A Certain Magical Index II #16 — Girls With Plates

January 28th, 2011

 

Thanks, Kaori, we needed that.

Impressions:

You know, usually when shows skip their OP and ED, it’s because the episode is going to be super extra double ultra hyper mega tension heaven’s impact dramatic, not because they need a few extra minutes to show a girl holding a plate over her head and had to cram in a speech explaining the point to the arc. Bizarrely, this ended up being the least enjoyable episode of this arc for me. The villain and his spells were lame, the explaination of his evil evil plan was shoehorned in literally a minute or two before Touma arrived to punch him in the face and chest, and the ice golem things were just plain ridiculous. Seriously. After appearing, the first thing one did after appearing was comically try and fail to go through a doorway because it was holding a spear sideways. Plus, remember how I was complaining about Touma not randomly disintegrating parts of the ship last week? Well this week, he apparently could. Way to be consistent.

The action wasn’t really up to snuff either. It looked okay in parts, but any one of the Oriana matches was far better. Biaggo’s spells seemed limited to making small crosses large (destroyed by touching them), making small crosses move fast (an attack that worked 100% of the time!), and smashing people with pressure/gravity (an attack defeated by Touma holding his hand above his head from thirty feet away). He also had extendo-crosses that like all of his effective attacks, he only used once. They must have had quite the sale on gimmicky crosses at the old Vatican flea market that weekend. I’m also pretty sure that he got ripped off if Touma was able to deflect one of his giant crosses with his left hand too. What are they made of, foam?

Preview:

"Misaka thinks that Misaka could use some vagisil."

Posted in Index | 9 Comments »

9 Shouts From the Peanut Gallery

  • Wilfriback says:
    January 28, 2011 at 8:54 am

    Thats the flagship, which only seems to have golems as guards and no people inside it. So it needs the the fleet to protect itself.

  • Anonymous says:
    January 28, 2011 at 10:20 am

    That quote for the next episode made me bust out laughing.

  • Nanaya says:
    January 28, 2011 at 5:52 pm

    I think what is going on with the ice/Touma’s hand is that most of the ship is just ice that’s been shaped like a ship. In the case of the golems and doors, there is magic running through them to maintain their function, but otherwise it was just shaped by magic then left alone.

    Basically, unless it’s shape/function starts changing or it tries to repair itself, Touma’s hand is just touching a chunk of oddly-shaped ice.

  • TJ says:
    January 28, 2011 at 7:15 pm

    The first ice golem that got stuck at the door and then got stabbed the next golem was hilarious.

    Wasn’t too bad of an ending for an arc, but nothing outstanding either.

  • Aex says:
    January 29, 2011 at 8:00 am

    As always, “final battles” in this show involve way too much exposition. Otherwise, decent episode. I always love the Kaori moments since she’s just too damn cute and sexy at the same time, plus Orsola is just moe wrapped in nun clothes. “I picked up some extra luggage” lol! Next episode looks interesting with all those Misakas!

  • Yamibakeru says:
    January 29, 2011 at 8:00 pm

    I… think the villain made sense. Some bits. It’s like, now, the entire Roman Catholic Church is out to actively destroy Academy City? So a number of factions within the Church itself are taking action to target it? And then one of them uses crosses and rosaries. Hey, that’s cool. Dante used crosses, and he was cool. Other than the fact that he was totally ripping off Kratos. At least it made more sense than nibbling on slips of post it notes while making some sexual innuendo.

  • Arnod says:
    January 30, 2011 at 12:40 pm

    Another consistency fail:
    After Touma escapes by breaking a wall to another room, he somersaults into it and clearly uses both hands to do so.
    The floor should’ve dissolved like before when he accidentally touched it after getting buried by a cross and fell down.
    http://goo.gl/ZlKe8

    Only wonky explanation I’d take is that they were on the bottommost floor where it would make sense to not use fragile magic so that the whole ship wouldn’t sink if something were to happen to the spell.

  • Teddeh says:
    January 30, 2011 at 9:42 pm

    They explained it, it may be a cop-out, but Index said “Unlike the other ships this one has magic infused” or something like that.

  • Arnod says:
    January 31, 2011 at 2:23 am

    Yeah, I noticed that too while watching the episode.
    Easy to miss tho.