Now we come to the (chronologically) last entry in Academy City’s anime run. I left this one for last not because of its place in the timeline, though, but rather because it has some critical differences with its predecessors, and those show in a big way.
On the surface, Index III shares the structure of I and II. It’s a two-cour show and can be fairly easily broken down into a set of arcs, each of which deals with a new crisis, to a greater or lesser degree. However, it’s adapted from a good deal more source material than the previous seasons, and it’s done by compression.
When considering how much material can be adapted, there’s always going to be the question of pace. A novel, even a light novel, is going to have more detail than can be comfortably slotted into a well-paced show, so something was always going to give. However, it can be managed more or less gracefully. The first couple seasons of Index had their troubled moments trying to explain the lore and not quite getting across in the middle of a pitched battle (or not quite getting the pitched battle right because it had too much magic exposition), but by in large it worked well enough.
Moving to a faster pace, though, did the show no favors. True, it gets through the material, but a lot of that material gets lost along the way. Most arcs are missing either a sense of continuity and progression, the emotions behind the conflict, or any sort of sense behind what is happening why. Some are even missing multiple from those. There are still moments and scenarios that work well (including a couple breakout characters), but the entire presentation is inconsistent.
So, when I comment on this season, there are going to be some things I outright say I don’t understand. Now, I could look those matters up, get longer explanations, and give them to you… but part of the point of these long plot summaries is to honestly evoke the material, and without a little confusion, you wouldn’t really be getting the true Index III experience.
Unlike the other Academy City shows that give us a largely disconnected episode to remember who these people are and what they do, Index III throws us right into the first arc. After the events of Season 2, it seems the Catholic Church has been stirring up unrest, directed against Academy City. This results in protests throughout the world against… you know, it’s never explained what the cover reason that the uninitiated are rallied against Academy City with is. We know that the Catholics hate Academy City because the growth of science-based power might threaten their general control of global affairs, and that other magic-side forces (but not all of them) are also intimidated. But part pf this world’s truth is that most people don’t know about magic. It’s not as though there aren’t things about Academy City to get up in arms about, but if there is a legitimate grievance leveraged to maintain the masquerade while stoking the flames of hatred, we aren’t let in on it… which is a pretty big deal when conventional war is frequently said to be on the table.
Because of this, Toma’s double agent friend has him thrown to Avignon, France with great haste to mess with the Church’s latest magic superweapon, the Document of Constantine. After being paradropped into the city, Toma meets up with the first breakout character of the season, Itsuwa. You might remember her from Index II, where she had an extremely minor role as one of the Amakusa who assisted Toma in a couple of the earlier arcs. She seemed to have something of a shy crush on Toma then, but here in Season 3 she really steps up as another contender in the Harem scenario. And, oddly enough, she’s a good one. Through this arc she proves her ability to fight, and moving on from here she proves it steadily more triumphantly, and actually manages to get and take time in this rushed scenario to connect with Toma more or less as a partner, acting the part of the domestic wife (which Toma very much appreciates, being cooked for and such) when visiting Academy City – a big contrast from shrill and toothy Index or Tsundere Mikoto. Even if she’s ultimately something of a third-string contender, she does good things for the balance of the cast.
In any case, the two of them manage to dodge protesters who, manipulated with the Church’s mind magic, turn into an angry lynch mob once they realize Toma is from Academy City. They then come into conflict with the Church’s agent in the city, Terra of the Left, another member of that Right Seat of God Group. Terra looks like the Joker, and pretty much fights with a guilloutine blade on a chain that’s made of flour (both the blade and the chain are flour. This one actually makes sense in context: the flour is used to evoke transubstantiation and serve as a substitute for the Body of Christ, which as a godly implement is then able to have precedence over whatever Terra wants to cut) and fast-talks exposition about his power and the current goings on. Toma and Itsuwa fight him to a standstill, and ultimately are able to destroy the Document of Constantine.
In the process, Terra realizes that Toma has amnesia, and taunts him about the fact he no longer knows the truth about his right hand. Thanks to Toma having been on the phone with Mikoto at the time (for good reason) she also overhears that he lost his memory, becoming the only one of his friends to know. If you’re hoping for a good followup to that revelation, you’re going to have to keep waiting, though, because Index at least doesn’t have enough time for Mikoto to provide it.
In any case, destroying the Document doesn’t quite deal with Terra, so what does? Well, it turns out Academy City must have a heck of a deal when it comes to international politics, because the city also deploys troops to France, including ground forces who clear out the protesters and Accelerator, who uses his ability and a supply of iron sand to cut lava swaths through the city, including one that scores a direct hit on Terra.
A member of the Right Seat of God isn’t killed so easily, though, and Terra evidently escapes his normally-lethal lava bath to return to the Vatican… only to be immediately killed off by one of his peers, Acqua of the Rear (the one who rescued Vento last season), who was upset that Terra would hurt normal people in the process of seeking their bloody ruin of Academy City. This is honestly kind of out of place how immediately on the heels of it looking like Accelerator burned him alive Terra’s actual death is. I get that Accelerator wasn’t even aiming for him and just happened to clip him, but it still seems a kind of pointless survival. I guess it shows us that Acqua is willing to take his own to task?
And right after that, with no real transition, we’re back in Academy City following some of the Dark Side groups. One of the ones we’re paying attention to is ITEM, the group led by Meltdowner (the fourth-ranked Level 5 Esper) that debuted in A Certain Scientific Railgun season 2. They have a new member, the season’s second breakout character, a Level 0 former Skill-Out goon called Hamazura who technically appeared and got punched out by Toma at the end of Season 2. The other main group is SCHOOL, which is led by Kakine Teitoku, aka Dark Matter, the second-ranked Level 5 Esper.
I suppose there is some continuity as GROUP (the band of misfits Accelerator is a part of) also gets involved, foiling an assassination attempt on one of the few principled members of the Board of Directors, getting into a fight with another of these alphabet soup organizations, BLOCK. Characters with creative designs but who we’ve never actually met drop like flies, and a lot of things blow up when we’re not totally sure what their significance is. GROUP foils BLOCK’s attempt to break an army of mercenaries into the city, and then has to fight over a prison where yet another organization is trying to blackmail Move Point into helping them assassinate Aleister Crowley. We actually get some really good growth and development for her, as she has to come to terms with her past and also face her phobias, ultimately being able to step forward a wiser and stronger person… but it’s mired in the middle of a bunch of other half-conflicts. For instance, at the prison the Aztec sorcerer in GROUP faces off against another Aztec sorcerer, who came to Academy City to reckon with him. They clearly have some sort of history and emotions run deep as she invokes a power-up that will probably cost her life, but… we don’t really even get to see their conflict. We follow Move Point and Accelerator inside, and next we know the sorceress is in a hospital while our familiar sorcerer, who somehow stopped or took over the dangerous power from her and yet saved her life, because reasons not announced. Does this guy just have a thing for every pretty girl who’s supposed to kill him or who he’s supposed to kill? Are the two of them somehow related? What is their history that makes them talk to each other like old friends, now on opposite sides? None of this will ever be explained.
Meanwhile, the ITEM/SCHOOL fight goes south for ITEM. Kakine squeezes Frenda for information on ITEM’s hideouts, which leads to Meltdowner going off the absolute deep end and cutting Frenda in half with her laser when she finds her and realizes what happened. Takitsubo and Hamazura (who has a thing for her since she’s the only person who’s ever nice to him) got out of trouble on their own, but the drug Takitsubo uses to enhance her ability and make it useful to ITEM is pretty close to killing her. Mugino doesn’t care, though, and when she’s dragging half of Frenda around and grinning like a maniac, you know she means business.
And then, like the emotional scene with Move Point earlier, we get a really badass sequence for Hamazura. Wanting to protect Takitsubo, and not have her literally used up by Meltdowner, a level 0 punk (with no secret power like Toma has) ends up challenging a Level 5 to a fight… and winning. Hamazura runs, hides, strikes from cover, uses terrain to his advantage, and ultimately sacrifices his ear for the chance to gouge out Meltdowner’s eye. And shoot her in the chest several times. And punch her out when she still tries to get up. Despite the massive difference in power, which is totally sold, Hamazura manages to totally defeat Mugino and leave her for dead, keeping Takitsubo from having to endure any more abuse. It’s a triumph both of combat skill and of ideals, with Hamazura standing for what Skill-Out’s most noble ideals were: that the ‘weak’ shouldn’t just be disregarded and trampled on by those with greater abilities.
Meanwhile, in the other plot, Dark Matter gets his hands on the gizmo he was looking for, called the Tweezers. These let him mess with Crowley’s nanobot surveillance system that we’re now being told permeates Academy City… and that will never be mentioned again. In fact, the Tweezers that this whole fight was over turn out to be kind of a useless plot device, as Dark Matter decides to just go kill Accelerator to become #1. In order to draw Accelerator into a fight, he hunts for Last Order, and ends up finding Uiharu (from Railgun), who has met Last Order and has enough presence of mind to not tell Dark Matter where she really is. Kakine moves to torturing Uiharu in broad daylight, which is when Accelerator shows up to… normally this would be save the day, but this is Accelerator we’re talking about: he’s here to teach a punk a lesson, and happens to be saving Uiharu on the way.
Of course, one can question how much of that might be bluster. In the ensuing conflict, there’s massive collateral damage done, but as Dark Matter mocks Accelerator over his inability to do anything but destroy, Accelerator reveals that, while fighting Kakine, he was also intercepting every threat that might have harmed a civilian, resulting in there being absolutely no injuries from the slugfest. Given that in the process Accelerator also got the upper hand, figuring out how to control the exotic matter Kakine creates and forcing him into submission, Accelerator’s claims that protecting the bystanders was just to show how totally he dominates the conflict is suspect but also not entirely wrong. It’s the reveal that he cares about what happens to normal people even if he claims not to and also the reveal that he beat Kakine with one hand tied behind his back.
Before Accelerator can finish Dark Matter off, though, Yomikawa (the lady from Anti-skill who’s basically a mother figure for Accelerator by now) comes in and does her best to convince him that he’s better than that. It seems to be taking, but then Kakine goes and stabs her with her power, mocking Accelerator’s inability, in that moment, to protect someone with meaning to him. This was a very bad move on Dark Matter’s part, as Accelerator proceeds to enter his berserk mode and violently merge Kakine with the floor rather than sparing him. Accelerator pretty much just keeps hitting his rival until Last Order shows up to reunite and calm him down, at which point Yomikawa can be bound for the hospital and Kakine…. well, he’d be bound for the morgue if this weren’t Academy City. As it stands, there’s a one off line significantly later that suggests he’s scraped off the pavement and put back in some useful form by the powers that be, but I’d be surprised if there was much more than a brain-in-a-jar after the pounding he takes.
We then cut abruptly back to Toma and his crew. They don’t comment on the gang war, attempted military invasion, or #1 and #2 Espers tearing up the city in their duel. Instead, we start out with Itsuwa arriving in Academy City to be Toma’s live-in bodyguard (much to his joy and Index’s jealous frustration with everything but the quality and quantity of Itsuwa’s cooking, which wins her over) since they’re under the implicit threat of Acqua of the Rear coming around to make trouble.
Sure enough, Acqua of the Rear comes around to make trouble, attacking Toma and trying to negotiate for him to just give up and let his arm be cut off in order to end the threat Imagine Breaker poses to the Church. Never mind that we saw in Railgun season 3 that cutting Toma’s arm off results in it spawning dragon heads before regrowing. This interrupts Itsuwa’s time with Toma (which the rest of the Amakusa, from the shadows, were trying to use to play matchmaker, meaning they’re around) and also Mikoto, who was in the same part of the city (an underground sub-city) for her own reasons, only to run into Toma and company. Recall, she wants to talk to Toma about that whole “lost his memories” thing, and what it means for the two of them, especially with regards to when he stood up for her in the Sisters arc. Does she?
Well after negotiations break down and Itsuwa fights Acqua (giving a fantastic account of herself until Kanzaki reappears) and Toma is briefly separated from the fighting, Mikoto catches up with him. There, she tries to tell him that he doesn’t have to go back and involve himself with the ongoing battle when he’s injured and the like, and does bring up the whole memory thing. Toma gives a much more confused speech than usual, about how he strongly feels like he’s the same person he was before and the old Toma lives on inside him and Mikoto, giving the sad eyes, lets him go onward to the conflict.
And, as he goes onward, Mikoto… stands by and does nothing? Excuse me? This is supposed to be the same girl who hunts thugs for sport, involves herself in dangerous criminal cases against the advice of wiser friends, manually tore down evil labs, brawling with another Level 5 on the way? Who, rather recently in terms of the timeline, got in a giant kaiju fight with an insane robot because it might have been tangentially related to something she cared about? She’s just standing on the sideline here? I guess from her own experiences she understands the value of having something you have to do alone, but Toma never really expresses that sentiment, and she’s all too happy to jump in and assist even a rival like Mental Out rather than a friend or the boy she has a crush on with big combat-related trouble, just because she knows about it. She’s not going to go support him when the city is under attack?
On one side, she does finally admit to herself that she has romantic feelings for Toma. On the other hand, she does that and then we still just sort of leave her in the dust.
OK show. I guess Itsuwa and Kanzaki need some time to show off, especially Kanzaki who is more than ever a romantic contender and yet who hasn’t been in the show very much, and most of this arc is just Team Amakusa fighting the rather non-malicious Acqua until Toma is able to come in and neutralize his ultimate attack. That gives the Amakusa the opening to hit him with the bane attack that should end him, and which appears to for the time being.
As the epilogue to this arc, we get more Catholic infighting, with the last member of the Right Seat of God, Fiamma of the Right, going against the pope, who realizes that Fiamma is plotting something evil (and what is, not that we’re told) and gets beat up for his trouble.
And then we leap onward into possibly the most confusing arc of the entire show. It starts innocently enough, with Toma once again being abruptly loaded onto a plane to Europe, this time with England as his destination and Index in tow. After the previous jet ride that ended with a paradrop, Toma elects to fly commercial this time. That turns out to be a tactical blunder, as it gets him involved in a terrorist attack on the plane that’s meant to increase tensions between England and France. This is, naturally, defused (the return of Stiyl helps. Don’t expect much out of him, though; he’s taken an even worse downgrade than Mikoto in terms of screen time), and Toma is brought to the meeting with the British Royal Family that he was headed to in the first place.
In this universe, the British Royal Family consists of an older queen, Elizard, and three daughters in the bracket where it’s impossible to tell what age they’re supposed to be because, seriously, we’re supposed to buy that Stiyl is fourteen when he neither acts nor, most importantly, looks less than 20something. I think they’re all significantly older than Toma, though, hence why there’s no tension between him and any of them. The eldest, Carissa, is of a martial disposition. Middle princess Rimea is the cold and clinical analyst, and young princess Villian is the sweet naive pretty girl.
Index, Kanzaki, and Toma (who have all been brought in on this) are contracted to provide various and sundry help with magical affairs in the brewing conflict beween England and France, which ends up with most of them working to pursue a group of smuggler-mages dealing with an unspecified magical artifact, and who have some ties to the plane incident. Though Toma (partnered with Oriana Thompson, back from Season 2 and now on the same side as Toma) manages to pursue one of them, Lessar, he ends up protecting her from an attempt to rub her out and cover the transit.
The artifact turns out to be something called the Curtana Original, a magic sword which has a replica that’s important to the British monarchy. The Curtana Original has the ability to cut through space itself (with the typical long-winded explanation), but despite the basic description being something with an amazing ton of potential applications, in practice its power seems to be limited to summoning and throwing otherworldly cubes of stuff to try to squash people. Forgive me if I’m a little disappointed when “The sword rips apart dimensions, cutting through space we can’t normally see” translates to “You can Tetris people to death”. Come on, Certain Magical Index, you’re supposed to be good at this stuff! I think Kuroko, with her teleportation, is probably better at messing with higher dimensions than this…
So, who got the dumb yet symbolically important sword we’re supposed to be afraid of? Well, we haven’t introduced anyone French, so of course it’s the most dubious character we have introduced, Princess Carissa. Apparently the power of blocks is the last thing she needed to launch a coup, having the support of the Knightly Orders (through their leader, who acts as a personal manservant to Carissa) and the mundane military, which combined do a lot more heavy lifting than the sword that I should probably stop complaining about. Carissa’s aim is basically to Brexit and restore the strength of the British Empire in the process, which is presented as being well-intentioned but wrong-headed, the latter especially when she tries to execute poor cute Villian.
Villian is saved by the sudden appearance of Acqua of the Rear (who she knows and has a crush on via his mortal name and prior identity as the mercenary William Orwell, who saved her life some time in the past as well), which leads to Acqua fighting the Knight Leader (which leads to a lot of excessive exposition about their powers, even by this season’s standards. They’re cool powers, but still…) while Toma moves to rescue Index and also the scheming sinister head lady of the Anglican church, only to end up recovering Villian as well as Index. Carissa goes back to Buckingham Palace rather than continuing to fight in the British countryside because we needed a cooler set for her battle, and Villian, Index, Toma, and Elizard all make their own preparations to confront Carissa there.
The ultimate conflict with Carissa is more confusing yet. Pretty much everyone shows up, though on what side is fairly arbitrary. Carissa has a modern ship go ahead and launch a cruise missile at herself, which serves only to muddy her motivation, and finally Elizard pops up with the big magic that’s going to make an opening and save the day.
And… I still don’t know what Elizard does. She waves the Union Jack, says an invocation, and this somehow causes magic power to be distributed by all the citizens of Britain. Their hands glow and she goes on this senile-sounding ramble about everyone having a choice and being heroes today, and how they need to make a choice, and this somehow stops Carissa long enough for Acqua to throw Toma at her and have him destroy the Curtana Original. Destroying the Curtana Original, then, ends Carissa’s coup in failure (though to be fair she didn’t have much left after the knight leader refused to support her self destructing and Rimea took back the army). All’s well that ends well.
Except, of course, that Fiamma of the Right shows up the next day, tries to kill off Carissa, gets stopped by Toma from out of nowhere, and then reveals and gloats about the fact that he’s already gone to the trouble of stealing Index’s remote control from the Anglicans, which leaves her as his puppet. He then heads off to do more evil things, leaving robot mode Index behind rather than moving her to another castle because… I don’t know why he leaves Index when he can apparently move her around with magic. Is she just too annoying even being put into robot mode?
Well, enough of that, how are Accelerator and Hamazura holding out back in Academy City?
I’m not going to pretend that the previous seasons didn’t have sharp cuts between their arcs, sometimes switching characters on a dime, but those times at least didn’t have a cliffhanger like the character who is theoretically one of our leads and theoretically likable being rendered the villain’s mind controlled puppet. I’m guessing this one is actually down to how the original source material did it, since we do need the Academy City story before we can catch back up with Toma and it does legitimately come second, but maybe it would have been best to structure things a little differently in adaptation.
I will say that at least the material with Accelerator and Hamazura as leads is a little stronger and more consistent. Surprisingly, when you take Index out of A Certain Magical Index (which this season basically did in terms of screen time and relevance even before locking her out with this turn) that much is actually an improvement.
In this case, we start with Accelerator and team looking into something known as DRAGON, which seems to be related to the other fallen Dark Side organizations. This is probably dangerous, though, as they’ve been ordered to eliminate the last group that poked their noses into DRAGON too far. Meanwhile, Hamazura is headed to visit Takitsubo given that she’s due to be discharged from the hospital. He’s traveling along with Kinuhata, the other surviving ITEM member, when they’re attacked by drone helicopters on the highway. There’s also an assassin, who’s hired to go after Accelerator but who instead first kills the guy who tried to hire her (because he was possibly trying to use her comatose friend as leverage) and then decides to go kill Kinuhata instead, since she was the one who put said buddy in a coma, during the whole ITEM versus SCHOOL conflict.
This leads to Kinuhata peeling off from Hamazura, who heads to the hospital (in triumphant fashion, requiring him to run across the city and even hijack a helicopter) while she fights the assassin. Accelerator also ends up there, continuing to try to mop up the enemies he’s supposed to. This leads to Hamazura reaching Takitsubo at about the same time as Accelerator does, misunderstanding the scene thinking Accelerator has come to kill her, and pulling a gun on Accelerator. Impressively, he does this even knowing (loudly) who Accelerator is, and makes his protect-the-girl motive clear. The sheer guts expressed actually get some praise and respect from Accelerator. He still puts Hamazura through a wall to make his exit, but he neglects to do real damage and does seem quite appreciative of his temporary foe. Takitsubo also has the chance to recognize exactly how far Hamazura is willing to go for her, so that’s another thing. While Accelerator might not have been a danger to them, danger is still coming, and it seems they’ll have to flee Academy City.
On Accelerator’s side, it seems even what snooping into DRAGON he and his team have done is too much, and they find themselves targeted for removal. While on the run, they manage to cover for and get the aid of that one good Board of Directors member, hoping to get them in against the one that’s pulling their strings and trying to rub them out. The meeting doesn’t go so well, though, as it turns out there are more shapeshifting Aztec hitpeople looking for, what else, our former defected Aztec sorcerer, as well as the Director and his bodyguard. This results in a hard fight (even for Accelerator, since countermeasures have been specifically prepared) but ultimately sees Accelerator encounter DRAGON itself, a being called Aiwass.
It’s not clear exactly what Aiwass is, but it seems to be something in the angel bracket – unrelated to any of the Judeau-Christian theology, but still very much an otherworldly being with the correct tier and flavor of power. The fight between Accelerator and Aiwass is brief and one-sided… in favor of Aiwass, who can move and attack in ways totally beyond Accelerator’s current understanding. Aiwass, though, seems to bear Accelerator no rancor, and despite tearing him pretty much to shreds also leaves Accelerator with the next plot hook, suggesting that if he wants to help Last Order, he’ll need to leave Academy City with her. This results in Accelerator ultimately fleeing the city, headed to Russia in search of answers.
Meanwhile, Hamazura and Takitsubo are also doing their best to get out of danger. They’re pretty good at getting away from the grunts, but soon enough a grudge match arrives: Meltdowner, now with cyborg parts to repair the damage Hamazura did to her last time, and looking for revenge against both him and Takitsubo. Hamazura manages to evade her shots at first and abuse her vicious nature and desire to finish him personally to lure her into a jet testing chamber, where the engines fire up to roast her off the outside while Hamazura waits inside the cockpit, the whole mess possible thanks in part to Takitsubo’s assistance. Hamazura and Takitsubo manage to hijack a plane out of Academy City, which seems them bound for Russia as well. During the whole harrowing experience, Hamazura also confesses his feelings to Takitsubo, which sees her answer with a big damn kiss. Perks of not being the lead character for Hamazura: he can actually land a romance while the story is still going rather than being trapped forever in harem limbo like Toma.
Speaking of Toma, his interest in saving Index has also brought him to Russia as World War III is getting ready to start between the church’s puppets (including Russia, a main belligerent) and Academy City and its allies, since that’s both where Fiamma is conducting his schemes, and where a quasi-national force called the Elizalina Alliance of Independent Nations, consisting of what appears to be a few towns in Siberia and led by Elizalina herself, who is also a magic-user and quite knowledgeable on plot-related affairs. Toma isn’t totally alone, though, since Lessar is accompanying him to help with the mission.
And, if you’re like me watching this, you might have to remind yourself who Lessar, this weird girl with a devil tail, is. Well, I mentioned her once before in this review – she was the one of the couriers who Toma helped capture and kept from getting killed at the start of the British arc. She didn’t really say much or express a character at that point (she pretty much just ran), and she wasn’t involved in the rest of the arc, so all in all she was pretty forgettable. In this arc, though, she’s set up to be Toma’s main girl and supporting cast.
And I have to ask, why? I don’t hate her, though her lewdly flirty gimmick (trying to literally seduce Toma into joining her faction) isn’t particularly engaging, but there are several of what seem to be better choices than someone who aided and abetted a coup and should probably be in British jail right about now. Kanzaki comes to mind – she was there at the time, deeply cares about Index, and really wants to make a move on Toma. Plus, she’s a powerful saint, so she could actually be expected to lend him meaningful support. But, okay, maybe as a very unique powerhouse she’s needed elsewhere. What about Itsuwa? The character who was tapped to be Toma’s bodyguard earlier in the season, who did a good job all things considered, and who would almost certainly jump at the chance to do it again? She seems like a better pull, but she’s fallen out of the story and doesn’t appear in this arc. I suppose she wasn’t in Britain, so maybe that’s the excuse. There’s a third option, though: Oriana Thompson, a competent but not overwhelmingly powerful magic-user with kind of the same flirting-teasing vibe as Lessar is given here (albeit in a more mature and more surely teasing fashion), who had two previous appearances to establish her character, and who was chosen to work with Toma the last time someone needed to work with him.
Any of these would have been more interesting and more relevant than Lessar. Or, and this might be crazy, she could have been left out entirely. Toma meets up with Elizalina rather quickly and from there encounters such recurring characters as Sasha Kreutzev, Accelerator, Vento of the Front, and even Kazakiri and Mikoto at various points. He doesn’t need the random hanger-on. And maybe the show knows it – she pretty much says nothing interesting and does nothing interesting for the running time of this arc, leaving her role to “Pads out scenes”. I probably won’t need to mention her for the rest of the review, but she’s there.
In any case, Toma meets with Elizalina, who knows a thing or two about Fiamma’s evil plans, especially where those evil plans involve Sasha Kreutzev (former host of the archangel Gabriel), who is present under Elizalina’s protection. Right as they’re talking about how this place has everything they need to keep safe from Fiamma, Fiamma attacks! Toma and Elizalina put up a pretty decent defense, especially once Vento of the Front shows up out of the blue to attack Fiamma, but in the end Fiamma rips out Vento’s dang tongue stud cross thing (brutal, but it was begging to happen) and makes off with Sasha.
Meanwhile, in Hamazura’s story, he’s trekking across Russia, low on supplies and morale as Takitsubo isn’t doing so well without access to Academy City’s medicine. After considering robbing some normal folks, he ends up in the position to save them instead, which gets him fueled up a little with references onto a local settlement. There, he meets the (not exactly) peaceful villagers, who suggest he could find help for Takitsubo in the Elizalina Alliance. Before they head on, though, they’re roped into protecting the people who helped them from an incoming force of “Privateers” – basically brigands with tanks trying to extort villages for money and resources like we’re in a modern rendition of The Seven Samurai. For Takitsubo’s sake, Hamazura plans well and fights well, and the tables are ultimately turned with the arrival of Acqua of the Rear, who’s in Russia to kick ass, protect the innocent, and probably die because he’s got a bad case of the angst despite the starstruck princess and country that wants him back. Hamazura gives Acqua a good talking to about living and moving forward that seems to actually get through to him, and he’s off to keep being a Deus ex Machina throughout this arc.
Over this time, Accelerator is engaged in his own plot as well. He’s hopping trains and the like with an unconscious Last Order (no word on how he’s charging or, less easy to explain, changing his batteries through this arc – we saw in his own show that he had serious trouble doing it himself because of the interruption to his basic motor functions.). Some Academy City robots attack, but it turns out they’re not just after Accelerator, leading to him discovering some weird mystical parchments that are apparently at least as valuable as he is. Naturally he takes the papers, but the next attack he has to deal with is both directed at him for real this time, and quite interesting.
The attack comes in the form of a single fighter, air-dropped into Accelerator’s presence. What enemy could Academy City possibly be banking on to take on Accelerator solo? The answer is a brand new Misaka clone, #20,002 officially (a little more than that if you count Dolly and her backup), or if you prefer the first Misaka clone of the new and improved Third Season project. She’s aged up compared to the original and her predecessors, and powered up as well, new methods and cybernetic implants both shielding her from Last Order’s possible influence and setting her to a normally formidable Level 4. Born solely to carry out this mission or die trying, her mind has been programmed not with the standard Misaka template, but with all the hatred and spite of the Misakas as a whole, a twisted and vicious version of Misaka with a maniac grin that rivals Accelerator’s own and the name Misaka Worst.
Technically speaking, Worst isn’t any more of a threat to Accelerator than a bunch of other Espers he’s soundly beaten, but given where he stands now, the fact that she’s a Misaka clone gives her the upper hand: Accelerator is unwilling to protect himself with reflection for fear of hitting her with her own nail shots (similar to Railgun’s signature move, but lower velocity, using nails as, basically, regular bullets). Essentially, Accelerator can pretty much just try to flee because he’s unwilling to fight back against another Misaka, out of guilt for what he did before.
However, Worst manages to push her luck too far by threatening Last Order, and triggers Accelerator’s berserk Black Wings state. In a fugue, he ends up pounding her into the dirt, and then losing it when he comes to enough to realize what he’s done. The black wings go totally out of control as he rages, desperate to save the critically injured Misaka Worst but not knowing how.
This is when Toma shows up. From the viewer’s perspective, this is a fairly climactic moment in Accelerator’s arc. From Toma’s perspective, when you think about it, it’s kind of funny the degree to which this is a random encounter: He’s driving through Russia, probably hundreds if not thousands of miles from Academy City, when all of a sudden there are black tornadoes of doom on the horizon and, when he investigates them, a berserk Accelerator. Toma and Accelerator fight once again, with Accelerator pretty much off his rocker screaming for an answer as to why a real hero like Toma couldn’t be here, rather than someone like Accelerator who can only destroy, and Toma gives him a surprisingly uplifting talking-to about how Accelerator can take his babble about heroes and villains and stuff it and instead use his great power to move forward rather than back, and punches him out for a second time for good measure. This does sober Accelerator up, and while the transitions are a little sketchy it’s clear from what follows that Accelerator was able to patch up Misaka Worst (she’ll be seen with no more than a broken arm later, when she was way worse off than that) and get the breadcrumb to Elizalina he needed.
Meanwhile, I might have mentioned this is World War III? It’s looking a lot more like a magic war, though, as barring the random encounters with military forces in the Russian boondocks, the main battle we see is between the British and the French at the Strait of Dover, involving wooden ships and lots of sorcery. Kanzaki is there, and even Carissa is let off the leash to bring some pain to the Catholics, where we see she can apparently still conjure otherworldly cubes without the Curtana Original.
And, while this is progressing, there are even more characters we have to worry about. There’s the old pope, who’s being replaced by election but still has a good heart and sway among the Catholic church, but more importantly there are two other people getting themselves to Russia to get involved in this whole mess: Mugino (or what’s left of her), determined to hunt Hamazura to the ends of the Earth, and Mikoto, who wants to actually do something to help and protect Toma. We’ll catch up with them going forward.
Accelerator and Hamazura each find their ways to Elizalina. She’s able to use her healing magic to fix the drug withdrawal and induced damage Takitsubo is suffering, putting her in top condition, but Last Order is a more difficult case – the most Elizalina can do is stabilize Last Order. She is able to tell Accelerator, though, that the parchment he’s carrying looks really mystical and important. Accelerator starts to figure out this whole ‘magic’ thing, carefully observing the new energy (even though it should be familiar to him after dealing with Isaac Rosenthal and a massive surge of magic in his own show), and also decides to make the Alliance of Independent Nations a safer place, interrogating and killing off spies and double agents that would otherwise threaten the area, with the help of Misaka Worst. Oddly enough, she seems positively amused by Accelerator now (though she’ll never miss a chance to tease or laugh at him), and is brought on board to help him because studying his Personal Reality could help her develop beyond what she was made to be, both as an Esper and a person. A lot like he had with Move Point, Accelerator has some pretty good on-screen chemistry with Worst. I guess it’s just more fun to see him play off somebody who will actually snark back at him.
The next big move is on Fiamma, who does the big flashy thing of the arc, creating the Star of B’Tselem – a giant flying island above the undisclosed region of Russia in which this is all taking place, in the shape of a cross and formed from churches ripped up from across the world and compounded into said giant flying island. Toma is caught in the process, not by Fiamma but by the formation of the stronghold, meaning he’s aboard. Well, that’s impressive. He’s not done there, though: he summons the archangel Gabriel (hence why he needed Sasha). Gabriel is unleashed against the English and the French, and then tries to go for Toma.
Gabriel is intercepted there, though: Kazakiri is back, and after having a little talk with Aiwass has flown to Russia (in full angel mode like last time, without losing her personality like last time) to fight for her friends, and that means it’s Artificial Angel versus Regular Angel. It doesn’t stay one on one, though, as Accelerator is able to pull out his Black Wings (controlled now) and joins the battle. If that wasn’t enough, Acqua also involves himself, draining a significant amount of Gabriel’s power (since they already had a connection through Acqua’s Right Seat of God post). After Gabriel is defeated, Kazakiri gives Accelerator the last clue he needs, that it was Index (whose name Accelerator didn’t know) who sang the song at the climax of Season 2 that saved Last Order then, and the same power could work again. With the parchment magic text and new understanding, Accelerator is able to sing the magic song and heal Last Order – though that does, of course, hurt him with the “Esper using magic” backlash effect.
While that’s going on, Hamazura has trouble of his own. It turns out the village he’s friends with is in trouble again, and while going out to warn them, he runs afoul of Mugino, looking for Round 3. The fight is harder than before, so instead of soundly beating her again, Hamazura manages to friendship speech Meltdowner into submission, playing on her own grief and guilt and convincing her to give up a vengeance that was caused by her own brutal actions in order to peacefully reunite with Hamazura, Takitsubo, and Kinuhata when they can find her. Mugino, Hamazura, and Takitsubo are then set upon by more Academy City goons, but manage to triumph, in the process learning that while Hamazura is wanted out of the picture as a spanner in the works, Takitsubo is wanted instead as the eighth person with the potential to reach Level 5, and a vast and tempting/terrifying Level 5 at that… a potential she might be starting to express. And that takes us through the end of their side of the story.
On Toma’s side, he’s up in the sky, and is quite naturally drawn into a fight with Fiamma. Fiamma goes on and on about distortions of the world but doesn’t make a lick of sense. In a show that was previously hell-bent on explaining every little detail of magic, the explanations here are rather lacking. As best as I can figure it, Fiamma wants to invoke the ending of RahXephon, and we shouldn’t let him because he’s a jerk. He also manages to cut off Toma’s arm in their conflict, the one with Imagine Breaker, which he wants to absorb to make himself more perfect.
This time, cutting off Toma’s arm doesn’t result in dragons, but it’s strongly implied that Toma restrains that on purpose in order to finish the fight fairly, causing his arm to spontaneously regrow and Imagine Breaker to return. Fiamma’s plan causes more random crap all over the world (including giant arms popping out of the ground. And sea.), turning the world against him, but he keeps on fighting, with new global-scale threats introduced and defeated in quick succession. The last real one is that the accumulated angelic energy in the Star of B’Tselem will destroy the world if it crashes to ground, but on the ground Accelerator seems to sense it coming, his wings turn white, and he flies up into the sky and no doom happens. This is surprisingly little commented on. It’s an easy guess that Accelerator probably controlled and redirected that energy like he did with the magic at the end of his own show, but there’s no real storytelling on it, visual or in dialogue, and the next time we see him is in the epilogue, strapped to a gurney in an Academy City transport but quite able to take control of the situation from there.
Fiamma finally pulls the “I have Index” card, which means revealing that remote control, losing it, and giving Toma the chance to wreck it. Between everything, Fiamma is finished and the Star of B’Tselem is crashing, albeit on course to plunge (relatively) harmlessly into water. So, all Toma has to do is get off and go home, right?
Well, the astute reader may have noticed I mentioned Mikoto a couple times in this arc, but she hasn’t done anything. Scenes cut back to her from time to time, as she meets up with one of the Sisters and has a bit of a comedy routine, but it’s been a big case of just reminding the viewer she exists and is present. What was it all building up to? As the Star starts to fall, Mikoto rides a plane up and extends her hand to Toma, offering him a good escape… only for Toma to refuse, say there’s still more he has to do, and Mikoto to cry in frustration that Toma is beyond her reach.
Excuse me? This is Mikoto Misaka, the Railgun, Level 5 Electromaster and spunky tsundere, a girl who is no stranger to throwing herself into danger for her friends, and doing impressive stunts in the process. Why is she worried about a piddly little air gap now and acting like a generic helpless girl? Why is she not jumping on to the Star, helping Toma do the thing, and returning them both safely to the Earth surfing on a bit of scrap metal? She’s completely useless in this arc and it’s a big disservice to a great character.
Anyway, Toma saves Fiamma (putting him in an escape pod as he’s apparently now humbled by his defeat and a good guy), and makes sure to drive the thing to where its fall won’t cause harm, more or less going down with the island, though in the epilogue he is of course alive and well and found by some colorful new characters for future seasons, after Mikoto’s search is fruitless.
And, also in the Epilogue, we get some movement from Aleister Crowley – he appears to finish off Fiamma, since Fiamma came to know too much when he saw what was in Toma’s severed arm, but despite utterly humiliating Fiamma, Crowley just leaves him for dead rather than killing him and he’s rescued by more new characters, while Crowley’s appearance outside his tank warns the magic side that he’s around and the real deal, which seems to have them all scared.
The end, for now. And for season 3, good riddance.
A Certain Magical Index III managed to encapsulate just about everything that was stupid about A Certain Magical Index, and very little of what was good about it. It played to the show’s weaknesses rather than its strengths, and because of that it suffers in a big way in terms of quality. Toma’s arcs in particular are kind of hard to get through, not because they’re painful but because they’re scattered and confusing.
It’s not all bad, of course; you might call this A Certain Mundane Hamazura for the degree to which he carries the show, and Accelerator’s story isn’t shabby either, especially his interplay with Move Point and Misaka Worst. But even that can be badly rushed, like all the interplay between the Aztec in GROUP and all the other Aztecs who know him, or the fact that things that do work, like ITEM’s battle with SCHOOL or Move Point’s coming to terms with her way of life, her past, and her fears, doesn’t have quite the buildup or payoff that the scenes really should.
In the end, the third season of A Certain Magical Index can’t be saved from losing ground by its secondary characters alone. The core conflict is just too much of a broken mess. This one gets a C from me, making it the weakest of the Academy City stories by a fair margin. The weak bits are very apparent and the good bits aren’t as good as they should be. Frankly, I’m just glad that the Accelerator and Railgun shows kind of prove the franchise still has life in it, because if it were just Index III at the end I couldn’t see wanting to come back around to more of this.