A Certain Magical Index II #12 — Cellular Phones

December 24th, 2010

 

Hang up, you pissant fools.

Impressions:

JC Staff should be ashamed to make episodes this terrible. It would also help if this arc wasn’t bad to the point where it’s amusing again. It feels like it’s been going on forever, can’t make up its mind whether Touma’s really pissed off about random people getting temporarily zapped or just minorly annoyed when friends have their insides torn out, and in the end, is about a sword that’s not a sword that gives Christians +10 creep growth on unclaimed tiles. All this during some pithy little sports festival.

In any case, while a couple past episodes have been bad enough to still be amusing in a twisted way, this one was almost completely just bad. Perhaps the characters should spend less time on the phone. Eleven of the first twelve minutes is spent watching talking heads on cell phones. They aren’t even trying to make it engaging in any way, just a flat out dump of blather. After that, it’s another 6 minutes or so before the dynamic trio takes a train to go to the final fight whereupon Tsuchi immediately grabs what is essentially an electric fence. Thank god that the brief bit of action at the end didn’t totally blow and Oriana’s learned that one can beat Touma just by kicking him in the gut. I suggest just skipping to the 19 minute mark for the brief little fight and Touma’s usual morality speech. It’ll also save you the potential aneurysm from trying to understand this plot.

Preview:

If his mouth is full of blood, he can’t be preachy. …I wish.

Posted in Index | 25 Comments »

25 Shouts From the Peanut Gallery

  • Twi says:
    December 24, 2010 at 8:18 am

    Okay, I may be a fan of the Light novels, but they really are dragging this along too much. I want them to get to volume 16 this season…

  • Pablo-kun says:
    December 24, 2010 at 8:21 am

    Oh J.C. Staff how I used to love you~

  • Wilfriback says:
    December 24, 2010 at 8:23 am

    Hey Twi, thats too much asking, at least wait a confirmation the PV was nice eye-candy.

    “It’ll also save you the potential aneurysm from trying to understand this plot.”
    Many of those who watch the anime have read the novels already so I think understatement about how is going the anime is better for them rather than for those who only watch the anime, which is a form of publicity.

  • Nanaya says:
    December 24, 2010 at 8:37 am

    Aroduc, I can’t wait to see your reaction to how this is resolved.

  • Solaris says:
    December 24, 2010 at 9:23 am

    *__* Wilfriback, another VIP from baka Tsuki!! Hello^^

    @Aroduc. This hide and seek game went on for two full novels, you know? Bit by bit they are revealing how the hell is that stab sword and how it worked. Is it really that bad?

    If one, i’d rather complain on how the visuals are getting bad. I mean if you compare it to last arc they seem two different shows. Even chars are drawn out differently from before, and now they just look ugly …

    • Aroduc says:
      December 24, 2010 at 12:17 pm

      Source is not sacrosanct. It is not automatically good for including bad things or things that do not adapt well across mediums.

      • Solaris says:
        December 24, 2010 at 2:10 pm

        Yes, but they are indeed following original novel’s story quite faithfully, without changing any major event. Actually there’s no need to change that.
        As for i always find you complaining about “talking heads”, that’s expecially one of tose stuff it’s hard to adapt into animation. Pity, cause explanation and talking are the basics for understanding Index’s world. That is to say they can’t cut if off completely without loosing half of the plot. Just bear with it, and notice how they actually did a good job reducing talking heads a lot from the last season.

      • Joel says:
        December 25, 2010 at 9:09 am

        @ Solaris All you’re doing is confirming that the novel version of this arc was just as terrible as what we’re seeing here.

      • Wilfriback says:
        December 25, 2010 at 10:34 am

        @Joel: If you mean the stupid festival being overlaped with the magicians doings, yes, you are right. IMO, among the arcs from the novels this is the worst arc because it was expanded for 2 novels instead 1, which would have been enough, but no, somehow they wanted to please the fans of secondary characters like Mikoto, Kuroko, etc.

      • Solaris says:
        December 25, 2010 at 4:25 pm

        The theme of this arc is the sport festival.
        The sport festival is quite unique in the Academy City, and resembles an esper war more than fair plays.
        Just notice this Touma’s peculiar version of the peculiar festival: Hide and seek with magicians.
        The premise and plot here are rather simple: Just stop ebil magic user whatever they’re doing in the Academy City.
        But, as they run after Oriana, piece of the plot have been revealed. Every episode ended with something new.
        So you can’t actually say nothing happened in these past 5 episodes. Magic fight too were rather nice, with Oriana using new spells every time.
        Ok, there was that hole last time when Touma just forgot to nullify Oriana’s spellcards soon after he defeated her, but let’s go on and resume the race.
        All the pieces are on the board now and we’ll have the last fight with Oriana next episode, but i urge you to think about Lidvia. What’s she doing? What was Oriana’s plan running left and right gor the whole city?
        Be prepared to the last trick next friday.

      • Aroduc says:
        December 25, 2010 at 5:06 pm

        Whatever you’re huffing, it cannot be legal.

      • Twi says:
        December 25, 2010 at 9:39 pm

        I hope the civil war arc is faster….with more action scenes. If they get there.

        I love Index series more than Railgun, and I tolerate the talking since it’s something that I can actually understand, but this is taking too long.

      • Solaris says:
        December 26, 2010 at 7:12 am

        Twi, i remember the teaser showing events up to the 13th novel. I doubt we’ll see anything about the civil war (17-18). They will need another season to get there. And another more for the WWIII. (actually i hope you’ll finish translating the novels at Baka Tsuki before that :P)

    • longhaul says:
      December 24, 2010 at 1:02 pm

      you have to admit the character art was significantly better this episode than the last two

  • Mesousa says:
    December 24, 2010 at 9:31 am

    This week in A Certain Magical Touma…

  • kobester says:
    December 24, 2010 at 7:00 pm

    Animation in the first season rocks, while here in the second plummeted…

    i wish xebec just animated this along with mm!

    • Anonymous says:
      December 25, 2010 at 11:32 pm

      Implying that the animation in the second season hasnt been clearly superior so far if you removed episodes 10 and 11.

  • alex says:
    December 25, 2010 at 7:58 am

    do you start to miss squid now ? :)

  • Malkuth says:
    December 26, 2010 at 9:58 am

    “… gives Christians +10 creep growth …”

    HILARIOUS!!!

    Also 2/3 times Aisa showed up she died?

    As for the current arc, just enjoy Orianna’s character design, since the author changed his mind too many times about what the plot will be, while writting vol. 9

  • Yue says:
    December 27, 2010 at 5:54 am

    Where’s ACCELERATOR when you need HIM?

    As a Catholic, there are better Roman Catholic representatives to highlight as opponents like high priests, bishops, cardinals, monks, etc,.

    [Imagines]
    A Certain Megalomaniacal Accelerator.

  • ubu says:
    December 28, 2010 at 1:41 am

    I think one battle between Touma and Orianna got left out, but I agree about the weakness in the source material. This is where I really started having my doubts about the series, and book 13 kind of sealed it. And someone have Kuroko spayed so she’ll stop going into heat every time she sees Mikoto.