Anime Review: Free! - SWIMMING DRAMA DUBSTEP

It's summer. I'm in the blissful period before my grades come in, where I can kick back, forget that I'm a uni student, and just do stuff. As such, I found myself with a lot of free time, and what better to do with this time than watch anime and play videogames?

After watching the fantastic Daria twice (which, despite not being anime, I started to write a thing about and found myself with writers block), beating Dark Souls (review coming eventually), almost 100%ing Bully and playing through most of Dark Souls II, I remembered that I hadn't watched anime in ages, and as such, on impulse, randomly picked an anime off of my to-watch list and went through the whole thing in one day.

I'm not sure how Free! ended up on said list. It seems to be a combinations of genres I don't like. It's very much a shoujo (translation for the unintiated: girl anime, this being for, not necessarily about, girls), and I am not, as it happens, a shoujo. It's also a sports anime, specifically a swimming anime. I'm not a sporty guy, and, as far as sports go, swimming is one of my least favorites (largely due to a pretty awful coach for several years in my childhood).

I won't lie, Free! doesn't make a good first impression. The first episode is an awful slog, with tonnes of cliches happening all around the place for no appropriate reason, and a lot of the characters coming across as bland. I almost quit watching right there and then, but decided to give it a second chance and watched the second episode, which was considerably better.

As one would expect, Free! follows a high-school swimming team, made up of four members, who, as the show for some reason makes a gleeful point of pointing out, all have girly names. The closest we have to a protagonist is the star of the team, the quiet and standoffish Haruka, who has a bizarre fascination with being in water.

Haruka himself is one of the biggest issues with the show. Most of the time, he just seems unpleasant. He's really insistent about the fact that "I only swim free", which gets to be really annoying, and, until the final two episodes, doesn't seem to justify the affection that everyone else seems to feel for him in any way. He's mopey, picky, standoffish, and just a downer to have around. There's a few mildly funny gags where a couple of his obsessions are made fun of, but that's unfortunately the highlight of his character.

The rest of the team, thankfully, does a lot better. There's the captain and backstroke specialist Makoto, who comes across very much as a gentle giant, friendly and understanding, as well as acting as the emotional backbone of the team. There's also Nagisa, the resident jokester and beam of sunlight, whose relentless energy and positive attitude originally annoyed me, but very quickly grew on me (he actually eerily reminds me of Persona 4's Teddie in that way), as well as Rei, the new guy who actually goes through a fairly effective (if oft used) arc, starting off as the cold logic guy and eventually turning out to be one of the people most in touch with the emotions of those around him. The supporting cast, (namely the team's manager Gou/Kou, the coach, and the teacher sponsoring the team) are actually some of the better characters, with their support for the team feeling genuinely heartfelt.

The plot is fairly barebones, as one would expect of a sports anime: Haruka, Makoto and Nagisa used to be on a team with Rin, another star swimmer. Rin left, he's now come back, and he's a jerkass obsessed with beating Haruka. What ensues is the new swim team going through a bunch of hurdles to compete against Rin, including setting up the team from the ground up, training, and a bunch of competitions. Eventually, the four of the old team members reconcile and learn that what really matters in competition is the power of friendship after all.

It's not precisely groundbreaking, but it works well, and it allows a few fairly tense moments to happen. The show's biggest hindrance is the sport it focuses on - the writing does do a really good job of setting up these tense situations, with a lot more than just a medal being on the line for the characters, but the payoff is never not disappointing. The swimming scenes are never more than a few seconds long, and consist of an animation just looping over and over whilst people yell in the background. The most intense these get is in one of the final confrontations, when Rin and Haruka get red and blue (respectively) backgrounds with speedlines.

The other big hurdle the show fails to satisfyingly jump over is Rin. If he was supposed to be a downright unlikeable jerk, then the show's done a great job, but he's actually supposed to be an old friend of the teams, and as I said, they end up reconciling by the end. There's also some tragic backstory about his dad clumsily tacked on, which leads me to believe he's meant to be at least mildly sympathetic. This does not work well. Rin seems like a genuine asshat, acts like a genuine asshat, and looks like a genuine asshat. The only times he's seen being nice to anyone are flashbacks to his childhood, and the very end of the series. The entire rest of the time he's making derisive comments to everyone, being both a sore winner and a sore looser, and just being a prick in general. This unfortunately ruins the emotional climax of the show, which is centered around him. Also, for some reason the artists decided to give him pointy teeth, which just goofy as fuck.

Rin's teeth stand out because this is a very good looking show. The characters are especially well drawn, which comes to no surprise as a large part of the show's appeal for its intended demographic is  supposedly the pretty buff boys in swimsuits. Whilst I'm not very attracted to that, I do have to say, those boys are really pretty, really buff, and those abs are very lovingly detailed. Fortunately, everything else is also very competently drawn, looking sharp and clear, with the water being especially impressively pretty.

The show has also got a pretty great soundtrack. Whilst the opening and ending themes are fairly generic, a lot of the music that plays throughout the show is genuinely great, though it tends to have issues with fitting what's going on on screen well, with goofy music occasionally playing over serious moments and viceversa. This is especially true of the one bizarre exception to the otherwise mostly instrumental music: the dubstep track. This is my favorite song on the soundtrack, not because I like dubstep (I enjoy how dumb it is, and that's about it), but because it almost feels like it was intentionally placed over inappropriate scenes, which resulted in me repeatedly laughing out loud as someone climbed out of a pool to intense wub-wubs.

Character and World Building:7 /10
The supporting cast is really great, with a considerable amount of both memorable and endearing characters. Unfortunately, the two main characters of Haruka and Rin are both boring and unlikeable, which brings the series down immensely.

Story: 5/10
It's there. The main drive behind the story is a relationship that's very much uninteresting, and the plot is one we've seen plenty of times, but it's done decently enough that it doesn't get in the way. The main appeal of the show is the moment-by-moment conflict, not the overarching plot, and that's usually driven enough by the characters I did like to be effective.

Presentation: 5/5
I can find no issue but Rin's teeth and that one dubstep track.

Enjoyment: 10/15
Despite a lot of the flaws, I did find myself immersed in the moment-to-moment drama, and the humor was often effective. Unfortunately, the constant downer that is Haruka, and the occasional unpleasantness that is Rin bring the show down a lot, and manage to drop the enjoyment rating by 4 just by themselves, with the anticlimatic swimming scenes nailing the coffin shut. If Haruka had acted the way he does in the final episodes through the whole series, this would likely have been considerably higher.

Overall: (7+5+5+10)/40
               27/40
               6.75/10

Despite it not being what I like, Free! did manage to hold my attention, and didn't feel like a waste of my time. It's got some very strong writing in the characters, but three very clearly defined fatal flaws that just divebombed my enjoyment of the whole ordeal. It's not something I'd recommend unless you're attracted to males and are into the typical sports formula, but if you are Free! is more than likely worth every second of its running time.

Toaru Kagaku no Railgun - Electrifying

The first thing one sees upon starting either of the two seasons of Toaru Kagaku no Railgun is a screen identifying it as an A Certain Magical Index side story. This is a massive injustice, and here's why:

As I concluded in my review, Toaru Majutsu no Index, or A Certain Magical Index in English, is a good show. Toaru Kagaku no Railgun, which translates to A Certain Scientific Railgun is not a good show. It's an absolutely breathtaking masterpiece.

Toaru Kagaku no Railgun, which I will henceforth refer to as simply Railgun follows Misaka Mikoto, also known as The Railgun (no italics), a powerful Level 5 Esper in a few of her adventures throughout the futuristic Academy City, though it begins chronologically quite a bit before Index does. As I explained in my Index review, Espers are people with what are essentially science-based superpowers, ranked by Level from 0 (no Esper ability) to 5 (extremely powerful Esper ability), though talk of a Level 6 Esper becomes important in the second season of the show.

Something that I felt Index really squandered was the world it created. It did a good job of translating it to really entertaining battles, but we never really got to explore Academy City, the city of learning and science where most Espers congregate. Index was also a lot more focused on magic than Espers, which was another wasted opportunity. Railgun capitalizes on both of these in a big way. We not only get to explore Academy City, but Academy City becomes a major thematic force in the plot. Through the silly and fantastic concept of science-based superpowers, Railgun explores very serious and real issues of our current society. There's a lot of facets to it: The Level division is used as a metaphor for the division between the rich and poor, including the inclusion of those who are and are not able to improve their social status. Academy City itself is used to explore the impact of science on human society, in both its negatives and its positives, as well as the possible folly of good intentions, and the loss of perspective on the importance of human life.

A lot of what Railgun has to say has been said already, but its many heavy themes aren't obnoxious and in your face. In fact, at points I found myself not even sure if they were intentionally put there, since they're masterfully woven into the world, and seem like they're just a natural consequence of the way this world operates. And yet, in hindsight, I can see that that's utterly unlikely, and giving the writers of Railgun too little credit. Railgun is true sci-fi: It's using apparently ridiculous ideas to convey something really real in an organic way, and it doesn't ever grind the action to a halt to shove it in your face: The ideas are there for you to pick up on by yourself.

Another issues I had with Index was character development, in that there was barely any. The characters we got to see where very well-defined, but they didn't change at all throughout the course of the show. Railgun also nails this. Whilst it focuses on a significantly smaller cast, every single member of this cast has changed in some way by the end of the show. Admittedly, a few of these changes are a bit heavy-handed, falling in the pitfall that it so elegantly and seemingly effortlessly avoids when it comes to overarching themes of the show, but this doesn't mean they're not impactful. Railgun is centred around Misaka, her room mate Shirai, and their friends Uiharu and Saten.

Even in Index, where she got considerably less screen-time, I could tell Misaka was my favourite character, and she gets considerably better here. She is eminently likeable: short-tempered enough to be funny, noble enough to be admirable, and powerful enough to be fist-pumpingly cool. Even if Index's Touma did a surprisingly good job as protagonist, Misaka blows him out of the water. She's got plenty of character, and goes through more than one really good emotional arc, particularly the one spanning the entirety of the second season. I also like her constant appreciation of a lot of childish things, which is an extremely endearing trait, especially considering how mature she is otherwise.

Shirai, Misaka's room mate, is a powerful Level 4 Esper (fantastic control of her ability, teleportation) and works at Judgement, one of the two main policing organizations at Academy City, along with her friend Uiharu. Both of them are also in middle school. This was one of my more omnipresent issues: middle-schoolers seem to be accepted for police work for no particular reason, and don't seem to get any special education for it, outside of physical training. It doesn't seem like a particularly huge issue, but it constantly pulled me out of the show with just how little sense it makes. Sure, Shirai is shown to be a powerful Esper, but there's information that later in the show becomes vital to her survival that she only just learned in class. What if she was a year younger? It's established that she was in Judgement since elementary school, so it's lucky none of these crises came up before she'd learned about it in school or Academy City would be fucked. I just think the whole Judgement thing would work if it were portrayed as training for the other, proper, police organization, Anti-Skill, or even as a club Shirai and friends started Buffy style.

Stupid, non-sensical police organizations aside, Shirai is a fairly decent character. The running joke with her is that she's very infatuated with Misaka, and will often display her affection. Outside a few choice situations, it's not very funny, and often drags on for too long. Still, when things get serious Shirai is shown to be a very dependable and kind, if stubborn person. Her character arcs aren't particularly interesting, but they do have a couple very cathartic moments at the end which made me shed a few tears.

The weakest character of the main four is likely Uiharu, Shirai's companion at Judgement, and a weak Level 1 (Has power, but can barely use it) Esper. There's just not much to her. She's kind of bland: She's shy-ish... and very understanding? Also a hard worker and a bit of an idealist, I guess? To be fair, the show doesn't often really focus on her that much, and when it does it tends to work surprisingly well, often centred around her wish to help those who are vulnerable. It's a good thing, too, because I feel that any more Uiharu-centred content than we get would get quite old.

Last but definitely not least out of the main cast is Saten. I have trouble deciding whether Saten or Misaka is my favourite character in the Academy City universe. Saten is a Level 0 Esper, having absolutely no ability. She's an energetic and somewhat goofy girl, but is shown to be a very understanding person. She's got an absolutely brilliant arc in Season 1, but unfortunately falls to the wayside in this respect in Season 2, acting mostly as just a supporting character. Still, there's such a sense of benevolence emanating from her that I can't help but like her. She's a very human character, smart in many ways, stupid in many others.

Accompanying them is a fairly large set of side characters, though nowhere near the size of that in Index, meaning each side character also gets a fair amount of development. There's some really fantastic ones here: I really like the pompous but ultimately good-natured Kongou, as well as Shirai and Uiharu's boss Konori. To put the nail in the coffin, several of these side-characters randomly get an episode dedicated to them where the main cast take a backseat role, and these are some of the best episodes in the series. There's a few guest appearances by characters from Index, most notably Touma (who admittedly is way too important to be just a guest halfway through Season 2), though these usually feel pretty hollow and a bit pointless.

Both the characters and the world would go to waste without at least a decent story to back them up, and Railgun's story is more than decent. Both seasons are comprised of two arcs, each spanning about half the season. In Season 1, both these arcs eventually make up a complete story in two parts, whereas in Season 2 the connection between the arcs is more thematic than anything. This lends the story a much more coherent feel than Index's three bajillion arcs, and helps keep momentum throughout. Even more so, the way each arc is built is absolutely phenomenal, typically starting with the gang going on several seemingly disconnected adventures throughout their daily lives that ultimately turn out to be connected to a larger plot, eventually building to a climatic battle. These small adventures provide the down-time in between important plot bits: They range everywhere from having a hot pot to helping a woman find where she parked her car to catching a small-time criminal.

This kind of stuff was sorely missing from Index, and lent its version of Academy City a bit of hollowness. It seemed like a nice place, but we never spent much time just enjoying it. With Railgun, it's occasionally easy to forget you're watching an anime about people with super powers, with a few episodes feeling a lot more like something out of Katawa Shoujo than Index. It's fluff, pure and simple, and it's what lets us feel comfortable around the main characters, and what leads us to love Academy City and its people.

These disconnected adventures typically do have some amount of overall significance, though. Little plot threads are planted throughout each adventure, either small discrepancies that the characters notice or apparently irrelevant rumours, which helps keep a sense of momentum going. Once the larger story of the arc has kicked in, they'll become apparent as consequences of whatever mysterious plot is going on in Academy City. Things escalate very smoothly, and soon the stakes are extremely high, but it's never as jarring as it was in Index since this escalation is taking place across ten or so episodes, rather than one or two. By the end of each arc, things feel important, damnit, and the inevitable final showdown between Misaka and company and the villain dejour has a lot riding on it.

Which is why it's good that the action is so damn awesome. I did praise Index for its action scenes, but Railgun blows them out of the water. Misaka's powers are used in extremely creative ways, and she comes across more than one villain with really cool gimmicks. Despite her being established as the 3rd most powerful Esper in Academy City, and as such the world, Misaka's opponents never fail to pose a challenge, and it's often tough to see ways for her to defeat them. Fights here are more about out-thinking your opponent and exploiting holes in their defensive capability than about constant offence, which makes them very entertaining, and they often end in unexpected ways. However, the highlights of the action scenes are undoubtedly the end-of-arc scenes, often Misaka using her power in extremely visually impressive and creative ways, whilst the theme music for that arc blares in the background. I honestly couldn't help myself from cheering during these (or, in one occasion, shedding a few manly tears), since they often build on all the character development done throughout the arc, as well.

There are a few flaws in the story, however, the major one happening in Season 1: Between the two major arcs, there are a good few episodes where nothing really seems to be happening. They're enjoyable enough by themselves, but they don't have any of the foreshadowing that's usually cleverly implanted in the show, and as such feel a bit pointless. I'd typically enjoy these scenes (Hell, I praised the hell out of Katawa Shoujo whenever it did that sort of thing), but since Railgun had proven to me it could do better with the same kind of material, it felt a bit disappointing. The four or five episodes after the end of the first arc of the first season are by far the weakest part of the show. The second flaw stems from being based on Index: The first arc of the second season ends kind of abruptly, because it was originally an Index storyline. As such, a lot of great build up is wasted on a payoff that's ultimately centred around Touma and not the characters that we've been watching the whole thing happen through. Fortunately, this is actually really cleverly used to push Misaka's development further along in the second arc of the season, which ultimately results in an absolutely stellar climax.

Character and World Building: 10/10
Jesus Christ, it's good at this. The entire cast is endearing as hell, and goes through large amounts of juicy character development. We get to spend both fun and hard times around them, which helps us love them even more. Not only this, but we get to see Academy City developed to its fullest, in both its light and dark sides, and it's glorious. Aside from a few very mildly annoying character traits, and one or two bland people, there's very little to dislike here.

Story: 8.5/10
Every single arc is brilliantly built, with a smooth progression from beginning to middle to end. We start small, and get big, and it all feels perfectly natural and logical. There's a few unfortunate flaws here and there, but these are largely hidden from view by how great the rest of the story elements are. The show does climaxes particularly well, with the end of every arc being an extremely cathartic experience.

Presentation: 4.5/5
It looks a lot like Index, for obvious reasons. However, fight scenes look a lot more visually impressive, and have a lot more creativity on display. The soundtrack, which I really enjoyed in Index, also feels quite a bit better this time around. We also get to see Academy City at day a lot more, which I feel just makes the show more pleasing to look at.

Enjoyment: 15/15
Railgun is an absolute blast to watch. There's ups and downs, there's highs and lows, and you feel for the characters the whole way through. You spend your time being silly with them, but when the situation gets serious you're still with them 100% of the way. The end-of-arc climaxes feel great, and the more sombre moments pack quite a bit of a punch. There's simply not a lot to complain about.

Overall: 10+8.5+4.5+15/40
                38/40
               (Simplifies to 9.5/10)

I guess I scored Railgun higher than I did Mirai Nikki, which I considered my favourite anime up until now. I'm not sure whether that's changed - scoring is a tricky beast that doesn't 100% reflect opinion - but the fact that I'm seriously considering that possibility should tell you all you need to know. Railgun is absolutely phenomenal, blowing its more than competent parent show completely out of the water. To put it plain and simple, there's very little that Railgun gets wrong: It nails characters, it does a fantastic job on its story, and it's set in an amazingly realized world. Railgun has the highest rating that I've given out on this blog so far, and it deserves every little bit of it.

Toaru Majutsu no Index - How Misfortunate!

Toaru Majutsu no Index is a weird one. It's one of those shows that I like, but, when asked to point out why I like it, I will pretty much blank. As per recently usual, I'll be reviewing both Toaru Majutsu no Index I and II as one show. This does not, however, include the Toaru Kagaru no Railgun spinoff series, nor the shittone of light novels or manga.

Toaru Majutsu no Index (English title A Certain Magical Index, and referred henceforth to as simply Index) follows Touma, a student in Academy City, built specifically as a center of academia and science. Touma is what is known as an Esper, someone who, through the power of techno-babble, is able to perform seemingly magical feats. His only power lies in his right hand, soon nick-named Imagine Breaker, which can cancel out other Esper's abilities by touching them (which we soon discover also affects magic). Despite how useful this proves during Touma's adventures, this isn't considered a proper, scientific Esper phenomenon, as it cannot be properly explained, and Touma is considered a Level 0 Esper: Practically no Esper ability.

Soon into the series, Touma finds a girl in what appears to be a religious habit on his balcony: This turns out to be the titular Index (Written with non-italic letters, so as to not be confused with the title of the show, Index. Got it? OK.). Index appears to be, indeed, a human index of 103,000 grimoires, which she has perfectly committed to memory. Soon thereafter, Touma finds himself enveloped in the world of magic, where various groups of magicians plan to overthrow the scientific world lead by Academy City, or just squabble amongst one another.

I could recount events after this point, but it's frankly sort of pointless. Index isn't really a show with a plot, or rather, not a show with an overaching plot. Every three or four episodes involve Touma and his ever expanding entourage of side characters getting involved in a different, mostly self-contained adventure. Despite their short length, they do a surprisingly good job of seeming impactful and important, though this actually grated me at points: The odds are constantly brought very high, which just ends up being exhausting. It seems not an arc goes by where thousands of lives aren't threatened. It'd be perfectly fine if there were a couple arcs where the only real thing at risk is the life of one of the characters we care about. This is made worse by the fact that the precious few arcs where this is the case are by far the strongest.

Still, the stories that the arcs tell are typically entertaining. Each one focuses on Touma and Index, along with a few members of the side cast, and usually introduces a couple new side-characters and a villain, helping keep things fresh. They do eventually fall into a bit of a predictable pattern, but there's just enough variation around to prevent them becoming stale: One story will find Touma joining forces with the magician Style to slowly climb up an alchemist's lair, whilst another will have Touma and a couple other characters tracking a courier with a dangerous artifact all around Academy City.

Since the series de-emphasizes story, it has a necessity to be carried by its characters, and here's where the show feels very strange. I've been meaning for a while to write a piece about character development vs character depth, and here's where I wish I had, because it would make explaining the following a hell of a lot easier. You see, Index is a show whose characters are, with two exceptions, really static - they barely get any development, but they have a satisfying amount of depth to them. That is to say, they don't change throughout the series, but we get a fairly decent idea of who they are.

This would typically result in me finding a show dull  - there's no real story to follow the whole way through, and the characters don't provide meaningful engagement by the means of developing. It's partially for shows like these that I felt the enjoyment rating should be more important: There's nothing wrong on a technical level, but by all means I should've found this thing immensely dull.

And yet I don't. Index was more than fairly entertaining, it was genuinely addicting. Perhaps the reason for this is that there's just so damn many characters, and all of them feel varied and unique in their own ways. Early in season 2 the archetypal good, clean and polite religious person character was introduced. I scoffed at the idea, being sure that we'd already seen this character before, before realizing that in a showed centered greatly around religious bickering, we'd never had this particular flavor of character before, a whole season in. The fact that, despite being blatant stereotypes, characters more often than not manage to be genuinely endearing also really helps, despite being just as surprising to me.

It's hard to pick out a main cast among such a huge group of characters, seeing as how none of them really get that much screentime apart from the main duo, but I'd like to point out a few that I feel deserve this title.

First off, we have Touma. He is pretty much as anime protagonist as anime protagonists get. However, he still manages to be bizarrely likable: his constant comedic misfortune (to the point where his catchphrase is the rather clumsily translated "How Misfortunate!") manages to be funny, despite it being a gag that's been done a million times, perhaps due to his comic self-awareness about the whole thing. One thing that I appreciated is that Touma is never given a reason to be as heroic as he becomes in moments of danger, he just is, and no one really questions it because that's just what Touma does. He does have a bad habit of repeating variations of the same speech to every villain he meets, but these are usually brief enough that they're not all that annoying.

Then there's the titular Index. She's perhaps the weakest character of the four I'd consider "the main cast", being little more than the traditional energetic young girl with a mysterious power. She fits the role OK, has a running comedic gag that is very hit-and-miss, and the occasional good emotional moment. After the arc centered around her in Season 1, she honestly doesn't seem to have much to do, and is definitely not enough of a powerful force in the plot to justify having the series named after her, though she's unquestionably around the most after Touma. Before writing this review, the word that kept popping to mind to describe Index's quality as a character was "inoffensive".

Then we have Misaka, also known as Railgun, a powerful Level 5 Esper (One of only seven in Academy City, as we are incessantly reminded) around whom the spinoff Toaru Kagaru no Railgun (A Certain Scientific Railgun, for those who, like me, don't know Japanese) revolves. She's your run-of-the-mill snarky and grumpy girl character. Despite this, I actually found myself really liking her, to the point where she's quite possibly my favorite character in the show. Something about the way she behaves just seems a lot more human than her archetype usually is, perhaps because she's also shown to be genuinely shy and silly at points. Later in the show she develops a crush on Touma, and the way she tip-toes around this and begins acting feels very natural, especially considering she is in middle school.

Finally, we have Accelerator, who is initially introduced as an antagonist, but grows into more of an anti-hero role. I found him immensely annoying during his stint as an antagonist, but once he becomes a more well-rounded character he becomes a fairly good addition to the roster. He's perhaps the character who develops the most, though it's through a rather cliche arc. It's still not boring to experience, but I can't say I ever felt any joy when the focus of the show shifted away from Touma and Index to Accelerator for episodes at a time.

However, the shows greatest strength doesn't lie in any of these factors: It's really the world and the ensuing battles that are interesting. The idea of the magical world and the technological world fighting isn't precisely novel, but is one that I feel is very much underused. As such, I greatly appreciated seeing it put in action fairly effectively here. There's also a decent deal of political intrigue going on behind the scenes: The different churches are constantly fighting against each other or against Academy City, which, though explained minimally, lends a decent deal of weight to the stuff going on in the foreground. The show also does a particularly good job of making up magical artifacts with sometimes genuinely terrifying powers, which often serve as McGuffins for an arc or two.

Of course, the whole Magic vs Technology aesthetic most importantly affects the fights. It's here where the show shines, with a host of interestingly powered enemies coming up against Touma, at least early on. By Season 2, the creativity wanes a little bit, and most attacks only really differ in what color the projectiles being thrown at Touma are. Fortunately, Season 2 manages to differentiate its bad guys by how they conjure said projectiles rather than what the projectiles do: One character casts spells using small strips of paper, for instance, whilst another uses a staff as a multi-purpose voodoo doll.

Whilst Touma's power (being exclusively a defensive one) seems like it'd be a clever way for the writers to force themselves to write him out of corners in more interesting ways, it ultimately only serves to make all the fights he's in very samey. Aside from enemies who fight in extremely creative ways, Touma's power means that he'll ultimately win most fights by blocking attacks with his right hand, and then uppercutting the enemy. This is really cool for the first few times, having a really kinetic and visceral feel to it that magic simply lacks, but eventually gets tired and predictable.

The other big issue with combat is the how extremely underused the science side is. We only get to see a few Espers fight, and most of them honestly feel like they're using magic in all but in name. Railgun, especially, whose power is channeling electricity feels like she fits in perfectly with the magician Style, who harnesses the power of fire. There just isn't enough of a technological feel to them: aside from a few instances, it doesn't feel like they're limited or empowered in any way by the fact that this isn't magic. What's most frustrating is that, when it goes right, there's a few really cool ideas there. I really like Accelerator's power, that being the ability to change any vector quantity that comes in contact with him. It's a nice, science-feeling power, and the show just doesn't do that kind of thing enough.

Character and World Building: 8.5/10
A large cast of unchanging but endearing characters inhabit a world that's got some really cool flavor to it, and enables them to do battle in really cool ways. A few of the things that the various Churches get up to are really insane in a very good way.

Story: 6/10
It's usually inoffensive, but has a decent amount of moments where it shines quite brightly. The events that go on in Index won't leave anyone stunned, but you'd be hard-pressed to be too bored, either.

Presentation: 4/5
Some really cool powers elevate this show beyond the rest. The art style is very much just there, but perhaps the unsung hero is the soundtrack, which has a really interesting, almost dissonant feel. It goes very well with the action, providing appropriate backing for everything from tension to comedy.

Enjoyment: 12/15
I really don't know why I liked Index as much as I did. It's not a bad show by any means, but it doesn't scratch any of my personal itches. Still, I found myself often grinning at the antics the characters got up to, and, despite never really feeling too deeply invested, I got a great amount of enjoyment from the fighting and drama.

Overall: (8.5+6+4+12/40)
                30.5/40
                Roughly 7.5/10

Despite the fact that I've left the show feeling pretty happy with having watched it, I can't help but shake the feeling that I shouldn't have. Index is a show that does a lot of things I don't like, and very few things I do like, yet I still came out with a good impression. Still, I review the experience I had, and not the experience I feel like I should've had by my idea of what my standards are, and I had a pretty good one with Index.

Look forward to my review of the spinoff based around Railgun, coming soon.

Anime: Kokoro Connect - Interesting People?

Kokoro Connect might be the toughest review I've had to write yet. Not because I'm uncertain how to approach it, like with Sakura Trick. Not because I can't feel like I can properly convey what makes the show great, like with the review of Spice and Wolf that's been sitting around in editing limbo for weeks. Nor because I wish it was so much more than it is, like with Angel Beats!

Kokoro Connect is very hard to write about because I still genuinely don't know how I feel about it. It's not a case of "I know how much I enjoyed it, but I'm not sure how good it is". It's a case of straight-up not knowing whether I personally liked it or not. So, I figure I'll write this review, and maybe the process of writing it itself will reveal to me what I thought about it. Please note there'll be spoilers: I'll mention character arcs late in the show, which might invalidate some plot-twists early on, will give details for each of the successive "phenomenons" the show is centred around and will be talking extensively about the ending.

Kokoro Connect follows five high-school students making up the school's Cultural Research Club (also known as CRC): A club where those who for some reason or another aren't in a "proper" club are dumped into. One day, two of the members of the club mysteriously find themselves body-swapped for a short period of time, and the others soon follow, swapping seemingly at random. A mysterious entity calling itself Heartseed, controlling the body of their teacher, soon appears and explains that it's doing this to them because they're interesting people (bit presumptuous of the writers, really), and the phenomenon will stop once the five of them do something Heartseed finds truly interesting.

The body-swapping is how the show was presented to me, and I thought this would be the show's gimmick: the one defining characteristic throughout the whole thing, much like Future Diaries in... err... Future Diary or VR MMOs in Sword Art Online. This turns out not to be quite true, as the show is divided into several shorter arcs, each one with a different random phenomenon disturbing the club's peace for Heartseed to observe. This is a good thing, as each arc's gimmick turns out to be rather shallow, not really leaving enough room for character exploration. It also helps establish Heartseed as an effective antagonist figure: he seems so utterly alien that his seemingly random meddling with the group's lives comes across as mysterious rather than annoying.

The real emphasis on the show lies, of course, on the "interesting people" in the CRC. It's a very character-driven show: each event impacts the five members differently, and they must each face some kind of trauma or crisis before Heartseed decides to stop whatever's currently messing with their lives. As such, it's a big drawback to the show that a lot of them are fairly bland, and those who aren't seem to be stuck repeating the same arc over and over. Out of the five characters that the show presents as being main characters, I can only bring myself to consider three as such: the characters of Aoki and Yui really don't get enough development.

That's not to say they're bad: Aoki is a fairly amusing comic relief character, and, to be completely fair, I get the impression that's all he's really supposed to be. However, I find it a genuine shame that Yui doesn't really get as much development as she deserves: She's actually a very likeable character who seems to have some interesting things going on. She's the pretty girl who likes cute things, but is actually quite a grouch in person. Yui also happens to be a black belt in karate. Her storyline revolves around her fear of men, caused by attempted rape earlier in her life, and her failure to be able to defend herself using her martial arts at the time. This is actually treated very tastefully, and it's hard not to feel sympathy for her, especially considering how strong of a person she's shown to be. As such, I can't help but feel she's criminally underutilized, only really having two episodes dedicated to her. I also really like the portrayal of her relationship with Aoki, who repeatedly and annoyingly professes to be in love with her: Despite Yui's insistence she doesn't reciprocate his feelings it's obvious she does.

The trio of real main characters unfortunately fares quite a lot worse. The protagonist, Taichi, is utterly dull. This is fairly common in anime, but Taichi is what I've come to expect amplified a hundredfold. Aside from one personality trait that the series insists on repeatedly telling us Taichi has (he likes to help people), I can't name a single distinguishing characteristic (no, him allegedly liking wrestling does not count). To be fair, the exploration that's done of his saving-people-thing is actually really effective, but it's over stupidly quick. I'm talking less than a quarter of an episode. I could live with this if the series did what most series do and instead focused on the other main characters, but Kokoro Connect insists on constantly making him the centre of most scenes, not to speak of being the main force in resolving pretty much every storyline. The fact that these storylines are the only way we get to explore the other two members of the trio means that Taichi's blandness forces itself on top of two largely superior characters. At least, the speeches he gives to try and "save" others (which are usually the emotional climax of each arc) are often moving, though they could be more moving if given by a character I gave the slightest shit about.

That said, it's not like both of the other two are stellar themselves. Iori is a character who I found really interesting for the first arc. She had an internal conflict I'd seen before, but with a fairly new twist on it: She's the outwardly popular, cheerful and loud "I'm not sure which of my personalities is really me" girl. Think Rise Kujikawa from Persona 4, but not quite as upbeat. During the body-swapping arc, the series takes on a genuinely interesting approach to her dilemma, and resolves it in a very emotionally satisfying way. In the second arc, she has the same dilemma again, but much more muted, taking a lot more of a back seat.  In the third arc, she has the same dilemma again. She also takes up a large chunk of the plot with it again. It's also done in a way I've seen a million times before. In the fourth arc she sigh has the same dilemma again. It's the main focus of the arc again, too. Admittedly, it's another really interesting take on the problem, experienced more from the perspective of those around her than herself, wondering whether the person they thought they knew existed at all this time. But it's resolved in exactly the same way that it'd been resolved the previous three times, and it's frankly become extremely dull by this point.

That's the biggest problem with Iori: She goes through a couple interesting arcs, but they're repeated so many times that she becomes an annoyance. Whereas at the start of the series I thought of her as a person with emotional issues, by the end of it she seemed more like a wishy-washy bimbo who couldn't put her problems behind her. Much like Taichi, the fact that she takes a front line seat for most of the show really hurts her character.

The two above characters also suffer from just not feeling all that human, Iori especially. Despite all my complaints about both of them, they're both likeable enough to not be annoying, but the two of them seem to be designed to have big, hard-hitting emotional moments of catharsis over and over again, and it's just honestly not all that believable. These moments do often work, but unlike in Spice and Wolf, Angel Beats! or hell, even something as non-character oriented as Dog Days, it's hard to forget that these are characters going through a pretty exaggerated plot beat.

Fortunately, the third member of the trio is by far my favourite character from the show: Inaba. She's a really cool take on the snarky clever one: She's extremely aggressive, in more ways than one. Inaba acts as the de-facto leader of the CRC, despite Iori being the President on paper, and is usually the one who makes sure the group gets through the different phenomenons safely. Despite it never being outright stated, it's obvious that, despite her constant berating of the other group members, Inaba actually suffers from self-esteem issues. These don't come up as plot points, but very clearly guide Inaba through her actions in dealing with the rest of the CRC, and lead her to make things happen that affect her negatively.

Perhaps the most surprising thing is just how funny Inaba is. Her constant annoyance at Taichi and Aoki's antics is intensely amusing, and she knows just how to make other people comically uncomfortable for her own amusement when need be. She's not a funny character in the same way Aoki is: Inaba is not comic relief, but she specializes in making other characters be comic relief, even when they don't want to. This isn't always used in this context, but it's also refreshing how concious she is of her sexuality, occasionally making dirty jokes to make those around her squirm.

That said, her greatest virtue lies in her arcs: She goes through several, very believable, varied character arcs. Each arc of the show involves us either learning more about Inaba or Inaba coming to realize something about herself, and it's by far the best the show has to offer. It just feels natural, which the rest of the show has massive trouble doing.

At this point, I should address the elephant in the room when it comes to Inaba, Taichi and Iori. The first arc focuses on Taichi and Iori developing a romance, which Inaba encourages along. However, the second arc involves Inaba realizing she also has feelings for Taichi, and the two girls agreeing to be friendly whilst fighting for his affections: Taichi still insisting he loves Iori. Eventually, both Taichi and Iori fall out of love with each other, though they stay friends, and Taichi and Inaba begin going out on the last episode, after he realizes his true feelings.

I'm not exactly experienced with love stories, but this feels like a pretty new one to me. It's really the show's strongest point, largely carried by how good Iori's first arc is and how likeable Inaba is. The original romance between Iori and Taichi feels like it's movie-style true love, and Inaba appears to be set up as the other girl who's in love with Taichi, whose affections he'll never really return. The show does a brilliant job of playing with tropes in this way, and it genuinely had me tricked, not because I really believed in Iori and Taichi's relationship, but simply because that's the way romance works in fiction.

However, the fourth arc, which might have been the show's strongest arc if not for the fact that it's focused on the same character arc Iori has gone through three times already, does a really good job of de-constructing the relationship between Taichi and Iori. It's a very fresh way of looking at a romance, too, and one that I feel is really level-headed: it's recognized as having been a great thing in its time, even if it was fuelled by deep issues that both characters had and as such was bound to eventually end when they got over said issues, which their romance helped them do. Well, the show claims that both of them had issues. Really, Iori had issues and Taichi was just around.

This subplot also synergizes very well with Inaba's character. The fact that Inaba is by far the most interesting character in turn helps keep the subplot interesting, whilst the evolution of the subplot is a large part of what allows Inaba to keep changing in interesting ways. I honestly think both would be lesser without the other, allowing this particular part of the show to be greater than the sum of its parts. It's really her attachment to Taichi that lets us see several new facets of Inaba later in the show, and it's precisely that that puts her above the other characters.

That love story is really the only subplot the series has that carries over all of the arcs, unless you count Iori's groundshog-day style loop of the same arc to be a subplot. This is a double-edged sword: On the one hand, the fact that the four arcs are pretty much distinct stories allows each one to have breathing space and not have to deal with whatever happened in the other ones. On the other, it means that each arc has to wrap-up everything that happens with in it in the rather short timespan they're given, meaning smaller plotlines often feel rushed or unresolved. This is particularly obvious in the third arc: Aoki and Yui develop some issues from the particular gimmick of the arc, (whereupon random members of the CRC turn into children for a set period of time each day), but these are each resolved in less than half an episode. It's a shame, too: Aoki seemed like he'd actually be relevant for once.

Despite this drawback, the arcs are, all-in-all, fairly well done. Each of their gimmicks is cleverly tailored to reveal certain emotional issues from members of the CRC, and they each have enough of a storyline that they feel satisfying to watch. The only real issue is the over-reliance on Iori and Taichi, but this is an issue that only really becomes apparent when looking at the show as a whole. If I had to say, the weakest arc was probably the third: It was by far the weakest take on Iori's arc, the gimmick was the least interesting, and it was the one where Inaba had the least presence.

Before moving on to ratings, shout-outs to a few "real" side-characters: Heartseed I already talked about, and makes a fantastic antagonist-if-not-villain. Goussan, the teacher, is a likeable slacker with a surprising ability to make sense, and feels like he's a really cool guy. Finally, Fujishima, the girl who's Taichi's rival in winning Iori's affection early on makes for some great comic relief, and is shown to be a touchingly good human being later on.

Character and World Building: 7/10
The fact that this score isn't higher is what confused me about Kokoro Connect, because, if it was, Kokoro Connect would be absolutely phenomenal. Unfortunately, this is precisely what the show focuses on, and it's also the part that it's got the biggest flaws in. There's some genuinely good characters here. As much as I complain about Iori, she could be really interesting if used with a lot more moderation: hell, she's got really good moments even being as overused as she is. Unfortunately, her character is absolutely ruined by being on-screen too much, and she also clouds the rest of the cast. Taichi, similarly, has some really interesting character development which is over in a blink and then proceeds to be the biggest wet noodle in the history of the world, covering up the interesting stuff about the other characters in the process. Fortunately, the show manages to have an absolutely fantastic character in Inaba, as well as a really good supporting cast. It also does a fantastic job of making the CRC feel like friends: it's clear that these people all deeply care about each other.

Story: 6.5/10
It's serviceable. There's the one outlying brilliant arc of the love story, and the general storytelling is just above average, which pushes it a bit over the neutral 5, but there's genuinely not much to say here. It's not what the show's about, anyway.

Presentation: 3/5
The show is good looking, if fairly generic. It's well drawn, but the characters faces have a weird uncanny valley feeling to them that I dislike, especially when it comes to their facial expressions. They also appear to have a bad case of the "changing proportions" disease, where faces seem to be slightly different from shot to shot. I'm also not fond of the show's use of close-ups on faces: whenever this is used in anime I always feel oddly uncomfortable, and Kokoro Connect seems to really like doing it. The first opening theme is very memorable and fits the show perfectly, everything else in the sound department is forgettable.

Enjoyment: 12/15
Dammit, despite all the flaws I couldn't help but enjoy myself. I really liked the characters, and wanted to spend more time around them even when Iori kept banging on about the same stuff. It got me hooked, and I wanted to see how these arcs would resolve. Illogically, despite the fact that the show is merely good at the one thing it sets out to do, I still enjoyed myself a fair amount. Kokoro Connect managed to somehow charm me, even if I can't see how it did, and I think that's what led me to come into this review so utterly confused. It's a show that requires you to sit through a lot of unenjoyable stuff, but, hidden under this sea of flaws, there's a show that I could potentially have truly loved, rather than just had a good time with.

Overall: (7+6.5+3+12)/40
               28.5/40
               (Just Over 7/10)

Kokoro Connect is flawed. At a very fundamental level, it manages to be good at the one thing that it needed to do great, which is a huge fall. But, under all that, under the overusage of Iori and Yui's tragic lack of screentime, under Taichi's blandness, lies a show that's capable of producing such characters as Inaba, or setting up situations as unexpectedly interesting as its love triangle. It's tragic, really: It's a show that could've been one of the best, but is merely good. The fact that its good points manage to bring it up so much only serves to highlight how huge Kokoro Connect's flaws are. Yet it's still serviceable, it's still enjoyable, and, if asked if this is a show that deserves a watch, I would give a confident, if not energetic, "yes". I just wish Kokoro Connect was the show that I know is buried somewhere within what it ended up being.