Anime/Manga Review: A Certain Series

Yo. I’m back to using this site as a means to relieve my literary steam. So… if you’re not into that stuff, keep calm and move along.

Anyway, where was I?

Ah yes, A Certain Magical Index/Scientific Railgun/Scientific Accelerator.

On the subject of Japanese media, I’ve recently gotten increasingly frustrated with the whole light novel-manga-anime translation routine. Light novels translate to anime faster than manga, and anime in general is faster than manga. Ergo, if an anime is based on a light novel, the manga is likely pitifully behind. If an anime is based on a manga, it is likely to catch up to the current plot in no time, which occasionally necessitates filler arcs while the manga runs its pace.

Both Index and Railgun fall into this issue; Index follows the light novel on which it is based, so the anime is far ahead of the manga, while Railgun’s manga release is agonizingly slow, so half of the episodes are anime-only arcs. Accelerator’s specific story is currently only told through manga.

The series follows a world filled with magic and science and their inexorable tension. A teen with the remarkably unique ability to “cancel out” both magic and science (in the form of psychic abilities) is thrown into the magiscientific political world when a nun suddenly appears at his doorfront. Cue the pew pew, the clones, the ships, and this ain’t Star Wars, bro.

The series is filled with tons of characters: a nun with over a hundred thousand grimoires memorized in her little noggin; an esper whose ability to generate and manipulate electromagnetism on an unparalleled level has generated a lot of underground and controversial activity; a sociopath whose capacity to control vectors would effectively make him an earthly god; a chick whose ability to teleport is only matched by her tenacity towards her female superior… The list goes on. There tends to be a ton of characters who have blatantly overpowered abilities, both on the magic and scientific side, which are usually kept in check mostly by their hubris or by the protagonist.

As for the story itself, on Index’s side, some of it is heartwarming and touching at first, but it soon becomes tediously formulaic: crazy antagonist wants to destroy Academy City (the scientific mecca in which the setting is most often), which probably involves using a hostage or some other person (usually female), to which the protagonist goes to beat the tar out of. Glorious speech here, funny stuff there, that’s the gist of it. On Railgun’s side, it’s usually about how the protagonist is trying to stop a series of unethical scientific projects that she inadvertently started when she was young, which soon appears to be a Sisyphean task; although the goal seems overarching, the objectives are nicely diverse.

Overall, it’s very much a fun series to watch/read. There’s a nice mix of lighthearted humor and dark, bloody horror as well as some nice action sequences. None of the three are top-notch in any of their quality, but it’s adequate. Some characters are more fleshed out than others. An overarching plot never seems to fully materialize, though I’ve heard that the light novel does eventually get into the meat of things.

If there’s one thing I definitely don’t like, it’s the harem theme. It’s frustratingly integrated into the storyline: a pathetic, oblivious dimwit with a heart of gold and the ability to negate psychic and magical abilities saves the girl, and then the girl falls for the hero. That’s really the gist of Touma’s existence. It’s not that bad so far, since a lot of the girls generally only have a passing interest in him. On the other hand, there are also girls who do fall for him who probably have no good reason to be falling for him.

Another issue I have is that, for a series named after Index, the lady in question rarely seems to be crucial in the thick of things, which is in itself peculiar considering in her mind contains the magical knowledge of a hundred thousand tomes of banned books. You’d think that someone with that kind of power would be a high-value target, but she’s rarely relevant.

Also the fanservice. The fact that most of the characters are teens or younger aside, there are times when these instances happen ludicrously often. There are characters who I’m convinced solely exist for fanservice reasons. Sometimes it’s nicely timed and does what it’s supposed to, but more often than not it becomes an annoying and detracting factor. (On a somewhat related note, some of the character’s ages are not very believable. For instance, a teacher looks like she could very well be seven, while some of the teens look amazingly mature.)

I personally like some of the characters, but it’d be pretty easy to point out almost trope-levels of stockiness in some of them, while others are just insignificant. How the writers had to balance out Accelerator shows how absurd some of the powers are; don’t try to explain to yourself how anything works, as there’s just a mess of rules and exceptions and rules to those exceptions and handwaves and defiance of logic and for some reason the nuns tend to imbue their clothing with magic, so when the protagonist lays his right hand on them, sudden fanservice moment.

In all, I’d say that the series is… acceptable. There’s a lot of tropes and cliches in play, the plot feels very… ’90s in terms of depth, it’s very much “good guys beat bad guys” kind of shtick, and it’s… well, very Japanese in media. The Railgun storyline seems much better than the Index one (although beware the crazy lesbian; it’s adorably funny in the manga, but it gets to unsettling levels in the anime). Give it a shot, or no. You won’t miss much, although there are more than a few gifs from the Internet that does require a bit of foreknowledge from the series.