Everything is solved with punching.

It never fails. As soon as I post something on what I think is going to be an idle day, some random OVA or DVD special pops up.

Impressions:

Well, it started out pretty well, then got increasingly self-referential until they were basically pimping Shana’s third season by the end of it. The first couple bits with Touma punching out Index and the wacky sound effects overlaid on the Accelerator scene were still pretty funny anyway, as was the bra clasp affair in the class room. But then all the visuals came to a complete half to just listen to the show talk about itself. Where’s the creativity, JC Staff? Shana-tan was built on the mountain of a dozen dead dogs. These Index-tan specials have just been weak in comparison.

Oh no! Drunk-Mom, Gun-Haver, and Stick-Wielder!

Impressions:

Man, I don’t even know what was going on in this episode either. Certainly much better than the last one, but still flailing in strange ways and pretty obviously cramming in a Touma speech just to make it feel like an ending. Either one of Accelerator’s fight with Lurch or the bizarre attack against Mikoto’s mom could have been stretched out to be their own episodes (say, in place of one of the many useless episodes that came before), and yet they still had time to dick around on the phone for five straight minutes and make jokes about Mikoto’s mom drunkenly molesting people in the streets. That should tell you how well paced the rest of it was. I’m all for decent action, and it was nice to see some from this show in its eleventh hour, but this was just vapid flailing. Hell, Touma argued morality with Stick-Wielder for easily a good three or four minutes. That guy only had about 45 seconds of screen time prior to getting talked at. Literally about 80% of his screen time was Touma telling him to be a better person. I don’t even think he had a name. Then Touma started glowing and punched him. God, I wish I was kidding.

Accel and Awaki’s fight against Lurch was pretty well done though. Accel remains ever the moron with his powers and continues to use the strategy of "if I can get close enough, I can slap him and wound his pride" approach, but at least he went for the gun when that didn’t work out as planned. Of course, he then rushed in and slapped Lurch once he had the advantage again. That whole segment does beg the question as to why any part of the previous arc couldn’t have been that well animated. Here we have some random antagonist that we’ve known for three minutes putting up a far better and more interesting fight than villains that were strung along for literally a month before collapsing of magical plot devices.

So, yeah. It wasn’t really much of an ending. They finished off Lurch by about the sixth minute, then introduced and finished up the epic saga of Mikoto’s mom in approximately 9 minutes, 7 of which were spent on the phone or telling some random guy with a telescoping baton to stop being so darn evil. I wouldn’t call it limping to the finish line, but I think it may have soiled itself somewhere along the way.

FYI, in case you forgot. No Freezing tonight. It’s final episode is now scheduled to be first broadcast on ATX next Thursday night (US time). Fun!

Final thoughts at the bottom.

Final Thoughts:

While I do think that the first season of Index was overly maligned for being excessively talking, it was an otherwise solid action show. Unfortunately, I really can’t say the same for this season. It was characterized by extremely poor pacing and very weak arcs where the two most major ones of the season that covered over half the show completely fizzled at the end of both. There was a pretty severe drop in the animation quality this season as well. While Touma was never good for much beyond hitting things, his opponents had creative and interesting ways to slap him around. This season though, Oriana was about the only one who managed to do something other than throw slow moving objects/energy balls or use invisible punches.

It was still okay, with enough watchable episodes to not really annoy me overly much, but this season was little more than that. If you weren’t a fan of the first season, there’s little reason to watch this one. I’m not sure I can think of anything that this season did better than the first. The villains are weaker, the arcs are much less interesting and more comically supervillain, there are few (if any) interesting new characters brought out with no real development for existing ones, and the production took a bit of a hit. It’s okay if you’re already a fan, but this season feels like it accomplished little more than keeping the franchise alive.

And yet I’ll still take a dozen more exactly like this over any more Railgun.

This episode was very very silly.

Impressions:

I have absolutely no idea what this episode was doing. 50% of it was spent on Accelerator getting lectured alternatively by brain (telepathy), by a dapper young gent, or by phone. All three of them were deliciously budget friendly and as tantalizingly boring as watching paint dry. I’m not sure that they reached double digit counts for frames animated in the telepathic recruitment speech or the later slum debriefing. Accel was also a CG magnet, attracting CG soldiers and CG hallways in between cocking guns with his face. I’m fairly certain that is not safe. Or practical. Then it was off to the slums for another long phone conversation and a little light man hunting because this is apparently how we’re ending the show next week. Hunting down some random guy in the slums. And the worst part is that even with all this blatant budget saving, the rest of the episode still looked dodgy as hell. I think Touma’s head was actively mutating through the episode.

The other 50% or so was Touma doing gag comedy. Yes, I am counting starting an episode with a dramatic touching insert song for Hyouka crying about how she doesn’t want to be a monster before that entire thing completely vanishes from the episode as gag comedy. I’m not sure what else to call it. I felt like I had missed five minutes of the show somewhere with how they just dumped me right into it and then dropped it again for about five straight minutes of watching Touma eat while a parade of women comically vie for his attention. Shouldn’t Index have gotten to at least say hello to Hyouka or something? Or maybe we could have had some resolution about the avatar for a demi-god now standing in a hole? No? We’re jumping forward to lunch at school? Uh, sure thing, JC Staff. Sure, there was some hubub on Touma’s side about a storm’s a comin’. But it’s hard to take that seriously while Aisa is doing slapstick and Fukiyose is basically sitting in Touma’s lap. Kudos to her for putting the goods at his eye level approximately six inches away from his face. He can’t miss ‘em now. Although I’m not sure if she’s just desperate to get him to notice her, or if the largest part of her is just being inexorably pulled in by the gravitational forces eminating from the dense singularity that Touma has somehow cobbled into a working brain.

FYI, GOSICK’s off for another week. It was planning to take a break after episode 10 anyway with a special in the interim. That’s what’s airing this week, and if there’s anything less intelligent than the show itself, it would be watching the people who are making that fiasco talk about it. God, I can’t wait until next season. Edit: It actually ended up being a clips montage episode. Even worse.

Preview:

I’m not sure I follow.

Don’t worry, Team Academy City, you’ll get the pikachu next time.

Impressions:

Not a horrible episode, but the same things that plagued the rest of this arc plagued this episode in terms of things jumping around and all the action being predicated on the more powerful side acting like complete prats. Everything was really well animated for the first three minutes or so, including Vento’s attacks being changed from slow drifting glowing balls into fast moving black holes kicking up debris, but it doesn’t change the fact that the Accelerator fight made no sense whatsoever. Well… Vento’s either for that matter, although she eventually remembered for a brief moment that her giant war hammer could be used as a war hammer, then completely forgot again and went back to using attacks that made her cough up blood. Apparently the technology used in the creation of war hammers is also too much for her to stand. Accelerator could only lose if he did nothing but try for hand-to-hand striking attacks, so of course, that’s all he did aside from one brief face ripping moment. Apparently losing a cheek isn’t worth mentioning to Kihara though. Like, seriously. Accelerator is holding an entire handful of skin, which is apparently little more than a scratch.

They did have to cram in the random usual stuff, but at least this time it was a little more character focused than world-building expositionally focused aside from Index’s magical healing song. You’d think Kihara would take a moment out from beating up Accelerator to think about the defenseless girl that started glowing and singing three feet away, but no. It only got really funny though when they decided to show him kicking an unmoving Accel for about 10 seconds while Index was chatting on the phone two feet away. Vento also started ranting about how science ruined her/her brother’s life out of nowhere, because all antagonists much have complex backstories, even if they have to spit them out 30 seconds before defeat. Of course, after the first few minutes, every time she attacked, she coughed up blood and dropped her weapon, including just before Touma punched her. I’m really not kidding here. They cut to an over-animated shot of Touma running, she attacks, he cancels it, she coughs up blood and drops her hammer, then after about ten more seconds of slow-mo Touma running, he finally hits her while she’s defenseless and already leaking copious amounts of fluid down her face. All three of the people there are dribbling morons.

And then Accelerator’s angel steroids kick in and he helps Kihara to blast off again. Cut to ED. Couldn’t you think of a way to make that less cheesy looking, JC Staff? Was the shooting star look really the way to go? How about a closeup of him beat up and/or on fire instead? I mean, you just launched him into the stratosphere by his face. I think a death like that deserves something better than a Team Rocket ending.

FYI, GOSICK’s broadcast has been cancelled today in Japan due to acts of God which I’m sure you’re all aware of. Even CrunchyRoll decided to cancel their broadcast of it. At the moment, GOSICK’s first scheduled airing in Japan right now is on Aichi TV on Monday.

Preview:

Some of these images are not like the others.

Get off the damn phones already.

Impressions:

Meh. I’m having a very hard time getting into this plot since they seem to have gone into almost full blown information dump mode without the characters having any idea what’s going on until after it’s happened, whereupon they feel the need to talk everything out to each other, often ended with one of them saying "I don’t understand what’s going on." At that point, some other random thing happens and they start the process anew. It’s moving too fast with too little weight put on any part before they get distracted by some other shiny plot point for any of it to have a real impact. Hell, most of the first half is spent watching Accelerator and Touma talk on the phone. The long and short is that they used Last Order to turn Hyouka into a kind of fallen angel and that’s bad news^tm, but Index wants Touma out of it because he’d probably end up killing Hyouka. Also, Accelerator is beting up more faceless grunts.

Admittedly, Accelerator beating up yet more powerless NPCs was kind of cool, but it was still just Accelerator beating up literal nobodies… or throwing buildings. Ugh. They couldn’t figure out any other way to show that other than having it slide along the road like an air hockey puck before literally bouncing off the other building? And Vento? Just hanging around. Shows up, throws an energy ball, disappears. Great use of time there. Mikoto also stood out by being crammed in for the sole purpose of having her pose, shoot her railgun, and then immediately disappear again from relevance. I guess this is likely the last arc for this season. They’ve gotta try to fit every major character in, no matter how awkward it is.

Preview:

Touma, what are you even doing in this arc?

You have a warhammer. Hit someone with it.

Impressions:

Eh, it was okay I guess, but the lack of any real buildup or meaning to Touma’s side of things is undercutting it and the fact that Accelerator spent most of his side torturing nameless generic SWAT members by throwing wrenches at them is undercutting his side. Add to that the problem that barely anything happened this episode and mix in some random completely inappropriate gag humor from Kuroko at random times and… well… here we are. At least Accelerator managed to ditch his mascot character for the fights. Touma’s still working on crafting a papoose so he can carry around LO since she’s apparently incapable of walking on her own anymore.

I was expecting a lot better from Vento too. She hits her tongue-cross with her warhammer to send slow moving energy balls flying. And she spontaneously starts coughing up blood when Touma even so much as thinks about fighting back, which takes him a surprisingly long time considering her attempts to go after LO and threaten hostages. The slow moving energy balls were bad enough, but the sudden "Oops, something else is happening, gotta run off now" bit was just clumsy. Do not toss in deus ex machina to obtrusively and artificially put off a fight that already has little actual purpose other than give Touma somebody to punch to begin with. At least she managed to blurt out her mission in between slow-pitching magical balls in Touma’s general direction once every thirty seconds or so.

Preview:

Send in the clones.

This hasn’t been a good week for anime physics.

Impressions:

I’d like to be happy about things actually going somewhere again, but the problem is that they’re kind of not and it was made worse by an extremely lame fight. Accelerator wrecked a car, tore it apart, then stood there and got beat up while some random guy lectured him about why and how, neither of which are particularly interesting questions since there’s only ever one reason the science side does anything and even less variation when Accel and LO are involved. He may as well have just been a really strong mugger. You’d think after dealing with Touma, he’d at least have a clue about how to fight against people who can nullify/’jam’ his abilities at close range. I did both enjoy him somehow harmlessly blasting an unconscious Last Order into the air away apparently as well as the fact that they actually had to freeze part of the ‘fight’ at one point mid punch just to get all the talking in. And by enjoy, I mean died a little more inside.

Unfortunately, after that little bout of wailing on Accel was finished, the episode basically stopped. Or at least, the animators stopped working on it. The last four minutes or so was seriously almost nothing more than an audio stream. Here’s a picture of the city. Here’s another picture of the city. Here’s a walky talky. Here’s the other side of the walky talky. Here’s the mayor floating upside down in his jar from 500 feet away. Fantastic. This is exactly how you keep people visually engaged. I’m so glad they had the dual cliffhangers of swapping Index and Last Order again just to follow it with… that.

Preview:

One of these things is not like the others.

What a deep and important episode.

Impressions:

Another episode made for the sole purpose of filling up twenty minutes while making sure that absolutely nothing important happens. Shouldn’t we be building up to the final arc about now instead of watching at nuns grapple with washing machines or Accelerator stare at answering machines with murderous intent? The only even vague overture towards anything of import was Hyouka rematerializing partway through the episode. What does that have to do with the assassins sent after Touma two weeks ago? Nothing! And now here’s Touma holding Last Order upside down. Hoo-bloody-ray.

It still wasn’t a terrible episode, although the giant burst of recap with Accelerator was completely unpleasant. At least they stopped animating it entirely and then threw in a ton of flashbacks to let you know that nobody on the staff gave a crap about it. Misaka remains easily one of the best sources of humor in the show without actually breaking what flimsy character most of these people have. Still, this season’s arcs have been pretty weak compared to the first season. It’s a bit frustrating. when they so overtly press the pause button and bring everything to a total stop instead of actually… you know… trying. And yet, it’s still better than anyting Railgun ever did.

Preview:

Things covered in blood and/or saliva.

What did you expect?

Impressions:

Yawn. Just an unabashed time filler episode, pretty much as expected. Oh wait, no. Misaka needing to pretend like she’s going out with Touma for a cellphone strap or Accelerator having his own harem antics are the epitome of plot. At least it looked like Accel was going to be the one to slap a bitch when he walked in on his women naked instead of the other way around. I think LO stealing one of the Misaka’s goggles because that would make her an adult (and how!) is about the only thing that’s going to have any impact whatsoever on future episodes.

There’s really not a ton more to say than that. It was okay, but still pretty poor compared to when they actually try to turn it into a comedy, ie the Index-tan DVD specials. All the rest we’ve seen before a few hundred times and are just going through the motions at this point. Misaka blushes, stammers, Kuroko fumes, Accel glares at people. Etc etc. I guess there’s the new OP, but they made that out of corny Windows Movie Maker effects and a song that has no flow whatsoever so… meh.

Preview:

What a wet archbishop.

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."