A Certain Magical Index [rating=3]

A Certain Magical Index

Complete Season 1

Synopsis
Kamijo is a student in Academy City, where people use science to develop supernatural abilities. He’s got a lot of heart, which is lucky for a young nun named Index. She’s on the run from a sorcery society that covets the astonishing library of magical knowledge in her memory. When Index stumbles into Kamijo’s life, he becomes her faithful friend and protector. Kamijo may be the weakest kid in Academy City, but he’s got something else going for him: the Imagine Breaker, an unexplainable power stored in his right hand that negates the powers of others. But when scientists and sorcerers attack from all sides, it’s Kamijo’s loyalty that will be his greatest weapon in the fight to keep Index safe.

In a nutshell without spoilers
As a continuation from the “A Certain..” series we see Toma Kamijo come face to face with new people with new abilities.
Toma is not new to different people with abilities as he himself is a low ranking esper with the power to negate practically all magic or power with just his right hand.
Throughout the season we see him come up against numerous adversaries which become friends. We also see him help solve several oddities.

Review with ratings
Okay so confession time: this is my first “A Certain..” anything anime, and on watching this I wouldn’t mind watching the rest, unlike some other anime that I’ve jumped in halfway through and felt completely lost enough to be turned away from the rest of those series; but this isn’t one of them.

Fighting
I’ll start with the fight scenes which can get very violent, however there aren’t many deaths out of those fights. The fighting is good though with the magic and esper powers is interesting and keeps us wanting to see more and more of it.
We have a plethora of fights in it, and nicely spread out. All in all a good full star.

Characters
The characters are an odd bunch as far as anime goes.
They develop the characters nicely through the anime but some seem like there isn’t much on them but they keep showing up, so there isn’t much on the backgrounds of each of the characters. Which is why I think the characters only deserve a half star.

Plot
As for the plot; there are several plotlines involved.
In 24 episodes there’s about 4-6 story arcs. This makes each arc short on episodes which is refreshing from the likes of Bleach, Dragonball whose Arcs can span 48 episodes or even longer. Again I’m going to give this a full star. It’s refreshing but at the same time they feel short lived and could be padded out a little more at least.

Extras
I won’t sugar coat the extras; there are a few commentaries, textless opening and closing themes, and the US Trailer. I can’t in good conscience give this a full star with these.
I know it is difficult for Anime released over on our side of the pond to get good extras.. but I’ve seen good extras!
So a half star.

In short three stars.
It doesn’t seem much but I did enjoy watching the series and if you too are in for something slightly different, or short story arcs, or if you are a busy busy person who doesn’t have much time to watch anime but still a fan, then this is a definite.

A Certain Magical Index Season 1 is another of Animatsu’s releases.
I can’t speak any higher of the work Animatsu is doing; for a company starting off so early yet still managing to get decent releases is nothing short of honest good work.

A Certain Magical Index is due to be released on September 14th 2014