in how this end I would have made laura humilated her more and toy with her even more just to rub it in her face.

    Mike
    Reply

  44. @DIVINE: “Given how this arc went, I’ll have to retract my statement about it being nice not having Index as the focus for a change, because the goofy interactions at the hospital quickly reminded me that more screen time for her would’ve made things more enjoyable.”

    Didn’t Touma and Stiyl avoided to spend the whole night chasing the Amakusa (first arc) because Index knew about the spell only works on midnight and told them to not do so? This time was the same situation and Touma showed how much of a idiot overprotective guy can be over Index.

    Still, I can’t understand why Japan loves to throw us their annoying festivals as if they were something new when every anime series has them. This was the sports festival. I fear the cultural festival :S.

    Wilfriback
    Reply

  45. it’s kind of lame that while watching the whole thing, at the back of my mind, i already know that the fireworks would end up saving everyone. felt like a waste of time. i wish they could have shortened this one and made the misaka/sisters arc a bit longer. 🙁

    shinai
    Reply

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