The main male protagonist.

As promised in this blog’s last entry, today’s review is for a 2008 anime titled Toaru Majutsu no Index, therefore it will compete with Wolf and Spice for the ‘Anime of the Year 2008’ title. This series side-story A Certain Scientific Railgun that I originally planned to watch after this title has to be shelved temporarily, because 2 high-priority titles had just been finished. I will tell you what they are at the end of this review.

Story:-
Our luckless main protagonist wakes up in one very hot and humid morning just to find an amnesiac Catholic nun being ‘dried up’ outside his veranda. He sneered at her claims that she is a magician with shitloads of magical grimoires carved into her brain. But he instantly found out that her other claim that she is on the run from other magicians is true, and from there on he has to defend her from being kidnapped by mysterious bad people.

This anime is very comparable to the recently-reviewed Kaze no Stigma, which has the similar multi-arc plots format. But while the story in the former is better than the latter, the latter has a better main protagonist. This anime’s title main female protagonist is better than her counterpart in Kaze no Stigma, and that’s a good improvement.Unlike in Kaze no Stigma, this anime doesn’t crap out after the first arc, which is another good improvement. But even that, the quality of the story arcs are uneven; some of them are decent, others excels at being bad. The arc-switching process is seamless, without being peppered with filler episodes as it was done in Kaze no Stigma.

One interesting tidbit I have noticed in this anime is how the title main female protagonist disappeared right after the first arc (arguably the best one in this series – alongside with the arc about the Accelerator and MISAKA 20001) and only reappeared in the final arc. In-between these two arcs, her role in this anime is restricted to biting the main protagonist on his hospital bed or being buried alive at the beach etc. For a title protagonist, the lack of airtime she has stunted her character development relative with the main male protagonist and a couple of other characters.And this is a damning fact for her considering that the main male protagonist has a static character development path (just like his counterpart in Kaze no Stigma), despite of what had happened to him at the end of the first arc.

The last arc of the anime, while a little bit retarded, did fully indicate that a second season will come. If an anime like this series’ side-story A Certain Scientific Railgun exists, a second season is definitely in the cards, unlike Kaze no Stigma…

Some snarky lines from our main male protagonist.

Character Design:-
Aesthetically not that different really from what you see in Kaze no Stigma, except that the main male protagonist has black hair. Which is a good thing because everyone else (ha ha ha) hair colors are very colorful to say the least. Big eyes, unrealistic body shapes and unnatural boob sizes (either they are flat-chested or overly buxomed – almost nothing in-between) are common here.

Voice Acting:-
Just like Kaze no Stigma, voice acting in this series is just average, but the main title female protagonist is outstanding. A pity though that she barely featured in nearly two-third of this anime.

Not really sure why I took this screenshot though, so I will leave it alone.

Music:-
Only the OST of this anime is good. The OP and ED themes are pretty much forgettable.

Animation/Direction:-
Animation quality in this anime is great (maybe it’s the Blu-ray rip that helps this anime here), with no problems even in fast-paced scenes. Action scenes choreography doesn’t match the animation quality though, even the average Kaze no Stigma is better in this aspect. The directing in this anime is decent, with no problems with the presentation.

Conclusion:-
7 out of 10. Wolf and Spice is still the reigning ‘Anime of the Year 2008’ holder by a distance. A Certain Scientific Railgun will be put on hold because the final season of Nodame Cantabile is now over, and so are the long-awaited Cross Game anime. Can the former recovers from the screw-ups done in the second season? Can the latter overcome the twin handicaps of romance and sports genres? You have to wait…

The main male protagonist with one of his other women.