A Certain Magical Index II is the second season based on the light novel series. It is 24 episodes long. The anime takes place in Academy City, which is known for its Espers, who are people with special powers. Their adversaries are Magicians, who can use magic. While both have powers and seem similar, they are different and the biggest difference is that Espers cannot use magic otherwise their body will die. These magicians are usually from a religious origin, and they constantly infiltrate Academy City, which is known for its science.
It mainly follows Toma, whose right hand has the special ability to negate any Esper ability or magic. This leads to some satisfying scenes where to his opponent’s surprise, Toma would be able to punch his way through his opponent’s defense, surprising them. The satisfaction doesn’t last long since that is all Toma ever does. Toma’s paired with Index, a young nun who has 103,000 grimoires stored inside her head. This isn’t important anymore and is rarely mentioned. The first season had Toma saving her and as a result, they are living with each other although their relationship has become somewhat complicated. Sometimes Index shows she cares for Toma, other times she gets annoyed really easily and bites him. Sometimes she’s understanding, while others she is an absolutely nuisance and a stubborn idiot.
Despite Index supposedly being an important character and a lot of the plot arcs having her as the target, you can’t help but feel that she’s… a bit superficial, like an extra character. She doesn’t feel like she is actually central to whatever’s going on. Her powers and personality flip flops as well, in one scene she’s naive and clueless, in another she exhibits a crazy amount of power.
The first season was pretty average and the second season doesn’t inspire much confidence either. Odd characters are still infiltrating Academy City, whether they are targeting Index or for other reasons. Toma will inevitably get involved, either willingly or forced, it doesn’t matter since he acts the same way. That’s the problem, Toma is predictable and does the same general things, spouting the same paraphrased lines, every single time. Toma ends up being a one-trick pony with his right fist. This is quite disappointing since he ends up relying solely on it with no variation to his techniques. There are only so many times you can watch him punch a magical attack to dispel it without feeling sick of it.
The problem with Toma is that he’s a bland character that lacks a clear motivation for the things that he does. He justifies everything as just wanting to save his friends, the city, or pretty much anyone in trouble but this is lazy writing. He barges his way into every single situation without much thought.
The various story arcs feel disjointed as well, since all the time spent on exposition isn’t actually used to properly link the various plot threads together. There are confusing or poorly explained connections between the characters and the current situation. One notable change in this season is the increased fan service, and this is not a good thing. It’s constantly inserted into scenes which make the attempts feel lazy and uninspired. There is a tendency to focus on the younger characters, which can be a bit creepy to say the least when it’s done this more.
The season turns more and more into a generic harem anime. The two main focuses are Index and Masaka, with a lot of teasing between Toma and Masaka. Granted, Masaka is probably the best character of the show along with Accelerator but it makes it seem as if Masaka is obsessed with thinking about Toma. This isn’t like her character at all when she was introduced, and it portrays Toma into a clueless idiot. It gets worse when so much time is spent on Toma being super vague about something. He’s say that he’ll tell Masaka later, when everything would have been resolved right then and there if he had used that wasted time to just say it directly. The city must be very small too since the characters are constantly bumping into each other.
The same gags are repeated endlessly. In nearly every episode you’ll have Index biting Toma, or Toma accidentally seeing Index or another one of the female cast while they were changing or showering. Toma gets hit by other female characters when it’s an accident. While these scenes are amusing the first couple of times, like everything else, it soon gets sickening when you realize it never gets further than that. Everything is just so shallow, lacking any sort of substance that make these scenes actually enjoyable.
Overall, A Certain Magical Index II is another average anime. While the first season wasn’t that great to start with, the second season managed to strip away so many things of what made the series unique. What we get is a generic romantic / harem/ action anime that does nothing well. Toma manages to become even more unremarkable in terms of personality that he boils down to a character who’s popular with the ladies and saves the day by literally punching his way out of everything. Characters are so underdeveloped that you cannot care for them when the story hinges on that aspect in order to have the impact it’d wanted.
------------------------------------------------
For other anime reviews, have a look at this page.
