Eh, I think Index is usually better as an ensemble cast anyway with multiple M Cs, makes the large cast seem less of a waste without thinking, "all this shit is going down, and everywhere seems to have gone out to dinner or something" instead of "while x happens, x person is doing x". So it at least gives the illusion that the world doesn't just move at speed of plot.
edited 8th Jun '15 11:21:14 AM by AOG
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
It's not that I'm gonna disagree with you about it being really weird when people just plain don't exist for a novel because reasons. But on the other hand, having everyone involved means there's a crazy amount of stuff going on. It's difficult to follow, and it makes some of the plot threads seem kind of contrived in terms of how they're sometimes forcing people into the story who aren't actually necessary at the moment.
Sometimes you just want the focus to be on a small subset of characters. There's always the hope there of some kind of decent character development, too.
Monsieur
Makes me wonder how the series would have turned out if it was written in a Switching P.O.V. style similar to A Song Of Ice And Fire.
While I'm not exactly hyped (but is still pleased as that a new novel is coming out), my quiet shipper side is silently jubilating, even though romance probably won't have that much development.
edited 8th Jun '15 4:38:18 PM by allfictions
New Railgun Raws are out, translations should follow soon.
Seeing Hamazura interacting with Frenda again is weird.
Accelerator came out a few days ago (forgot to post). Accelerator going nuts on overconfident espers. Hope he doesn't kill them, because it's a team with a lot of potential.
Today I saw Index volume 1, the manga and not just the light novel, in a local Barnes & Noble bookstore.
I wonder why it took so long to be released when Railgun has been around for how long?
King of Anime
Yeah the Railgun manga has been being released since 2011 and has caught up with the Japanese release in terms of volumes. No clue why the Index manga took so long to come over.
The Index manga is insanely slow even in Japan. Even though it skipped the Deep Blood and Angel Fall arcs, it still takes forever to update and it was in the Daihasei Festival arc for a really long time.
Monsieur
So Dengeki Bunko has put online the preview of New Testament 13
, and here is what is known (courtesy of an acquaintance who can read it):
Prologue is a philosophical-ish analysis of the world ending.
Chapter 1: (title) — Sword_and_Sheath.
Chapter 1 part 1, Touma being chased on the Acro Bike by the darkness thing in the blurb, he manages to slide under a train thanks to its high specs to in order to escape. The bike can go up to 50kph, lean 70 degrees without falling over, auto stance recover, electronic controlled shock absorbers, can jump to a height of 20 metres.
part 2 onward., Komoe cries that Touma is in danger of repeating a year. Therefore he must undertake this criminal awareness event right now, on top of extra classes in the winter break to even have a chance of not staying back a year.
The event is basically having students play the role of criminals, police and hostages. The three idiots play as criminals, wearing a skin-colored tightsuit and white trunks. Aogami manages to incur the rage of Fukiyose somehow and bought collateral damage to his two friends. In order to escape, Touma literally ran up the school building wall from the third floor and succeeded. Just when he is about to run up to the fourth floor (still on the wall btw), Misaka playing as the police walks past the school and spots him in his hilariously embarrassing outfit, like a pervert looking into a building.
Just before the encounter Misaka was actually mulling over the events of NT 10, conflicted but determined to talk to Touma about it in a way that wouldn't hurt the boy. The sight of his pathetic self enraged/embarrased her so much, Touma almost got a railgun up his ass. Just before this can happen, Seria opens a window and lets Touma inside the building, specifically, her secret base. Seria plays a hostage but couldn't be bothered about this whole event. She generously offers to share her snacks and flirts with Touma a bit, randomly throwing out a comment about how Touma's screams of horror when she opened the window reminds her of a monster being treated like a human after stones were thrown at him. It could be alluding to Touma's childhood horrors when people treated him like a plague, so maybe Seria knows about his past. Preview ends here.
Alternatively, that preview is up and translated if you'd like to read it yourself.
Monsieur
That was fast.
Hm, reading Part 1, I believe that makes it the first volume beginning In Medias Res.
edited 7th Jul '15 6:53:25 AM by allfictions
Monsieur
Looks like the (low-res) pics of the volume were "leaked":
Color (3): Kinda hard not to have shipping googles
◊
Colored page before the table of contents: Comet of DOOOOOM
◊
Non colored illustrations: The perverted daredevil
◊
The perverted daredevil 2: Electric Boogaloo
◊
Marshmallow Hell
◊ (might be NSFW)
A new player?
◊ (EDIT: Yes he is, apparently. According to spoilers (that may be fake), the guy, a self-proclaimed 'Magic God Hunter', can kill Magic Gods with a special power he also possess in his right hand, called 'World Rejector', and Niang Niang was taken out. Laura's chess piece at the end of NT 12 may have actually been referring to him, not Touma or Imagine Breaker, since she calls Aleister a fool for seemingly not knowing of his existence. The Magic God Hunter has already killed all of the Magic Gods that were hiding in the other dimension (hence why we didn't see the "chimera" from NT 10 last volume), and Othinus may be his next target)
edited 10th Jul '15 10:04:28 AM by allfictions
𐀀𐀩𐀯𐀂𐀰𐀅𐀡𐀄
Figured he'd do something like that,Gods too OP.Omg,a girl was killed.How evil.
Secret Signature
vicarious
That sounds suspiciously legit.
We hardly knew ye.
Monsieur
And more (fake?) spoilers, apparently:
The unexpected person from the summary who appears and save Touma is Fiamma of the Right. He tries to cast the Fairy spell on the High Priest, but the High Priest counter back before he could. Touma calls an ambulance to pick up Fiamma after he falls unconscious.
The High Priest called Touma 'The One who Purifies God and Slays Demons' 3 times. There is also a possibility that the true power of Touma's right hand will be released if he confronts the High Priest directly.
Mikoto blows the High Priest to space with a mass driver, but he manages to come back to earth riding a comet, only to end up dead by Kihara Noukan's hand using something called 'Rocket Booster' to destroy him. Furthermore, it seems like the High Priest was the one responsible for the death of Aleister's daughter. And he apologize for that as he die.
The Magic God Hunter, called Kamisato, suddenly appears besides Niang-Niang and destroy her with 'World Rejector'. Niang-Niang shows "pleasure" when she 'dies'. Kamisato, similar to Touma, refers to himself as a 'normal highschool boy'.
Aleister thanks Noukan for killing the Magic Gods, but he doesn't know that Kamisato already killed all the other Magic Gods. He thinks Noukan is the one who killed them all.
Laura knew about Kamisato, she calls Aleister a human and thinks he is a fool for not knowing about Kamisato's existence.
The reason why Nepthys survived Kamisato's attack is because one part of her organs manage to escape unharmed. Also, Nepthys becomes another one of Touma's freeloaders.
Mikoto feels despair over the fact that Touma called her "a burden" in the volume. And laments about how 'he is too far away for her'.
edited 10th Jul '15 5:21:05 AM by allfictions
𐀀𐀩𐀯𐀂𐀰𐀅𐀡𐀄
The Mikoto bits sound like BS,but the comet bits make it BS enough to be Index. 
Monsieur
More illustrations!
The High Priest in all his glory
◊ (he is saying "Hoho, is that all you've got, Kamijou Touma? Why don't you come over to this side and see what you can achieve?").
All chapter titles accounted for now:
Prologue: Another Possible Demise — Before_the_End.
Chapter 1: The Magic God is Always There — Sword_and_Sheath.
Chapter 2: Run or Die — Chase_With_the_Girl.
Chapter 3: The Frayed Tip of a Spider's Thread — Nightmare_to_Ray_of_Hope.
Chapter 4: The End of an Unsuccessful Battle — A.A.A.
Epilogue: Another Possible Beginning — The_End_is_Named......
edited 10th Jul '15 10:32:55 AM by allfictions
It begins...
The translation, that is.
So, if True Gremlin's goal has been to create a "happy" world (by effectively, to paraphrase Touma, getting rid of everything that makes people, well, people)... has Aleister been the good guy this whole time? Or at least the brand of well-intentioned extremism so common for antagonists in this series?
Maybe, though I think it was implied Crowley has a similar goal anyways. Fiamma was going to create a "happy world", and apparently Fiamma and Crowley had similar plans.
Also there's probably a fair chance that the old man is just full of crap. He lied to Touma, what, three times during that conversation? Headband Girl troll was priceless though.
Plus generally when the plot of the volume is revealed this early in the book it turns out to be a lie, unless it's a multi-parter.
vicarious
I thought Aleister's schtick was his hatred for magic.
Which of course means to create your own roundabout that's similar!
I guess that will be the final thing to be clarified.
Man, this volume is actually really good so far. Also holy shit at Misaka playing catch with fucking buildings, was Magneto spotted in Japan 14 years ago by any chance?
𐀀𐀩𐀯𐀂𐀰𐀅𐀡𐀄
So apparently the High Priest became a Magic God via Buddhism.Or at least practised it.
Also,a bunch of people/numbers die from said game of catch,and Touma's rather unfazed.
Also he says various horrific ways of harming the Priest won't be very effective.
Secret Signature
Actually, I'm pretty sure absolutely nobody died. Not even what happened to Anti-Skill was conclusive.
Speaking of death, am I alone in thinking that it's been heavily hinted throughout the last few novels that we're actually going to see important character deaths?
But hey! Misaka as main character!
...which has been promised since like NT 2 or 3, I'm not getting my hopes up.
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