The 7th episode of A Certain Magical Index II covered the battle-heavy continuation of the arc begun during the previous episode, combining a flirtatious Kuroko-as-heroine, copious amounts of service throughout, and even an Accelerator “berserk” scene to make for a surprisingly strong episode.
A not-so-brief preamble: Novel readers may not easily remember this, due to the Index light novel series’ especially episodic structure, but the events of the current story arc are from the eighth book, out of well over twenty total books.
Since a trend of the last decade or so has been to not carry on a series for more than three seasons, regardless of whether the seasons are one or two-cour in length, fans have reasonable cause to wonder what arcs this season might include.
Despite the Railgun side-story series being separate from the Index novels proper, and mostly not linking up chronologically with any of the main Index story arcs, it seems likely enough that the “To Aru…” series having three total TV seasons thus far would suggest the likelihood of further TV shows is not good…
Luckily, the number of appearances by Laura Stuart (the blond Archbishop that Stiyl frequently reports to) does at least give novel readers a pretty good inkling of which major arcs the TV series will be driving towards in the near future.
On to this week’s especially fun episode:
Awaki, the newcomer Level 4 ESPer, is all over this episode, in more ways than one.
As mentioned last week, her seiyuu, 櫻井浩美 / Harumi Sakurai, is most definitely a fairly rookie seiyuu to this sort of work (TV anime), despite her past work in visual novels and the like being substantial.
Kuroko, for most intents and purposes, this week’s main character.
As expected for such an action-heavy climax episode, the production quality is somewhat above the series’ average – shots like this one look great in broadcast resolution.
Fortunately for us viewers, Awaki will soon spend the rest of the episode wearing even less clothing.
Imouto #10032 completes her service scene from last episode:
The rest of her clothing doesn’t get as much attention, sadly:
Last Order!
Despite what the OP might suggest, Accelerator doesn’t quite belong to the same level of prominence as the series’ main trio of characters do, but it is has been a shame we’ve seen so little of him this season…
Awaki is very considerate to her viewers.
Kuroko’s animators seemingly often have trouble with her head, sometimes making it seem out of proportion to the rest of her fetching body.
Awaki service appears throughout the episode…
Index and Touma, engaged in the usual foreplay business they do when both are sitting an episode out.
Touma does learn a new trick, however:
It’s safe to say that a black aura probably isn’t the type to come from an innocent, youthful nun.
Mikoto’s scenes are brief, but this short one is a treat:
The classic and cutely awkward “knees-bent, feet pointing inwards” pose as modelled by Kuroko here makes its appearance.
Hence its innumerable number of appearances in all sorts of anime for decades – Usagi (Serena) of Sailor Moon’s pose at the end of her transformation is a venerable example of it.
As mentioned before, the production quality given this episode made many of the scenes look excellent:
Touma kindly performing his duties as the main protagonist.
Sadly, Touma’s magical harem-building powers seem to not always work:
Accelerator’s scene probably wins out as the episode’s best, however.
The character design of, and the animation for Accelerator’s face and facial expressions are so outstanding that they deserve this little montage:
“Tanima,” the word for “valley” or “cleavage” was mentioned previously during a Mikoto / Kuroko scene, but Awaki makes for a much better demonstration here!
The obligatory GIF of the episode’s standout few seconds:
Poor Awaki!
Index’s line here is especially moe-some:
“Look, look, Touma! I’ve finally mastered my juice-buying (from a vending machine) method!”
Ever-vigilant 2ch sleuths spotted something interesting: Pakuri, from the verb ぱくる / pakuru, meaning “to rip off.”
2ch speculates rather unkindly that this refers to Ikamusume being a copy of Index.
In any case, the caption reads: “They want to say ‘Ikamusume is a rip off of Index!'”
How Touma got that slap mark:
Touma was even lucky enough to sneak in on an Imouto cosplaying as a bashful Ayanami:
The presence of Imouto or Last Order provides the amusing “Misaka wa Misaka…” sentence suffixes, something sadly lost in translation.
In case once wasn’t enough, poor Awaki being Accelerated once more:
Episode is worth it for Touma’s Harem-Get:FAIL alone
LMAO at Accelerator’s expressions:
1. Bored
2. Annoyed
3. Happy
4. r♥♥e FACE!!!
The Accelerator scene was the best thing I have ever seen in anime up to now.
damn this article is wrong index is confirmed to cover 7-13 in the novels and railgun 2 is confirmed to come after index and it is actually possible to place railgun anime in index chronologically. Railgun is more of a side story than a spin off.
Index II is actually covering 7-14. The trailer shows a character who doesn’t appear until the 14th novel.
That would be the dumbest thing J.C. Staff would do, not only would totally ruin a perfectly good ending (novel 13 is probably the best way to end the season), but they’ll probably skip SS1 novel as well just so they can stick novel 14 into the season, wich by the way SS1 is pretty plot important.
i always liked kuroko better than mikoto but not her voice so much.
Her voice IS what makes her so special. Show me another seiyuu that could pull off a Kuroko the way she does.
This anime needs more Accelerator fucking s♥♥t up.
If there is anyone truly invincible, it’s him. The list of what he could do is endless.