A Certain Magical Index Ep 10-14 Review: Sisters

After many months of saying I was continuing these, and I was even at the point where I watched episode 10 and did not write anything down for months, it is time to return. But, seeing that the third season is now announced for a fall of 2018, it is time to kick these reviews into overdrive to make sure the first two seasons are covered by the fall. With that out-of-the-way, time to talk about what was once my favorite arc of the series and to see if it still holds up after 6 years.

Episode 10 Plot:

As I said I saw this episode months prior to starting to write this review, so, this part is a bit fuzzy. Seeing that these reviews are more relaxed, well, the brief story is that Toma meets Misaka a lot. He finds out she has a sister, and well there is a cat that appears. Toma meets with the sister a lot. There is also Accelerator, the strongest esper. But, the episode ends with the sister Misaka going into a dark ally.

Episode 11 Plot:

Now it starts to kick up. So, the Misaka sister is fighting Accelerator. She ultimately dies and Toma finds her body. Of course, he is freaking out like crazy, I mean it is not every day when you see a dead body.

By the time the cops arrive the body is gone, Toma runs off, and the cops oddly do not follow him. But, anyway, he runs into one Misaka, and about five or so others appear. Thus, revealing why this arc is known as the Sisters Arc, they are clones and Misaka is seen as the sister.

So, Toma now bothered by this decides to do some investigating, ultimately wanting to confront the Bug Zapper he knows on what is with all her clones. Well, she is not at her dorm, but Kuroko is. But, well, she leaves to not raise suspicion that a boy is in an all-girls dorm. Toma then finds papers that talks about plans on how to make Accelerator become a level 6 esper. Which involves special battlefields and well, killing clones, more details in the next episode. But, this episode ends with Toma off to find Misaka to confront her about the truth.

Episode 12 Plot:

Ok, so, this episode is all about Toma confronting Misaka. He learns more about the experiments. It also turned out that Misaka willingly gave her DNA so that her powers could be replicated into curing people who may be paralyzed. But, Toma learns that Misaka believes that if she dies then the experiment will be over and the remaining Sisters will not have to die. Of course, Toma does not want this to happen and thankfully he is rather resilient to any form of attack, so he takes attack after attack from Misaka. Ultimately, he falls unconscious and ends the episode trying to find a solution to end the experiment.

Episode 13 Plot:

So, much like the previous episode Toma’s teacher starts talking about where espers, powers come from. But that soon ends. But again, it is noted how they sort of make a reality of their own.

But anyway, Toma wakes up and realizes a solution. If Misaka fights Accelerator, well, that would be within the margin of error, so the experiments could easily continue. However, if the weakest in the city fights the strongest, well, everything would be thrown out for the experiment. Thus, Toma races off to fight him.

So, the Sister that Toma has been with this whole time is the one fighting Accelerator. Which, is not surprising, this is the final fight, and well, might as well make it a clone we know. Toma however gets their just in time, and well, seeing that his powers come down to a touch, it is kind of hard seeing Accelerator can throw things at him. Toma does land that touch, and well, Accelerator loses it. So, the episode ends with a massive attack from Accelerator.

Episode 14 Plot:

So, Accelerator is still angry that Toma slapped his hand away, but now the real fight begins, sort of. After Toma manages to land some hits on Accelerator, well, it turns out Accelerator has no real fighting experience. Sure, he has killed over 10,000 clones, but even then, it is not really a fight if it ends in a single hit.

However, this does not stop Accelerator from pulling off some crazy things with his powers. This includes making plasma. Misaka, since she appeared despite Toma telling her not to, but whatever, notes that Accelerator had to account for the wind. She then asks her clones, to change the wind current with the windmills. Remember, one clone can communicate with all the others, that way as the more clones die the more know the experience of a way on how to beat Accelerator.

So, Accelerator’s spirit bomb was stopped. Toma lands the final punch and becomes unconscious.

He of course wakes up in the hospital. The Misaka clone tells him the experiment is over, and right now she will have to leave for some time. The clones were made to well, not have a long lifespan and die. Now that the experiment is over it is a different story. Now they need to be adjusted so they can have a longer life span. I do like how Toma asks if this is a cure, and the clone does not answer, meaning somewhere down the line they could come back to this, although I doubt it. Anyway, the real Misaka appears and is grateful for what Toma did. The arc ends with Index appearing.

Overall Thoughts:

Now, I still have yet to watch season two for a second time. I hardly remember the final arc for season one, as it has been so long. But, I still remember back in my mind that this was one of my favorite arcs for this season, and honestly, I can see why. Sure, the buildup is a lot. Watching this series not in bulk like I used to, well, I can tell how much build up it takes. It did not feel like it took one or two episodes of buildup and explanation, but really just a quarter of that. But the overall ending was still just as enjoyable.

Accelerator is the strongest esper. While, at this time we only have seen 2 of the several level fives, this series still has not shown all of them. I think even with the light novels, being over 40 now, not all of them have appeared. So, Accelerator, at this time anyway, this was probably not him at his absolute strongest. I only say that as well, like any series the villains get stronger over time, Accelerator, although at this point in the series is a villain, a few episodes from now he becomes a “good guy” he also now has a spin-off manga of his own, and well, he is doing quite well for himself there too.  But, that is beside the point.

This arc was still enjoyable. One thing that I like about Index is, that unlike the other spin offs, that mostly focus on the science end of things, Index gets a nice balance of both magic and science. It blends together, and in this case, it is nice to see the switch to the more science side and the explanation of espers more clearly after two arcs of magic. Unlike the previous arc this one sets up a lot, between characters, and even the majority of the second season of Railgun, in fact these four episodes were expanded upon for 17 episodes of that season of Railgun. So, there is a lot of important things that came from this arc.

Either way, it certainly picked up this time around. I do not know if that was my personal bias from almost 6 years ago when I started this series, or something else entirely. Either way, this arc improved on a lot, but also had a rough start.

Overall Enjoyment: A

Overall Score: B

This show is over almost a decade old, so I may spoil future events. Either way, feel free to comment your thoughts on this series, and your hopes for season three.

Episode 7-9: Deep Blood

Episode 15-17: Angel Fall

This series is licensed by Funimation. Crunchyroll and Funimation have it legally streamed for free. Also Yen Press is releasing both the manga and light novels in North America.

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– Joe