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alt title(s): To Aru Kagaku No Railgun
A Certain Magical Index
Touma is just an extremely-unlucky Ordinary High School Student, living in a state-of-the-art city dedicated to the study of people with esper powers and possessing an unheard of ability to negate the effects of esper powers with his right hand. One day, he wakes up to find a young girl dressed like a nun hanging on his balcony. Her name is Index, and she claims to be on the run from rogue magicians who desire the 103,000 magical texts of the Index Librorum Prohibitorum locked inside her head...
Based on a series of Light Novels. There are also two manga adaptations, one being a spinoff centered around Mikoto ( To Aru Kagaku no Railgun, "A Certain Scientific Railgun") with an anime adaptation of its own.
Examples shared by both series
Harumi: You uh... You like him?
Mikoto: W-What?
Harumi: You know, when a girl behaves all cold towards the guy she likes. It was popular a while back... Tsun... Tsun... Tsundara? No... Tsunjire?
- Unknown Rival - Mikoto hounds Touma on a regular basis trying to get him to fight seriously with her, having misinterpreted his mysterious ability to negate her lightning as a sign of some incredible power that he's holding back. His nonchalance toward her and her otherwise remarkable power is a blow to her pride as one of the strongest espers in the city.
- And then she's really unknown because his memory was erased. He has no idea who she is anymore.
- We Have Reserves - The Sisters. See For Science for details.
- Well Intentioned Extremist - Everyone, even Accelerator (with a little Ret Con)
- When All You Have Is A Hammer - Touma's complete lack of offensive power basically reduces his strategy to running at the enemy—using his hand to shield himself—and punching them really hard in the face. Some thought to figuring out the weakness in his enemy's flashy attack may be required first.
To Aru Majutsu no Index
- Anti Hero - Accelerator of all people, in the arc where he's the protagonist.
- Arbitrary Skepticism - Touma sees esper powers on a regular basis but initially dismisses the idea of magic as nonsense. Index's counter-skepticism of Touma's power is a lot more reasonable, considering he (an atheist) is claiming precedence over God's power. Academy City in general seems to hold this attitude, considering its brain-enhancing esper program as thoroughly scientific and counter to any related superstitions that might crop up. But since science is basically proven hypotheses supported by data from repeatable experiments about how the world works, the fact that magic is repeatable means...
- Artifact Title - After the first arc, Index has next to no relevance to the plot other than in passing mentions as a Mac Guffin. The ED is still dedicated to her side by side with Touma.
- Art Shift - Touma—and drastically so—when he sees President
Obama Kuroko.
- Awesomeness By Analysis - Index's complete knowledge of magic finally gets the spotlight in episode 23, in which she holds her own against a giant golem with a few quick phrases and safety pins. If Touma hadn't knocked out the caster, she would have won. All this to a Theme Music Power Up, too.
- Beach Episode - Combined with Bizarro Universe for a maximum amount of Fanservice without risking Character Derailment.
- The Beard - Mikoto tries to get Touma to pretend to be her boyfriend to discourage another guy who keeps following her around—the grandson of her school's superintendent, so she can't just blow him off the usual way.
- BFS: Kanzaki Kaori's katana (whew), which is easily as long as she is tall.
- Bodyguard Crush - Implied with Stiyl, but Touma is nice enough not to press the issue.
- Cloning Blues
- Color Failure - See Thunder Shock, below.
- Crowning Moment of Heartwarming In episodes 19 and 20 when Accelerator takes a bullet to the head to save Last Order. Even if it doesn't redeem him.
- Day In The Limelight - Episodes 19 and 20 casts former antagionist Accelerator as the protagionist and shows the events that make him less of a jerk.
- Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu - Touma's victories against a Reality Warper and an esper who won about ten different superpower lotteries feel a bit like this. (Bonus points because he literally did punch them out.) One wonders just how much more they can keep powering up the villains.
- Drama Preserving Handicap - Index's "Walking Church" robe provides her with amazing defensive capabilities. Touma inadvertently destroys it in the first episode to prove the existence of his Imagine Breaker. Index patches it back together, but it's lost it's defensive powers.
- Easy Amnesia - Index remembers very little of her own life because of her periodic mind-wipes, and at the end of the first Story Arc, all of Touma's memories are permanently destroyed due to magic-induced brain damage.
- Everythings Cuter With Kittens - Pretty much the sole reason Sphinx exists. Not that I'm complaining.
- Fanon - Fans have speculated that the Amakusa Catholic girl that Touma fought & saved from a fall in volume 7 maybe Itsuwa, the Amakusa warrior who was first introduced in Volume 11. If it is true, that may explain why she has a crush on Touma in the first place. We’ll just have to wait for season 2 of Index to see if it’s her.
- Fan Nickname - Not a true Fan Nickname, since Touma uses it too during the first Story Arc, but "Biri Biri" (a sound effect for shocking) for Mikoto.
- There are also pikachu-tan (pikachu-chan) and pika-pika-tan, which are fanbased.
- Fashionable Asymmetry - Kaori apparently only needs one full leg on her pants.
- Funbag Airbag - Komoe-Sensei in the second intro.
- Genre Savvy - After getting hit with magic-induced amnesia, Touma knows that any bizarre-looking characters he encounters are likely important acquantances of his. He's quite proud of this prediction, actually.
- Unfortunately, the first time he tries this, he's wrong. But the person is quite important to what's going on, regardless.
- Good Is Dumb - Accelerator, after becoming more of an Anti Hero, is weakened in later novels.
- Handicapped Badass - In connection with Good Is Dumb and No Good Deed Goes Unpunished, Accelerator suffers major brain damage at the end of his arc, requiring a cane and the Sisters' Hive Mind to remain functional and use his powers. He's a Bad Ass since he can still use his incredible redirection powers, if only for 15 minutes at a time. But seriously, with that kind of power, few enemies would last 15 seconds.
- Heroic Sacrifice - Mikoto's plan in the sisters arc.
- Holding Back The Phlebotinum - Index has mastered, functional knowledge of all magic, but her ridiculous power, cumulating in destroying a satellite by accident with a giant magical laser beam, is only seen once when Touma trips her auto-defense program (and subsequently destroys it). If someone would just tell her that she really can use magic, useless, annoying Index would become a nigh-unstoppable force of nature. As it is, she makes do sporatic analyses and is of little direct plot relevance.
- Hostile Show Takeover - In the DVD bonus shorts. While fighting crazy-defense-program Index, Touma tries to get Kaori and Stiyl to take action by telling them to quit being "just side characters. Don't you want to be main characters too?!" (The pair think about it for a second and decide to murder Touma.)
- Hot Chick With A Sword - The katana wielding Kaori.
- Hot For Student - Komoe. Touma used to be a naughty boy, apparently. Various things happened. Various.
- Lampshade Hanging - Touma acknowledges his tendency to break into long monologues: "Quit getting depressed in this kinda long prologue!"
- Also the various discussions about how Touma keeps meeting new girls and expanding his harem. Various characters imply that he's the protagonist of a galgame.
- Laser Guided Amnesia
- Level Grinding - According to the Tree Diagram supercomputer, Accelerator needs to kill about 20,000 Biri Biri-clones in order to become a Level 6. And so the project begins. ;_;
- Magical Database - In a literal sense, with Index herself being an index about magic.
- Marshmallow Hell - Poor Sphinx, stuck in Hyouka's breasts like that.
- Meaningful Name Aogami has blue hair and Himegami has hime hair.
- Meido - Maika. She goes to a maid school and sits on a cleaning robot that spins round and round. ;_;
- Minor Injury Overreaction - Accelerator goes from toying with Touma to raging fury after Touma slaps Accelerator's hand away with impunity. He really isn't used to people being able to ignore his power like that.
- Later this scene was turned into some sort of a yaoi joke in the DVD extras.
- Morality Pet - The loli Last Order (the 20001th Sister), for Accelerator, the guy who tortured and killed over ten thousand Sisters! She even gives a long speech about how he isn't such a bad guy deep down. Even Accelerator is in disbelief.
- Mundane Solution - Touma defeats Firestarter's indefinitely regenerating fire summon by tripping his apartment's sprinkler system, thus washing away the runes sustaining it.
- Naked First Impression - Touma walks in on Index and Hyouka changing. Lampshaded in the following episode when he is standing in front of a changing booth:
- New Transfer Student - Subverted when Komoe-sensei announces Touma's class will be getting a new student. Index walks into the classroom, only it turns out she was lost and looking for Touma. Himegami is the actual new tranfer student.
- Ninety Percent Of Your Brain - 85% of Index's mind is taken up by the grimoire collection. This leaves her only able to maintain one year of memories. Subverted when Komoe-sensei not only reveals that the 15%=one year explanation was completely wrong, but goes on to explain in layman's terms how the brain works with memory.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished - The first time Accelerator actually tries to help someone with his powers and what does he get? A bullet to the head for his troubles; though he survives, he gets brain damage that makes him reliant on the Sisters' Hive Mind to make up for the impaired brain functions. His powers are also reduced; he can only use them for 15 minutes at a time. Overlaps with Good Is Dumb.
- Nosebleed - Touma in reaction to having a half-naked Index sleeping in his bed. Also subverted in that he had a nosebleed from humidity before he saw her, and lampshaded in that he defends himself by calling it unrealistic "manga-like" interpretation of a nosebleed. His nosebleed did get worse upon seeing her though.
- Not So Different - Touma and Accelerator both suffer brain damage in similar circumstances. Faced with the choice of using their powers to save themselves or to prevent someone from dying, both choose to save the other person. They're also treated by the same doctor.
- Older Than They Look - Komoe-sensei looks like a young girl (and wears bunny pajamas), but her home is littered with cigarettes, beer cans, and neurology books.
- One Hundred And Eight - When rumors first surfaced about Biri Biri clones running around, Kuroko fantasizes about having 108 all for herself.
- Omake - Much as there was with Shana, there's a series of DVD specials titled Toaru Majutsu no Index-tan. They include, among other things, a nod to another of J.C. Staff's works, Toradora.
- Only Sane Man - In the 15th episode, Touma suddenly finds everyone around him inexplicably recast in different roles, with no one else the wiser. Among other things, Mikoto is now his Genki Girl cousin, Index is his mother, and Kuroko is now President Obama ("Yes. We. Can!"). He spends half the time yelling at everyone for playing a prank on him and the other half just wondering what the hell is going on before he finally finds out what's going on.
- Our Angels Are Different - Apparently, if you force an angel down from heaven or whatever, it goes berserk in the attempt to get back home to do whatever its job is and may destroy the world in doing so. They don't seem particularly thrilled about this.
- Phantom Zone
- Playing With Fire - Touma's first magic-using opponent, Stiyl, uses liberally distributed magical runes to throw 3000°C fireballs and control an indefinitely regenerating fire demon. He's a firestarter, twisted firestarter.
- Pretty Freeloader - Index, and thanks to his memory-loss, Touma doesn't even know why!
- Rant Inducing Slight - Touma insults Aogami's infatuation with girls that fall from the sky, and he goes into an incredible rant about what he's into that contains so much Fetish Fuel it has to be seen
 to be believed.
- Reality Subtext - in the Index-tan special, someone who used a voice changer asked Kaori Kanzaki about her age, her Stripperific outfit, and her voice actress' Lady Drunk antics in the launch of the anime.
- Reality Warper - Aureolus Izzard, whose magic goes far beyond what anyone else might consider alchemy...
- Relationship Values - In a Shout Out to these, Last Order declares to Accelerator that her "love index" will go up if he feeds her.
- Robo Speak - Index seems to enter verbose debug mode when ever accessing the tomes.
- Running Gag - Index's unique method of getting back at Touma. She has a wider bite radius than you'd expect for someone about half his size.
- Shout Out - After Touma finally loses the delinquents in the aforementioned first episode, when Mikoto tracks him down.
- In one episode, Touma passes an old man and a little kid (illusions) reading a magazine with Shana-tan on it. "Shana-tan, moe~"
- In another episode, after seeing Aisa Himegami skillfully heal an unfortunate bystander, Touma asks her:
- The To Aru Majutsu No Index-tan omake is itself an imitation of the Shakugan No Shana-tan omake and makes clear reference to it several times. The Toradora tiger makes an appearance, too, for the same reason—same publisher/studio.
- Squishy Wizard - After his fire summon is negated, Stiyl goes down with a single uppercut from Touma, who to be fair has a pretty impressive punch. Accelerator, the strongest psychic in Academy City, has no experience in streetfighting and subsequently thus goes down to a flurry of Touma's punches, as well.
- Superpower Lottery - On one end, you have people like Mikoto who worked hard to raise their rank and have intimidating powers. And then you have Accelerator. He can change the velocity vectors of anything he comes into contact with, be it bullets or Elemental Powers—even automatically if he is in danger. When a character can theoretically fly, replicate the effects of a variety of other offensive powers, shrug off a nuclear bomb without even trying, and still have time for an Evil Laugh, you have to wonder if something went wrong somewhere...
- Talking Is A Free Action - A lot of people in this show have the strange habit of starting long monologes to explain what they're about to do while attacking an enemy.
- The Reason You Suck Speech - Reversed with Touma's verbal barrage at Aureolus.
- Third Person Person - The Sisters narrate everything they say in third person, complete with descriptions of how they are speaking and what they are doing at the time. It probably goes with the Hive Mind.
- This Looks Like A Job For Aquaman - Even though Touma's abilities aren't really that spectacular when compared with the abilities of everyone else, they end up being the only thing that can save the day most of the time.
- Thunder Shock - Index and Aisa (plus a Color Failure), when Komoe starts happily talking about how Touma was a naughty boy, and how "various things" happened. Though in this case it's more like a Thunder Rage: "Another one?" "That bastard."
- Unwanted Harem - Surprisingly, the only thing that isn't proportionate with Touma's bad luck is the number of girls who seem to have crushes on him. His harem includes but is not limited to: Index (possibly?), Misaka Mikoto, Komoe Tsukuyomi, Aisa Himegami, and (from the novels) Seiri Fukiyose and Itsuwa. Index and Mikoto meet in episode 22 and instantly dislike each other—Mikoto even gives off involuntarily bursts of electricity during the encounter. Of course, Touma and Index had been caught in a compromising position at the time, with Kuroko along to insinuate that he had been getting steamy with Index.
- Possibly Misaka Imouto aswell.
- ...whom number around 9968 as of last count.
- Given the hassle that comes with an Unwanted Harem, it's likely that Touma's "success" with women is yet another form of bad luck.
- Verbal Tic - Several characters have unique ways of speaking, one of the more obvious ones being Last Order's tendency to repeat the "said Misaka" portion of her Third Person Person speech twice.
- Specifically she's announcing herself as the subject of the sentence twice (and she's the subject of all her sentences, given that she's narrating her own dialog), although the translators necessarily took some liberties in how it was phrased. This is also a case of a Verbal Tic being embedded inside another Verbal Tic, possibly making her the most annoying character to listen to ever devised. Or not.
- Wild Card - Tsuchimikado Motoharu—self-professed liar—plays at this; at the end of the arc where his secret identity is revealed, he claims to be an agent, or maybe a double agent, or maybe a double double agent, etc... for the Church or Academy City (and relations between the two groups are vague to begin with). Conveniently, his esper power is slow regeneration, thus allowing him to survive the bloody backlash that accompanies an esper using magic.
- Yaoi Fangirl - Tsuchimikado Maika, the Maid, who asks Misaka to pickup some Boys Love manga for her.
- Younger Than They Look - Styl Magnus is 14.
To Aru Kagaku no Railgun
- All Your Powers Combined - The "Level Upper" hivemind gives its instigator the free use of the powers of all of its members, when an esper is only supposed to have one. By the time of The Reveal, this count is literally Over Nine Thousand.
- Badass Normal - the Dorm Supervisor of Tokiwadai Dormitories.
- Big Ol Eyebrows - The reason for Miho for attacking Tokidawai students in the first place.
- Brown Note - The main plot centers around a "Level Upper", which turns out to be an audio file. It works by synaesthesia, using sound alone to manipulate all of the senses at once—not, sadly, The Power Of Rock—in order to effect an increase in power. Unfortunately, its users inevitably fall into comas...
- Chainsaw Good - Mikoto attacks Touma with a chainsaw materialized from iron in the air, nearly lopping off a few limbs before she turns it into a Whip Sword and he's able to dispel it.
- Chekhovs Gun - Episode 4: in a list of "urban legends", the Level Upper is mentioned.
- Eureka Moment - Episode 3: The girls are stumped over why a girl shows up on camera but isn't seen by her victims, since everyone with the power to turn invisible has an alibi. After Kuroko remarks that she "didn't notice" the pigeon Uiharu saw fly by, Mikoto realizes that the girl must have the power to erase her presence from the minds of people who see her directly.
- Four Girl Ensemble
- Fetus Terrible - A flying psychic malformed embryo... thing... formed from the negative emotions of thousands of espers. Not really conscious but damn good at blowing stuff up. Regenerates in a fraction of a second. Also, tentacles. Only The Power Of Rock can save you now.
- The Heartless - The Fetus Terrible, above.
- Invisibility - The anime mentions offhand that there are 47 students with the power to turn completely invisible, and that count doesn't include more specific powers like the ability to not be noticed by direct sight.
- Mission Control - Uiharu puts her computer skills to good use in episode 3, watching the action through an extensive web of surveillance cameras and giving directions to the other three girls through their earpieces.
- Required Spinoff Crossover - Mikoto running into Touma, which happens very frequently before the main story kicks in.
- Serious Business - A team of top scientists spending an entire omake chapter speculating on what kind of panties Mikoto wears under her shorts, even sending a special ops team in a (thwarted) attempt to steal them.
- Urban Legends - Episode 4 shows us that there are a few of these around. The Undressing Woman and The ability to nullify other abilities are... well the former is shown in the episode and the other is obviously Touma, so those two are confirmed. There are others though.
- What Do You Mean Its Not Heinous - Episode 3 is about a culprit who sneaks up on girls, stuns them with a taser and while they are unconscious performs on them the depraved, heinous act of drawing them huge eyebrows.
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