To Aru Majutsu no Index III – 12

“Mercenaries”

「傭兵」 (Youhei)

Sorry for the delays! Christmas Eve till Boxing Day I’ve been spending with my family, and the few days before that were spent furiously compiling HTML codes for a certain project. A late Christmas present, if you must, and I’m sure you’ll all appreciate it when the time comes. Anyway, I hope everyone had a merry Christmas! I know I did. But enough with pleasantries. Let’s get on with examining the latest events in Raildex’s take on Glorious Britannia!

What I thought was sisterly affection between Carissa and Villian turned out to be a façade. Having deposed her mother Elizard as the UK’s ruler, Carissa immediately seeks to kill off her family — including poor Villian — to consolidate her newfound power. The knights take to the frontlines across the kingdom, clashing with the witches and suppressing the nuns in what could only be described as an all-out rebellion. And their venerable leader steps to the plate, happy to dirty his hands with the blood of a completely innocent girl. Fortunately, Acqua turns up to save the day. His timely arrival, which isn’t a surprise considering what flashbacks alluded to, prevents Villian from meeting a cruel fate. Unlike the Puritanical faction that abandoned her, William Orwell seeks to stand by her side even if it means taking on every British knight by himself. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like he’s recovered from his battle with the Amakusa Church and Hrunting also seems to be one heck of a special sword. I have a feeling we didn’t get to see everything Acqua could do, so I will be excited to see how he will tackle this seemingly disadvantageous situation. Or maybe he sacrifices himself for Villian’s sake? Hard to say, but I hope it doesn’t just end in one sided defeat.

I’d considered Knight Leader to be a man of integrity and worth. However, he answers to Carissa’s despicable tyranny and has no qualms with carrying out morally repugnant deeds. And he’s extremely strong as well, seeing how he easily defeated Kanzaki Kaori. Which makes me question why he isn’t trying to actively challenge destiny? His justification that it’s simply the best course of action for the country rings somewhat hollow, following his display of remarkable power. Aren’t there other ways of going about British interest which won’t result in so much short term instability, bloodshed and sacrifice? Maybe that’s a naïve outlook on the situation, because there’s nothing wrong with being confident in your ideals and beliefs. Also, that’s an arrogant assumption on my part that Knight Leader didn’t put much sincere thought into considering his various options, before settling with this particularly austere course of action. When fed up with an undesirable status quo, it makes sense to try something else in the hopes of changing things up. Additionally, we might know that Fiamma is up to something suspicious and could be pulling some strings. But that doesn’t mean anybody else within the Raildex universe does!

Now, although I’m quite fond of our Royal family, I’m not a hugely political person when it comes to the monarchy. There are arguments to be made for both the benefits they bring or the lack thereof. Anyhow, I’d like to talk about the Queen’s Christmas Speech. Say whatever you want about her Christmas message. But it impresses me how the Queen shows a propensity for dispensing greater wisdom in a single short speech than anything our prime ministers seem to manage within a year. Anyway, I’m not sure Elizard herself is wise. It seems odd that she’s heading straight back to London, instead of consolidating the ability to resist the rebellion through Necessarius and other factions e.g. Amakusa Church. However, I’m willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. There must have been a reason why she’s so desperate to head back.

Let me clarify one last thing. Coverage of Index is going to be handed down to better hands at some point around these couple of episodes. However, we both ended up being extremely busy for various reasons. I’ll be covering this episode, possibly the next. But the worst case scenario is that we’ll see a week being skipped. I’m sorry it turned out this way, especially with how delayed this post became. But it couldn’t be helped, apologies. And I’m quite sure you’d all prefer to see the Winter 2019 Preview come out earlier, right? Anyway, that’s about everything I wanted to discuss. As always, thanks for reading my post and hope to see you next time!

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