A Certain Magical Grimoire

Another chalk bites the dust.

So the end of the episode is here. And it’s not half bad. Well, the part that wasn’t too talkative at least. But I remain disappointed that the closure for this series, and the arc in question, seem rather dull and predictable, removing itself back to mediocrity through extended conversation, oft seen ending paradigms, and simply not enough material covered.

Note Sphinx the cat

Touma remains, once again, the most talkative, yet dry and blunt, character if there is one, and while he doesn’t say anything out of the ordinary, he harps on about the same things over and over again, and that is probably the worst thing that could happen. You would groan, roll your eyes and mouth whatever he says seemingly because you know him too well. His speech about Hyouka not being a monster? Been there. The thing about hurting yourself and that what you’re doing is wrong? Been there several times already. It’s just so…tacky…

She can actually cry!?

Sherry didn’t really help things - her reasons are so mish-mashed that I didn’t really get anything besides she wanted to create the war for revenge…yet she didn’t want to do it in the first place…and that she’s got some angst over Magic and Science…I got lost at this point and couldn’t really bother to get my brain working. All that really mattered was that she was stopped, and that happened as expected.

Luckily she drank a Potion of Storm Giant Strength.

And Hyouka taking down Sherry’s golem. Now that was priceless, seemingly because they seemed to focus on a lot more on her breasts than the battle itself. And then with Touma punching it out of commission…I would have thought that he would have killed himself simply from the momentum of the ball of rock debris smashing into him. Apparently, my understanding of physics is askew thanks to the series.

Gallery link here.
Just three interesting bits to remember.
1. Accelerator is still kicking along with Last Order. Hopefully we might get to see them again if there’s ever a second season (and even though I do hope so, I dread it much the same).
2. Laura Stuart makes her appearance! And she’s not really what I quite expected. That being said, I didn’t even know that Archbishops could be female…unless I got my religion wrong. As long as she doesn’t just sit around drinking tea and eating biscuits, it might be interesting.
3. Kuroko attacks Mikoto in the showers. It’s unsurprising really but amusing nonetheless.

So after an entirety of series, we return once again at end of the episode back to the what defined Touma and Index’s relationship, and that is food and her biting him to death and his misfortune. It’s nice to see it again, but it does get old. The last episode get’s a medium rating, simply because It didn’t seem that conclusive. Though closure is given to Hyouka, Index’s friendship and so on, it feels sort of incomplete…I wonder what ever happened to Sherry in the end…they never do tell. Sigh.

Bitten in the end.

Final Thoughts
A Certain Magical Index certainly has been an entertaining series and while I remain a fan of the universe, I still believe it could have been better. Cool ideas, convoluted concepts and a good blend of serious drama and humour make it easy to swallow, and the animation quality is quite consistent throughout (though at some points it does take a slight dive) but it delves into repetitiveness and boredom soon after the first half of the series. It might be something to do with the incredibly long and unnatural amounts of talking, or the fact that Touma is too much of a goody-two-shoes and his actions too predictable in light of what has to be done, but getting rid of all of these, and you still have decent story, with an array of amusing and deep characters that don’t seem all too bad to watch. Well, maybe not the one time villains at least. If you’re fan of magic, then you would still watch it regardless. Just prepare yourself to skip the talking parts to get to the action sequences.

So now that the anime is finished, I can go back to reading the manga adaptions. I do wish we get to see more of Index though - 16 volumes of material and barely even a quarter covered means possibility is definitely evident. At least we have A Certain Scientific Railgun to look forward to for now. Yay!

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