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REVIEW: A Certain Magical Index DVD 1 & 2


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Angel M Cazares



Joined: 23 Sep 2010
Posts: 5406
Location: Iscandar
PostPosted: Fri Feb 01, 2013 8:53 am Reply with quote
mewpudding101 wrote:
However, I strongly recommend this series. What people have to remember is that reviews are mostly opinion. Even if it has a C rating, it doesn't mean it's necessarily a C product. It just happens that this reviewer thinks it is.


So, you are telling us to ignore the opinion of the reviewer? If so, why are you giving feedback to a review you do not seem to care much for? I have not seen this series, but am willing to trust this reviewer and his assertion that this is a C show.

I might watch this series and have a better opinion of it than the reviewer. But why dismiss the opinions and conclusions of Carlo Santos, who I am confident knows more about anime reviewing than you and me.
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Cecilthedarkknight_234



Joined: 02 Apr 2011
Posts: 3819
Location: Louisville, KY
PostPosted: Fri Feb 01, 2013 9:01 am Reply with quote
angelmcazares wrote:
So, you are telling us to ignore the opinion of the reviewer? If so, why are you giving feedback to a review you do not seem to care much for? I have not seen this series, but am willing to trust this reviewer and his assertion that this is a C show.

I might watch this series and have a better opinion of it than the reviewer. But why dismiss the opinions and conclusions of Carlo Santos, who I am confident knows more about anime reviewing than you and me.


I don't discredit Carlos either he is a decent reviewer by all accounts However there is a second opinion for the series from Carl Kimlinger when funimation started to stream the series. I will flat out say this I have no problem with carol's review, if you really need a second opinion then read Carl's review below.
animenewsnetwork.com/review/a-certain-magical-index/episodes-1
animenewsnetwork.com/review/a-certain-magical-index/episodes-15
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getchman
Space Cowboy



Joined: 07 Apr 2012
Posts: 9117
Location: Bedford, NH
PostPosted: Fri Feb 01, 2013 11:28 am Reply with quote
Kohii wrote:
I thought Kuroko sounded awfully bland in english. And I cringe when I imagine how she's going to sound in the Railgun dub. It wouldn't do justice to Satomi Arai's award-winning performance of Kuroko.


If she is told to act like she does when playing Tomoko, Tomoki's female self in HLP, then Alison might make a petty good Kuroko in Railgun
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casualfan



Joined: 24 Jul 2012
Posts: 333
PostPosted: Fri Feb 01, 2013 11:43 am Reply with quote
@angelmcazares

He didn't say to dismiss the review. He was just saying that a review is still nothing but opinion so check it for yourself if you are interested with the show. Instead of just becoming a drone agreeing with whatever the reviewer said.
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Kazemon15



Joined: 24 Mar 2007
Posts: 400
PostPosted: Fri Feb 01, 2013 1:22 pm Reply with quote
PrecisionCrab wrote:
It's...really not. It actually worse, by a significant margin. And from the LN spoilers I read...it goes ridiculously downhill from there.

Maybe I should retract my statement about the bargain pin pricing after all...


Sorry, but I'll be the judge of that. You may not like it, but maybe I will. My favorite series is the Reborn! series (where I even imported all the Japanese boxsets where it didn't get licensed), yet it did so poorly here in terms of manga sales and considered "crap" by the ANN team. 80% of the time, what the ANN team and most posters calls "crap", I watch it myself and like it alot. While what they call "amazing", I hate to the core (coughmadokacough), so I am not going to listen to what other people say and just find out for myself...in a Day-1 purchase because I want to support these types of shows.
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asimpson2006



Joined: 13 May 2008
Posts: 3151
Location: USA
PostPosted: Fri Feb 01, 2013 2:04 pm Reply with quote
PrecisionCrab wrote:
I'm not gonna force my own tastes onto you, but when you notice that your opinions contrast 180 with everyone else's, perhaps it's time for a self-evaluation? "Maybe I just have really bad tastes?" or "Am I contrarian subconsciously?"


Just because someone has a different opinion of a show from the majority doesn't mean that person has bad tastes they just don't agree with the majority. There are plenty of shows I enjoyed that others seem the so called "majority" hates and the same could be said that I didn't enjoy some shows that majority loved. Does that mean I have bad tastes, no it means I don't see the what the majority sees. For example, PMMM is loved by many anime fans, yet I didn't get any enjoyment out of it and found it to be an overrated title.

On to the review, I don't agree with Carlos review of the series but I tend to agree with Carl about the series. I really don't agree with the dub as I found it to be a good dub overall not a C- quality that he claims it is. Sure the series isn't a masterpiece but I don't see it as mediocre show either.
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DavidShallcross



Joined: 19 Feb 2008
Posts: 1008
PostPosted: Fri Feb 01, 2013 2:11 pm Reply with quote
Cecilthedarkknight_234 wrote:

I don't discredit Carlos either he is a decent reviewer by all accounts However there is a second opinion for the series from Carl Kimlinger when funimation started to stream the series. I will flat out say this I have no problem with carol's review, if you really need a second opinion then read Carl's review below.
animenewsnetwork.com/review/a-certain-magical-index/episodes-1
animenewsnetwork.com/review/a-certain-magical-index/episodes-15

This is one case where typographical errors are really confusing. Carlo? Carlos? Carl? Carol? (Mr. Santos should change his name to Bruce. It'd be so much easier.)
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leeoflittlefaith



Joined: 08 Apr 2012
Posts: 104
PostPosted: Sat Feb 02, 2013 8:10 am Reply with quote
I'm glad that this review agrees with me. Index has lots of fun moments but it's hopelessly convoluted and just doesn't make sense most of the time. The Railgun anime is better in pretty much every way.
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Scytalle
Subscriber



Joined: 03 May 2011
Posts: 52
PostPosted: Sat Feb 02, 2013 4:11 pm Reply with quote
I feel like the reviewer was a bit harsh.

Yes, there is a fair amount of convoluted exposition about their world and some of it does go over the viewer's head. However, it's really the first 3-4 episodes that are the worst offenders. Once the show gets going, it's actually a lot of fun.

Now I'm not saying it's worthy of A's or anything, but C- seems to indicate that it isn't worth watching at all, which I promise is not the case. The characters are highly entertaining, and the action is solid.

Plus, you then will have the background necessary to jump into Railgun!
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leeoflittlefaith



Joined: 08 Apr 2012
Posts: 104
PostPosted: Sat Feb 02, 2013 8:57 pm Reply with quote
The first 3-4 episodes have an awful lot of exposition true but they're actually among the best episodes for me, and were a really promising start to the series. Index herself seemed really important, like a really big deal, as you'd expect from a show called Index. But during the course of the series she just fades into relative insignificance because she doesn't grow or develop or show any more great powers or threaten to explode etc etc. Much of the time she's reduced to a miscellaneous damsel in distress and source of comic relief.

There ARE plenty of fun moments in the series and many of the characters are cool. However, none of them show any character development that results in anything noteworthy happening, so they're 'cool', but why should we care?

Oh, and another advantage Railgun has is that you totally don't need to watch Index to comprehend it. It stands perfectly well on it's own because it's nowhere near as needlessly complex. Sure, you don't know why Misaka has Sisters or what the deal is with Touma etc, but oddly enough not even watching Index can explain that coherently, so why bother? Wink
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Joe Mello



Joined: 31 May 2004
Posts: 2251
Location: Online Terminal
PostPosted: Sat Feb 02, 2013 9:02 pm Reply with quote
There are a lot of things that I wouldn't buy at full price, but would take a punt on at a discount. I don't see how being a discerning shopper is, in general, a bad thing.

Index was wildly inconsistent, but the world and its mythos greatly fascinated me. You could also see in the first season the series start to buckle under the weight of its own cast list. You're not writing a manga for Shounen Jump, so why try to have as many characters as one?
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ryoga79



Joined: 19 Feb 2005
Posts: 33
PostPosted: Sat Feb 02, 2013 9:03 pm Reply with quote
@Gon*Gon

Intersting theory. I too was able to follow and I have also played a lot of text heavy rpgs.

Funny too that Touma basically spends his life as if he is the hero in an rpg. He does every every side quest, tries to keep everyone happy, Index is named badly in a way, it isn't about Index, rather its about Touma getting in over his head and somehow pulling through with the help of his determination, his friends and his trusty right hook.

Anyway, people should give it a go, I'd have definitely rated it as above average.
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Kalessin



Joined: 15 Aug 2007
Posts: 931
PostPosted: Sat Feb 02, 2013 11:19 pm Reply with quote
I really liked this series and am a bit disappointed by the negative review. I actually thought that that this was one of the better series in recent years. But oh well. My real gripe is the lack of a blu-ray release, and the fact that Railgun isn't getting a Blu-ray release either doesn't exactly give much hope for Index getting a proper Blu-ray release. I'm just about to the point that I won't ever buy DVDs. The quality is just too poor in comparison, so I'll just have to wait and see if Funimation manages to put one out for Index and Railgun. I might eventually buy the DVDs and remux the dub with rips from the Japanese Blu-rays, but I'm not doing that until they've been out for a while, and it's clear that we'll never get a Blu-ray release.
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teferi



Joined: 16 May 2006
Posts: 400
PostPosted: Sun Feb 03, 2013 12:46 am Reply with quote
@angelmcazares

Half the shows that get Cs on here are the kinds of shows that most people would be fine grabbing off netflix/hulu and going through over a week or two. People tend to take reviews like this too seriously and overstate how much they hate a show. In the end most of us grab a bowl of popcorn and watch a show that really isn't that great, but end up enjoying it anyways. And then those same people go on the internet and complain about how terrible it was, because that's what the internet is there for.
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Tony K.
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Joined: 18 Nov 2003
Posts: 11265
Location: Frisco, TX
PostPosted: Sun Feb 03, 2013 5:04 am Reply with quote
Did some cleaning..
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