Toaru Majutsu no Index III

Asheath

I don't even know why I watched this, you can't keep up with ANYTHING. Random characters keep appearing out of nowhere and you have no idea who are they, angels? gods? people fighting among each other? I really liked the previous seasons I don't know if it was because I was dumb enough to like anything or because it was better, and after watching this I don't even feel like re-watching the old ones anymore. What a wreck. Art: 7/10 Gotta admit it's okay, J.C never fails to impress. The characters looked memorable and the abilities graphics looked nice, sadly it's nowhere near as good as Railgun combat animations but it's better than previous Index seasons I guess. Despite everything, this is one of J.C's strengths in my opinion. Story: 3/10 Nothing makes sense. I think you have to watch the visual novel to understand anything but that is no excuse for this poor writing. An anime series needs to stand up on its own otherwise just make it a TV Short or a teaser to that novel. No matter if the story is good or not I think it's poorly executed. Sounds: 7/10 Fine I guess, isn't exactly anything to write home about, and I didn't notice any amazing OST either, might have been cause I generally didn't like the series so don't quote me on that. The ending song was okay though. Characters: 3/10 There was absolutely no character development at all. If you watch the characters on their first appearance and at the end of the anime they all act and think the same. Except the "bad guy" as usual cause godmode Kamijo Toma punched sense into him. I wish Misaka showed more action she literally did absolutely nothing, she is supposed to be #3 esper for god's sake. The whole anime doesn't need to revolve around her like Railgun series but come on, the little Misaka had more camera time than the original one. Enjoyment: 2/10 Watching this anime is painful. It's so painful that every episode I thought about dropping it. I gave this one point cause it made me smile every now and then at the absurdity of everything that was happening, I'm glad I had friends to talk to so we could mock this writing and it brought us something to talk about. The second point was for nostalgia, it brought back some good days around the time I started watching anime, good old days. Overall this is not worth watching, save your time if you're thinking about picking it up.

Aniosophy

img700(https://i.imgur.com/IjJNlob.jpg) - __Unpopular opinion: But season 3 of Index is not only the best season of Index so far, but is the best installment in the entire anime franchise thus far (other than Railgun T), and I genuinely do not understand why this season gets so much hate.__ __Prefix: __ I just want to preface this post with that I watched this installment for the first time as a part of the chronological rewatch I did to help me make the Railgun/Index infographic I made and posted last week. So that might be the main reason why a lot of this season did not seem convoluted to me, (to be fair honestly most of Index is already convoluted), but this season, because I watched all the other installments before this, I could fairly easily follow along with what was going on, plus, honestly, by comparison, this season really is not as convoluted as previous ones. img500(https://thumbs.gfycat.com/CrazyLegalHeron-size_restricted.gif) - __Here is why I think season 3 is the best installment.. Yes, there are spoilers, sorry.__ __Story:__ I genuinely do not understand how people can say this season of Index somehow has a less interesting story than the previous ones, because this season improved SO MUCH not only on the story structure for the entire season, but just how the stories are developed within each arc. My biggest complaint from the previous two seasons of Index, was that not all of the story arcs made it a priority to get you invested in what is going on, sometimes they would portray a story that was very personal, making it at least somewhat interesting to the audience. Yet other times, story arcs would not only be too short to develop any investment on the part of the audience, but also would throw in a variety of new characters into these stories, only for them to be gone within the next 2 episodes, making it nearly impossible for me to ever care about what is going on in these instances. This was the main improvement usually noted when comparing Index to Railgun, because the majority of Railgun stories make it a priority for you to be invested personally in the story that is being told, and this trend seemed uniform when comparing Index to Railgun, that is until we finally get to Index season 3. img500(https://64.media.tumblr.com/eb55f1a2574eca1a6fd9c18f0fbf10cf/tumblr_pg5m14PvYj1w0hrkno1_500.gifv) - The first major improvement, is that the story arcs in season 3 ACTUALLY CONNECT, there is an overarching story throughout the entire season, which is something that has been sorely lacking in previous seasons, with story arcs only loosely being connected previously. Additionally, not only is there an overarching story within this season that makes it particularly more interesting compared to previous ones, but it also retroactively makes previous meaningless story arcs better, by putting in characters from story arcs (that before this) were never shown again. Second, a majority of episodes in this season are split between three different concurrent storylines, which drastically improves character dynamics, since some of the characters in this franchise have personalities that are much more enjoyable in smaller doses (cough Toma, cough Accelerator). img500(https://64.media.tumblr.com/035ca7769d05252bc03dc56d2bf3c2b3/tumblr_mz0sbbQdhB1shp8p8o1_500.gif) - Third, in some instances, story arcs this season are significantly expanded on when compared to previous seasons, giving the audience actual time to watch these characters develop, and become invested in these story arcs before they are concluded. So many times before this season we would have story arcs that would throw so much new information into such a small time frame that the entire story arc became a chore to watch, specifically, the La Regina del Mare Adriatico Arc, Kazakiri Hyoka Arc, and the Deep Blood Arcs from Season 1 & 2 were especially ultimately meaningless while watching the series. This is why I feel it is such an improvement in season three that story arcs are not independent from one another, but instead are interlaced throughout the narrative of the season, because it makes it much easier for me to get invested in the overarching story this season is trying to tell. While I feel these drastic differences in storytelling might put off some people who were used to how the story was being told in season one and two, I feel, this was a much-needed improvement for the longevity of the franchise. img500(https://pa1.narvii.com/7084/a5bbec64aa01141757da4251f2dad12e5d568d9ar1-500-281_hq.gif) - __Pacing:__ This is a separate part because a lot of people on the reaction board for this season were complaining about the pacing, and although it is a little fast in the final arc, I genuinely feel the rest of the season’s pacing was very well done. The only arc that I feel was slightly rushed was the World War III arc, but honestly, I feel they did the best they could in the time they had. Not only does this arc have the longest episode count in all of Index (which is what most likely pushed them past the regular 24 episode count per season), But they even regularly took out the OP and the ED of episodes to utilize as much of the episode as possible to tell this arc’s story, so except for the exclusion of some of the Mikoto’s stuff, I feel the arc was handled relatively fine. img500(https://pa1.narvii.com/5868/cb9bd24011047cdb8ce67da34fa927acfc01eaf0_00.gif) - __Characters:__ Not only has the story been drastically improved upon this season, but also the overall approach to characters has also been drastically improved, when compared to previous seasons. when I see comments about this season like there are “too many characters” I genuinely question if you are watching the same series as me, because the entire Index franchise continuously introduces a multitude of new characters every story arc. I would argue, that this season the character introductions are much better because not only do they have more time to develop over the course of the season, but the characters we are introduced to already start off with motivations that we the audience can sympathize with from the beginning. This sympathetic aspect that has been added is even extended to the villains, with me actually understanding where characters like Acqua of the Back and the Second Princess are coming from, because their motivations at least somewhat makes sense, unlike previous villains who motivations were convoluted at best, or were completely nonsensical at worst. This doesn’t even bring up how some of the best characters this season are new characters, because with the addition of an entirely new perspective throughout this season, comes with one of my favorite focuses of this season, and that is the development within the ITEM team. Like, HOLY SHIT GUYS, a reoccurring character that has appeared in multiple installments of both Index and Railgun was killed off this season, not only that, but one of the only Level Fives in this ENTIRE story LOSTS AN ARM AND AN EYE, this development shows there are actual permanent consequences in this universe, which was something sorely lacking throughout the entire franchise before this. This one storyline is filled with so many mature “holy shit” moments during the season, that its inclusion alone makes this entire season (in my eyes) leagues above previous seasons of Index. img500(https://i.imgur.com/KwuE3sS.gif) - There are also characters like Accelerator, who before this season felt so one-note that it was becoming tiresome to watch his actions in the franchise, that is until this season, where we see him actually develop into a multi-dimensional character, instead of being a one-note “villain” doing “villainous” things. There is also Index, who has been relegated to the sidelines for the majority of this season, which (in my opinion) was a significant improvement for character dynamics, because her personality is one that is best applied in small doses, so for this season, I thought her appearances were just the right amount and were great. img500(https://i.imgur.com/llPn4sn.gif?noredirect) - Finally, let talk about Touma, Who throughout the entire series is so one note that is almost comedic at this point, however, this season (while his one-note personality does not really change) because his screen time has been drastically reduced, his personality actually becomes bearable and sometimes even enjoyable to watch. The only character That I feel got shafted this season was Mikoto, who unfortunately did not receive as much screen time this season as I was hoping. Overall, the drastic changes in how the story was told this season, made all the additional characters a welcome addition in my eyes, since many of the new characters actually got enough screen time to develop personalities that I found enjoyable to watch. img500(https://media1.tenor.com/images/8bb7c41ac6ad833af101f0e233f26ea0/tenor.gif?itemid=15230272) - __Conclusion:__ For all the reasons listed above and more (because I am literally at the character limit for the post), This is why I feel this season of Index is not only the best season of Index, but is also the best installment in the entire franchise so far, because it truly improves on all the aspects of the series that I wanted improved, while also maintaining the original good aspects of the series. Of course, season 3 is not perfect, one of my biggest disappointments is how little Mikoto is involved in the story throughout the season, and Touma personality is still just as hit or miss as every other season, but many of the new elements that were introduced this season really outweigh these cons for me. So while I do sympathize with the complaint that really this season of Index can only truly be enjoyed if you have watched all of the previous installments up to this point (most likely in chronological order so you do not feel like there is as big of a gap between installments), but for me, because I already embarked on this endeavor, that wasn’t that big of an obstacle. This is why I’m rating the series a 95/100, because it really was the epitome and culmination of what this entire franchise is all about. I am looking forward to the next installment in the franchise, and hopefully, we can get season 4 of Index faster than we did season 3😊😊😊 img700(https://pa1.narvii.com/7037/c5fae10d732e51e4b49869513a2e39c2d35c88b1r1-500-281_hq.gif)

Collaide

# A Certain Magical Index Season 3 - Review There is little merit to the third season of A Certain Magical Index. It seems like whoever is making the executive decisions on how the show is adapted actively tries to keep all the worst aspects of previous seasons. Before I delve deeper into the bad aspects of the show let me just quickly tell you what is NOT the problem. ____ __The Art__ Generally fine. The backgrounds are actually really good. Animation seems to be a step down from Railgun S & Railgun T, but still acceptable. __Voice acting__ The actors are doing their absolute best with the material they were given. (Sub). It's not their fault they were forced to voice this disaster of a show. __Sound & Music__ Seems pretty average for an anime but definately not bad. ____ __Cause of the main problem__ Apparently Season 1 of Index adapted 6 novels, and season 2 adapted 7. Season 3 coming in at 26 episodes and is adapting whopping 9 novels. As of episode 11 the show enters its FOURTH arc. This show just blatantly fastforwarding each and every episode in order to fit in these 9 novels. It doesn't slow down. Whatever the cause for this is - the publishing executives insisting on it, studio higher ups that are paranoid of not getting a 4th season, studio workers plainly not being interested - is a damn shame. This anime is nigh unwatchable. Nearly every casual fan I've seen in comments, forums, etc agree that it's too fast paced. It should at least bring down everyone's enjoyment by 25%. How the show plays out in practice is that, you are briefly introduced to an arc. Characters that you've forgotten the name of show up in half a scene, do something. You don't know why they do it. You don't know how they do it. You don't know when. And then someone else does something else. You don't know how that relates to Touma, or Accelerator or Academy city as a whole. You don't know the motivation of the things the characters do. The only thing you can possibly grasp about each arc is the bigger picture. Like "Oh this religious guy has angel powers and wants to win the war". The second arc (ep 4-6) is about infighting of the different dark groups in academy city. What I described is injected with steroids here. I cannot stress it enough but you don't know anything about anyone and just watch characters you have no relation to do weird shit. Prime example: The meltdowner suddenly trying to kill their own squad. Why does she do this? Do I need to rewatch the episode? Should I have a pen and paper ready so that I can pause and take notes? This is supposed to be entertainment right? People have told way more complicated stories in less of a complicated manner successfully. These different dark groups, have characters randomly betraying their own group or they were spies or whatever. And honestly, you don't know why. ____ __Old issues that are now impossible to overlook__ Harem. This show is already a slice of life, action, epic fantasy, mystery show. Why does it still decide to keep the Harem elements? Why does Touma constantly have to touch boobs, fall on boobs, walk in on people changing, more boobs, etc? Out of everything they skipped to fit in the 9 novels they decided to keep every single bit of fanservice and every single bit of "harem plot exposition". Why? Nobody knows! Apparently this condescending man attracts women. IF you're gonna have a harem, maybe you should give the protagonist a likable characteristic at least. If you are that horny just go watch Prison School or something. Plot holes. I will give you 3 examples. Tsuchimikado gets hurt when he uses magic because he's an ESPER now. Why did he try to learn ESP powers? Surely he could have just pretended to learn while keeping his magical abilities. And what is his ESP power anyway? We've never seen him use it! The second example revolves around the commotion in Academy city. In the other installments of this universe it's also prevalent but in episode 6 whole entire blocks get destroyed. There are mass shootings and random explosions all around town. 5000 soldiers are just standing in some bushes in a park. In a society this technically savvy, why do people in other parts of the city not know about it? Several blocks just exploded and you tell me nobody is inside the buildings and three blocks away people just sit and have a cup of coffee in a cafe? You've got to be fucking kidding! And everyone forgets about it instantly! The population is as daft as a bunch of fruit flies. The third example is Touma's invincible body. Unless the second half of the season revealed that Imagine Breaker also has the power to magically heal Touma of any injuries. He's been in the hospital more times than I can count. His injuries heal insanely fast. IN real life, sustaining that many severe injuries in short amounts of time can kill you. Not to mention organ damage etc. The running jokes. They're all boring. All of them. The characters. There are too many. The only characters that are given development throughout this series are Mikoto and Accelerator. In this installment the characters are not even introduced before they are phased out again! Characters have intentions that we are not made aware of, or they don't have intentions at all. It's impossible to tell the difference! We are often introduced to these characters so incredibly briefly that I can't even discern them. "Oh the third redheaded woman did something? What's her name? Oh the seventh blonde? Uhhhh, why is she friends with Touma? I thought she tried to kill him last season?" Index. Index hasn't done anything since the first arc in season 1. She is oblivious to what's happening about ESPers in Academic City. __Bad & Uninteresting writing__ Though ESPers and magic users are supposed to have some sort of international global conflict not once throughout the series has an ESPer ever battled a non-ESPer (Touma not included as he is neither?). I thought it would be really cool to see how the power system gets developed. A pyromancing ESPer vs a pyromancing magician. How would that work? How do they differ? How would the fight look? I think that's very interesting. But it never happens. It actually feels like two different anime universes but with Touma in the center of each. Misaka stumbled across the Asakusa magicians in one episode. But they just literally disappeared in the blink of an eye. She didn't understand what happened neither did we. She offered to help Touma once, he declined and then she arbitrarily decided "it would be best if I didn't help after all". I'm confused. Touma is limping; he's escaped the hospital and you're just gonna be like "Ah well he may be hospitalized and barely able to walk but if he needs to fight someone he ain't getting help." Like what why? It literally feels like the exact opposite of what Mikoto would do. Touma does the same thing every time. Someone should just use a normal sword or a normal gun and then he's defeated. Not that hard huh? I guess everyone trying to fight him ever ignored that fact. But we did see him dodging bullets in season 2 so maybe all of Touma's enemies would behave like Star Wars stormtroopers if they had guns, and like League of Legends creeps if they used a normal sword. The overarching plot is not made clear at all. Never are we given a summary of anything. Index seemed like a big deal in the beginning but now she's irrelevant. Aleister just sitting in his tube grinning for reasons unknown to any viewer. Christians attacking each other for no reason. Elaborate religious missions in Academic City for arbitrary reasons. We are never getting any reminders or external exposition of what's happening. It would be needed. Honestly having a narrator explaining things from a third person view would make this season so much better, and also improve previous seasons. Some help for us to keep track of the difference between the underground organisations, the goals of different churches etc. The way Railgun manages its story is much better. It's smaller, more isolated, but still has themes. Still has character development. Index 3 has barely anything of value compared to it's previous seasons. It's a trainwreck of a show. ____ This show would have gotten an even lower score, but certain aspects weighed it up for me. - Accelerator is cool and also badass. Seeing him fight is good, objectively speaking. - Misaka is a good character. I said it. Without these two aspects, I would have given this show a 5/100.

ACasualViewer

THIS REVIEW WILL CONTAIN A FEW SPOILERS I love the Toaru series, I really do, I have seen all the spin offs, read the novels, read the manga, will watch the third season of railgun and will watch the Accelerator spin off. Despite this I will be giving this particular adaptation of the show a low review, not because the source material is bad, but because its just a terrible adaption. If you want to actually enjoy this series, please just read the damn novels. This adaptation was basically JC Staff butchering the plot, stitching it back together incorrectly, throwing out important parts because hey we need to save budget for Misaka’s rear view camera angles, and then setting it on fire. Anyway, now that I cleared that up we can get onto the actual review. Story: 4 I have never seen such a poorly executed story in anime before, and I have seen that one isekai anime involving a Kirito clone and a smart phone. Nothing in the story actually makes sense, and this is from a novel reader who knows exactly what is supposed to be going on. The anime was already very fast paced in season 1 and 2 and those 2 seasons adapted 12 novels combined, while this season tried to adapt 10 at once, this lead to a great portion of the plot being cut out. The battle Royale Arc, one of the best arcs in the novel, with mind games, extremely well written fights, great conflicting motivations, was turned into an endless blood bath. What happened was a bunch of characters you don’t care about got killed, some soldiers got shot up, and all for a bunch of reasons that they don’t expand beyond a single line here and there. The British Halloween arc? One of the best political stories I seen in an LN, one that successfully predicted Britain in real life leaving the EU before it actually happened, was turned into a half ass coup by some bratty girl who was really tsundere about Great Britain. Don’t even get me started on the acqua of the back, arc with more focus on Misaka’s ass than the motivations on WHY acqua was in the city, how he got there, when in the timeline he got there, and why Academy City dint put him down as fast as possible. Also the exposition in this season was some of the worst, it was already bad in previous seasons, when they start explaining character abilities, half of it sounds like chuuni nonsense someone on drugs came up with, the other half shouldn’t even be included since it wastes a good portion of the episode with someone just talking. Would it be so hard to just simply explain their abilities, since clearly going into the origins of the abilities in depth won’t work in an ANIME, it works well in novel because they can dedicate 3 pages to something like that. They also don’t do this once, they do it like 30 times, every time some new character shows up. Art: 3 The animation is honestly disgusting, and I have seen shows released in 1998 that are much better looking, I am serious, we have scenes that look worse and more broken than that bad berserk adaption a few years back. The fights which in the novel were described as shattering mountains, tearing space, explosions in every colors as reality was distorted, had no weight to them at all. Most of the fights were just the characters talking, them using their abilities 2 or 3 times and then eventually one of them backed down or got knocked out. The effects for the abilities looked terrible, curtana was supposed to cut through space, what were those stupid cubes of jello???? Or how Accelerator’s black wings were not consistent between this season and last season, heck it wasn’t even consistent in the 2 fights this season alone. Also, what the heck were the gods right seat abilities, seat of the left had some weird look blade that moved slowly through the air, acqua’s speed was downplayed the entire time, fiammas holy right looked so ugly and did not do any of the cool sounding stuff it was supposed to, like teleport to the target and knock them out without force, oh by the way his sword was supposed to be 40KM long and on FIRE. This being said, the only reason the art gets a 3 instead of a 1 was because of the second opening, after seeing it though it made me even more angry, how can they make an opening so great visually, and then make a show that looks so awful after. The opening visuals were possibly top 10 out of 100s of series I seen, if JC staff is capable of that, then it’s clear it was not even a lack of talent but just laziness on why the show looked this garbage. The sound: 8 The openings were absolutely amazing I will admit that, and the soundtrack is as good as ever, I guess they managed to get one thing right. I have nothing bad to say here, the sound effects used were interesting even if it was not consistent with the previous season, and I really enjoyed the soundtrack that played during major fights. Characters: 2 Accelerator became the epitome of edge and stupid justifications instead of a well written anti hero, the MC became an endless platitude generator who quotes basic lines about justice and punches out his enemies without understanding their view point, and hamazura apparently survives every situation by luck. This is essentially how the anime adaption portrayed them, one dimensional cardboard characters with no nuance, who can’t think beyond the most obvious solutions to their issues, and who win by luck or plot armor. I will tell you that the novel does not do this and the characters are much more likable but I think I already said this enough, the character writing and development in the series is just awful. Another issue in the series is that they add like 100 new characters without developing any of them, some of them genuinely have great character designs, interesting abilities, and look really cute or cool. However, we will never get to know them because they either die, or are forgotten about in the next arc, and you don’t care much about them because the show skipped any significant development or backstories for the characters. Also outside of fan service some of the most popular characters got no screen time, we dint even get to see Misaka do anything substantial or have any of the Academy city students show up outside of 3 minutes of screen time. Enjoyment: 5 I really wanted to enjoy this series, since the source material is something I love, and I was looking forward to seeing this anime. However I just could not get myself to like it for the most part, I know the story from the novel and could barely follow it, I feel sorry for anime only viewers who likely understood nothing through the entire show. Now I wouldn’t say I hated all of it, but a majority of it except some highlight scenes were pretty bad. I used to like JC staff as a studio, however after this adaptation, and whatever they are doing with Date a Live 3, they are garbage to me. All I can hope for is that the railgun season 3 director manages to put on a good show despite the studio, like he did last time with railgun s. Overall: 5 I give this show an 5, it was really hard deciding whether or not to give this show a lower score since it was very bad and disappointing, however I will give it a 5 just because I love the source series, and because I rarely ever give a show under a 7, if its under a 7 on my list it means the show it hot garbage and I would never recommend it.