Raildex verse (A Certain Magical Index, A Certain Scientific Railgun, A Certain Scientific Accelerator)

Kanou's, Touma's, and Hamazura's reflections leading up and during that confrontation was surprisingly good to me.

Sometimes, you a'ight Kamachi

I was worried that Hamazura or Touma would overshadow the other, but their team up went surprisingly smoothly.

So the volume is done.

Saint Germain was a fun villain, I find the whole idea of the main villain of the arc's only real threat being making people think he's strong a pretty good plot. He was certainly a hell of a liar at least.

Kanou sort of came out of nowhere, but I like how the #6's sudden appearance in the epilogue cleared it up. Nice kid, hope to see him again but hopefully not as a major part of the story, I feel like this is his peak and he'll only go down after this if he shows up again as a main character.

Hamazura was pretty fun this time around, though I was pretty frustrated when he refused to listen to Touma about how dangerous a Magic God is.

The Kihara's backstory is rather horrifying and suddenly makes me feel much worse for them (the original ones at least).

The Magic God's defeat was pretty expected, everything's got to go according to Keikaku after all. At least they were just outmaneuvered instead of being out power-leveled.

Also thought the afterword was pretty funny, I find the idea of Kamachi being startled at Frenda suddenly being popular kind of amusing.

Overall liked it a fair bit, I felt like it had a pretty weak beginning though. 7.5/10.

Edit: Just sorta clicked when I looked back at it, apparently there are freaking secret death games played every 3 days in Academy City. That's sorta horrifying.

edited 26th Mar '15 9:20:46 PM by RedAcer

That makes me wonder...

How would Hamazura feel about Attraction Land?

Yeah, I was avoiding commenting until the whole thing was finished so I wouldn't be changing my opinion halfway through like has happened a few times.

I'm almost entirely in agreement with your comments, RedAcer. I liked this one a lot. I'd add a few things, though:

This was one of the few times I haven't minded the justifications for magic so much - sure, I still tuned out the more technical stuff, but overall it wasn't a problem. The whole conceit of St. Germain's ability being based around just being a con artist was pretty fun too, so that probably contributed.

I was also pleasantly surprised to see Kamachi actually going more in-depth into the characterization of the main characters, which you really don't see very often. Post-Othinus Touma feels quite a bit different than he used to, and in a very good way. (And a side note on that: we've had multiple confirmations now of Touma not being able to handle failing to save someone. Possible foreshadowing? And if so, who?)

I wasn't really a big fan of Kanou getting convinced incredibly easily by St. Germain that Touma was to blame for Frenda's death, and the justifications given weren't quite enough to get me to stop thinking that was just lazy writing. But if that's my biggest complaint over an otherwise very enjoyable volume, I'll take it.

And one of the more exciting things for me, personally, was this little line from the afterword: "It’s about time for Mikoto to have her turn in the spotlight, isn’t it?" I really hope this gets done well, and isn't like, well, NT 3.

edited 26th Mar '15 9:47:57 PM by clockworkBabbage

The Accelerator manga's got an official translation into English by Seven Seas as announced a day ago or so.

a bit iffy on how Touma's only Living Emotional Crutch is Othinus.oh well.

Secret Signature

I'm not quite seeing how that trope applies. I mean, the other way around, sure, but... what's your reasoning?

edited 26th Mar '15 11:34:53 PM by clockworkBabbage

mostly not knowing a better trope to use.

i meant how Othinus is keeping Touma together from breaking down from all the stuff she put him through.

Secret Signature

Is she? I mean, I don't exactly read this all that carefully, so maybe I'm missing something, but I thought that what was helping more were the pep-talks from the Misaka network and Mikoto.

Favorite scene from NT 12 is Hamazura calling bullshit on the guy blaming Touma for not saving Frenda. After all, Hamazura was in the area when she was killed and probably blamed himself, while Touma was in Europe trying to stop invasions and civil wars.

My impressions are the same as everyone else,this was a good volume. At first, I thought it was going to be parallel to Old Testament 12, what with the similar setup (trip to a shopping mall, two protagonists, a magician making their move), and so went in expecting the first part of a major two-parter, but the actual story was better than that (though it still was the prelude of something major regardless).

And after the bittertaste the end of NT 10 left and the alright NT 11, the upping in plot quality was pleasantly welcome.

As I said earlier, the Touma/Hamazura team up was really well done this volume. It's really different from how it went in NT 6, where Hamazura was hardly relevant, and really a different beast than what NT 3 should have been. Mugino being on the good guys' side again was cool, but I still have some issues with her not-so-Face–Heel Turn.

St. Germain was an actually interesting villain. I thought Kamachi introduced yet another abnormal character like Fraulein Kreutune (what use is there to have well defined sides if you have people existing outside of them?), but it was just more playing on the concept of deceit. Having a magician whose entire modus operandi revolves around lies and acting, to the point you were led to believe he was a Magic God, is an interesting concept. The use of a character I know and am fascinated by appealed to me even more. Rasputine when? My only nitpick is the mention of his(?) existence since the 1600s when it's really 1700s. Translator error perhaps.

Speaking of lies, it was kinda obvious, despite what the summary would have us believe, that the #6 wouldn't be revealed this volume (the sudden appearance in the epilogue was surprising though). Come on, would that really be mentionned on the back if that's what had happened? Anyway, leading me to 'Aihana Etsu'/Kanou Shinka. While I felt he was more like a plot device to move the story along than a real character, I didn't exactly dislike him either. There were some weird shotacon-like descriptions of him by Kamachi though (why the hell focus on his scent!?).

And the epilogue, awesome. Aleister has completely retaken his position as the Final Boss after losing his Chessmater status for a while, though I'm not sure if that means his Plan is back on tracks or if he just eliminated a possible threat. His trolling the Magic Gods was great. And Laura Stuart remake an appearance as another major player that everyone seems to ignore. Maybe the return to England is coming fast. And I hope the Magic Gods will still be a threat, because they were kinda beaten way too fast after just making their presence known in-universe, and their actual 'objective' remains nebulous.

Finally, too many references to 'that' for whatever IB is to not be explored in the next volume.

And completely unrelated, we finally entered December in-universe! About time, I thought the entire series would be endless November.

edited 27th Mar '15 12:54:17 PM by allfictions

Yeah, I really don't think Mugino's ever going to get any better, and it's always going to feel odd having her around pretending to be a good person. Luckily, Takitsubo's there to keep her in check. I'm honestly surprised she hasn't been reclassified as a Level 5 now that she's been magically healed from all the awful drug side affects and with what we've seen her do.

we've kinda entered Endgame territory now,havent we?i could give it 10 more volumes left.

Secret Signature

I'm just not even going to bother guessing when the end is gonna happen. Anything can happen, really.

On another note, I didn't notice any of the usual Index "jokes" in this volume. Hardly actual characterization/development, but definitely a step in the right direction.

Also, before I forget to mention it again: Whatever Aiwass is, and however powerful it is, it was apparently a failure. What.

edited 27th Mar '15 4:49:53 PM by clockworkBabbage

failure of whom?the big G that hasn't shown up?and at what.sounds silly,like Othinus's "failed Magic God,even at 100%" stick.

Secret Signature

Hell if I know. But the magic gods called Aiwass a failure. I assume they know more than me.

They're not the same thing?

if i had to guess,Aiwass is the technobabble equivalent of a Magic God.

Secret Signature

I guess that makes sense, considering Aleister's hate boner for all things magic.

Aneri is too cute, haha Hamazura.

It's strange to admit, but almost everything in-universe started because Aleister threw a temper tantrum one day and ragequit the Magic Side

To be honest, I was kinda looking forward to your reaction to the Magic Gods' divide by infinity voodoo spell. ;) Aiwass is said to be outside God's system/creation, so it isn't from Him. I think what the Magic Gods meant is how Aleister bound Aiwass and restricted it to only appear by manifesting through AIM fields (for his plans I guess, it's not clear why he keeps Aiwass around save for the fact that it acted as a blueprint for Kazakiri).

As for Othinus, I think that, when you can litterally destroy the universe several times over simply by appearing, she sure does seem weaker.

That's Level 6 (hypothetically). Aiwass is one for Angels (probably).

edited 29th Mar '15 4:40:29 PM by allfictions

My issue with the justifications for magic isn't based around how stuff works (otherwise I would probably have had a stroke by now), it's about the clunky, overly-involved ways to link a spell or magical effect up to some weird, obscure, piece of mythology, often badly mangling said mythology in the process of making it work for the plot.

If there was any of that sort of justification for the Magic God's way to get into the world, it wasn't given enough attention for me to get annoyed by it.

EDIT: Wait, I thought Kazakiri was the blueprint for Aiwass, not the other way around.

edited 29th Mar '15 5:07:18 PM by clockworkBabbage

Now that I'm more familiar with most of Raildex (except maybe some details of novels or maybe in manga), are there any other Judgement members mentioned by name aside from the ones mentioned in the show and novels (Dunno about Yotsuba)?

edited 31st Mar '15 4:24:18 AM by Ominae

None that we've seen.

Judgement isn't ever particularly relevant in most of Raildex honestly. It's always Anti-Skill instead.

When's the last time it was even mentioned in the LN anyways?

edited 31st Mar '15 7:02:25 AM by RedAcer