Forum - View topicREVIEW: A Certain Magical Index III part 1 BR/DVD
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Angel M Cazares
 Posts: 5420 Location: Iscandar |
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Index III is one of the worst anime series I have ever watched; easily a D grade. The first two seasons are mediocre, but season three sank to unimaginable lows. I continue to be amazed as to how Railgun is so much better written and charming than the main series.
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BodaciousSpacePirate
 Subscriber Posts: 3017 |
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I've been thinking a lot more about one particular passage from Theron's review:
One of the things I thought was really cool about the way the Battle Royale Arc was presented in the light novels was that every chapter was bookended by images that were heavily implied to be status reports displayed on one or more of these organizations' handlers' monitors. e.g. - 
GROUP, SCHOOL, BLOCK, ITEM, MEMBER... as the battle royale goes on, the lights on the monitor start to go out, one by one. The person sitting at the monitor might see these lights in terms of their place within the broader struggle to control the fate of Academy City. They represent the "members" of "groups", "blocks" of strategic assets, and "schools" that turn out super-powered operatives that can be deployed as pawns/"items". (It's a little wonky, but English isn't the author's first language, so I'm willing to cut him a break here.) This, then, is how we're supposed to think that the "higher ups" in Academy City view the protagonists. It is from this framework, this way of viewing human life, that GROUP and ITEM are struggling to break free, all hoping to grasp hold of and shape their own destinies. Going into this arc, we already had a number of reasons to care about each of GROUP's members, but what did we know about ITEM? Here's one case where the anime adaptations of Index and Railgun significantly differ from the source material! Anime viewers who have previously seen Railgun S will already be familiar with ITEM going into Index Season III, but way back in 2008, the ITEM girls wouldn't end up making their first appearances in the Railgun manga until six months after the Battle Royale arc had been published as the 15th Index light novel. The Railgun anime adaptation did a fantastic job covering for the fact that manga readers would have already known who each of these characters were: in addition to squeezing every bit of character development they could out of the manga (the scene where Frenda and Kuroko loudly compare their respective Level 5s is from a 4koma!) the animation team gave their introductory Railgun appearances plenty of time to breath, and made the audience want to know more about each of the girls and their respective backstories. Without the context of their Railgun appearances, the light novels heavily relied on Hamazura's internal narratives in order to give the readers the distinct impression that each of the ITEM girls were some different mixture of antagonistic and charming. The readers' first impressions of the ITEM girls were that they were Hamazura's unwanted, belligerent, and "bratty" harem (much later, during the New Testament novels, the girls would eventually come to form the core of spoiler["The Hamazura Brigade"]). It was through Hamazura's eyes and within Hamazura's thoughts that readers got a handle on who these girls were and how they interacted with one another. (As a side note: several years later, NisioIsin's "second season" Monogatari novels would play around with the idea that you can't always trust your light novel harem lead to accurately understand the relationships between his growing gaggle of love interests.) I find it really interesting, then, that anime-only viewers were first introduced to each of these characters outside of the context of their constantly-beleaguered male compatriot's impressions of their personalities. |
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SilverTalon01
Posts: 2401 |
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Problem there is that I doubt they have the balls to end in the middle of the Gremlin arc. If they would stop at NT6 or so then pacing should be fine with a decent director to keep it together. That just isn't a natural stopping point. |
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JaffaOrange
 Posts: 251 |
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My gosh, I wonder how short the review would be if you took out all of the proper nouns. After watching Index II and following adaptations of a few of the spin-off series, I don't remember the series being this intimidating.
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RoamFree
 Posts: 46 Location: Canada |
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2015 was the year I went through the RailDex anime adaptations in the order they were originally broadcast, and I thoroughly enjoyed them. Related note, I checked out the author's other creation Heavy Object and had a fun time with it (Hoping for a S2 of it after Index III happened). After finishing Index II, I decided to read the original light novels, and was surprised by how much was left out (I stopped on Volume 7 where the various Churches get involved). Reading this review and the various problems that almost everyone here has brought to life about this adaptation and the previous Index seasons, I'll still enjoy watching the first two Index seasons for what they are whenever I get the chance, and call me a completionist but I am going to check out Index III when I get a hold of both parts of that season on home video (or have them all in one case like previous RailDex releases). Then Accelerator and Railgun S will follow soon.
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Todd_Harry08
Posts: 181 |
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the author stated that Kadokawa is the one who wanted the anime studio to rush the season into 24 episodes and the director asked for more episodes but they gave him only 2 additional episodes |
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Todd_Harry08
Posts: 181 |
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the director wasn't really the problem it was the schedule and also to keep in mind the director was busy with working on 2 movies with Index III at the same time you guys are just mean with the wrong person lmao also adapting light novel isn't an easy task as you see i bet even Nagi is good with adapting manga only but he'll struggle like Hiroshi struggled too if he was adapting light novels |
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SilverTalon01
Posts: 2401 |
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Oh, and I suppose he had the same problem during the second season too? Because that suffered greatly for a lot of the same reasons... it just wasn't the total train wreck of S3. Plenty of other light novels get good anime adaptations. That isn't a valid excuse. |
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Megiddo
 Posts: 8360 Location: IL |
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At least this wasn't as much of a complete trainwreck as Shana III was. That's about the only thing positive I can say about it. Railgun T's first 6 episodes have delivered far more than anything I got from watching this.
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SilverTalon01
Posts: 2401 |
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I could tell Shana 3 had skipped a good amount, but I liked that season, at least enough to buy it on bluray. I definitely can't say the same for Index 3. |
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BodaciousSpacePirate
Subscriber Posts: 3017 |
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Yeah, despite how much it obviously cut out, Shana III was what convinced me to go back and buy Blurays of the whole thing.
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OH&S
 Posts: 306 Location: Sydney, Australia |
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Project Index is synonymous with Kadokawa but in reality its the whole production committee that was managing the whole thing that screwed it up for everyone.
There's a lot of blame to go around and its not solely Nishikiori's fault. But there's no way he's getting off scot free for this. There are clear directorial decisions he made that completely ruined moments from the source material. Everyone's to blame. |
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SilverTalon01
Posts: 2401 |
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Right. Just like a good director doesn't automatically get you a good series, a bad one doesn't automatically result in something on the level of Index 3. There are a lot of people involved. The director is just the low hanging fruit when they clearly shit the bed, and he did. |
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Todd_Harry08
Posts: 181 |
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index needed more episodes because it's a complicated series and kadokawa is treating it like it their other IPs (with giving the same number of episodes which isn't enough for index) and perhaps that's the reason season 2 was rushed in some corners so with index iii it was inevitable that will be more rushed with kadokawa not giving hiroshi enough (they gave him only 2 additional episodes with the already 24 episodes imo) so how you can expect him to do better job especially with a tight schedule and J.C.Staff being in turmoil because they were handling OPM S2 in the same time index iii was airing which lead him to Improvise sometimes so if you wanna blame someone so hard just blame kadokawa because they just care more about SAO than their other IPs. |
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). Add to that the inevitable problems of adapting a light novel to begin with, JC Staff's horrendous production schedule and Nishikiori's bland direction.
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