天下制覇

…Lost control, and tumbled overboard…

Impressions:

What this episode taught me is that if you ever want information spread to everybody and their mother, you just need to tell it to a mage, because they cannot help but blather out their life story to the nearest passerby given a moment’s notice. I was fairly underwhelmed all around by this episode. I think it was a combination of Wonder Bra Kaori’s initial ‘action’ scenes being her just standing still and using her Seven Flash attack, along with stock footage, about five times to cut Touma to ribbons. Sadly, it was more impressive looking when she lost her temper and began to just uncontrollably bludgeon Touma. At least Anti-Gravity Breasts Kaori is nice enough to look at.

The extended exposition in the middle of things probably didn’t help matters either. Alright, mages can’t help but be gregarious chatterboxes… fine, whatever. I wasn’t really hoping for a philosophical discussion of self in the middle of violent beatings. Index’s deal is that after all the magic crap in her, she has a very limited amount of brain left for day to day life, so once that gets filled up, she ‘dies,’ or more specifically, her brain gets reset. Excessively Perky Kaori and Touma have it out over the meaning of self, whether it’s in the memories or the heart (didn’t Kingdom Hearts:Chain of Memories have this exact same speech?) and blah blah blah how can you call yourself her friends yada yada everybody loves the cute little white marshmallow girl. At least it ended with a violent beating. There’s nothing that can’t be improved by a violent beating.

Don’t get me wrong though, while I was underwhelmed, it was still worlds beyond the previous episode. I was just expecting a little more action and a lot less exposition. They did a much better job all around in keeping the scenes moving and from feeling like they were dragging on by showing Kaori and Touma both reacting as the other one talked instead of just 10 minutes of a pair of heads. It was also nice to see Kaori pretty effortlessly kick the crap out of Touma after he’s manhandled the last two supposedly super powerful mages/espers. There’s at least something for him to strive for now instead of just relying on his magic buster and a strong right hook.

Preview:

Why does the preview make the next episode look like it takes place in a seedy bathhouse?