Old ladies with firearms are a growing issue in this day and age.

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Toma Kamijou (Micah Solusod) lives in Academy City, a city that houses 2.3 million citizens, all of the people with psychic powers, or “Espers”. Toma himself is one of the weakest, being at “Level 0” range of power scales in the city, though he does have a power in his right hand which can cancel out anything supernatural it touches, he’s also strangely unlucky. A few months ago, he came across a hungry nun named Index (Monica Rial) who has memorized 103,000 magical books, as well as a powerful electricity using Esper named Mikoto Misaka (Brittany Karbowski), and since then he’s been dragged into battle after battle, especially against the Roman Catholic Church and their Right Seat of God group.

After a major battle against one of their members that caused major damage to several areas, Academy City is preparing to retaliate, but there also seems to protest against them happening in the south of France. These rumblings eventually make their way to Toma, who gets held at gunpoint by Monaka Oyafune, an old lady on Academy City’s governing board who gives him a warning about how his right hand will play a big part in events to come as the battles between Academy City and the Roman Catholic Church begin to escalate. The Church is apparently taking steps to undermine science across the globe, meaning an already controversial place like Academy City is bound to be targeted again sooner or later.

Motoharu Tsuchimikado, Toma’s friend and classmate who also has knowledge of magic, arrives soon after to shoot Monaka in the stomach, but she apparently knew this was coming. Seems the science side of this conflict is also eager to destroy religion, and Monaka coming to tell Toma about this goes against that agenda. She knew she’d be eliminated for it, but at least her death will keep her daughter, a teacher at Toma’s school, from being caught up in things. So, she put a hit out on herself to make sure she got the information to him and her family would be safe.

Tsuchimikado also has a job for Toma: They’re headed to France to pick up the Document of Constantine.

OUR TAKE

After over five years of no animated material, A Certain Magical Index returns with a vengeance, beginning the first of three productions: Third seasons of both this series and a spin-off, A Certain Scientific Railgun, as well as the first season of another spin-off. But for now, we have the first episode of this.

First off, how nice of them to have a VERY brief recap of the past two seasons made up mostly of Toma socking people in the face. To be fair, that is a pretty fitting way to sum up the show thus far, but the last episode of the anime aired in early 2011, so you’re probably not going to be fully prepared unless you’ve watched or rewatched the rest of the show recently (like on VRV, which will still have it up until November 9th!). Though I do get the sense that the staff figured they should properly reintroduce what fans are familiar with regarding the characters, tone, and running gags. So, in the range of twenty minutes we have Toma getting bitten by Index and screaming about his bad luck, Misaka getting sparking mad about her crush on Toma and Toma blocking said sparks with his hand (which now has a weird new sound), Toma walking in on a girl in a compromising position twice and getting hurt for it (which has already been beaten into the ground enough in the last two seasons, though at least this time she wasn’t naked and the door was open so he had no reason to knock). So, I guess it’s nice that this show hasn’t lost its spirit in the last few years, for better or worse.

But while it’s reassuring to know that fans will be getting more of the story they know and love, all those callbacks don’t make up for the fact that this premiere was pretty uneventful. There were more things that happened than I described in the Overview, but not a lot really related much to the progression of the plot. I do appreciate that the show can still have a relaxed air about Toma getting detention and still getting into hijinks while also having an undercurrent of war on the horizon, but after such a long time waiting for this third season, I was kinda hoping we could hit the ground running. Especially since this season is probably planning on adapting nine whole volumes of the original light novel, as opposed to the six adapted in the first season or the eight in the second. That said, unlike other shows based on light novels like Full Metal Panic, I’m not as worried about this one not having the chance to cover the end of the story just in case the ratings for this don’t do well…but that’s mainly because there have been over twenty novels published since the second season ended, so there’s no chance in hell of them even getting close at this point.

We should also talk about the new OP and ED. Index OPs have always been pretty cluttered and frantic with how many characters and hints at future plots they have to fit in, but they usually managed to keep it at a pace that made it easy to digest. The season’s first OP, “Gravitation” by Maon Kurosaki, has close to 40 new cast additions flashed briefly over 15 seconds before the fights are shown, and even the details of those are pretty vague other than that fights will indeed be happening. The accompanying ED, “Revolution” by Yuka Iguchi, has the opposite problem, being pretty much just a far away shot of Index flashing in and out of the frame of an admittedly pretty looking gate. In contrast, the EDs have often been really low tempo, but giving us nice snippets of animation to cool us off and keep us knowing who the key characters will be going forward (or at least giving us cute images of Index like the fourth ED did). This gate could be foreshadowing for something in a future episode, but it’s pretty lackluster for an ED from this franchise.

I remember watching the first season of Index back in 2008 with fansubs (before Crunchyroll was as big as it is now, so don’t judge me!) and it was one of the first real glimpses I got of watching anime as it was coming out, so seeing it finally come back is really awesome to see. Here’s hoping the next episode can start living up the highs I remember the series having.

Score 7/10