To Aru Majutsu no Index 7 is, hopefully, the worst book in the damn series, committing a litany of sins that essentially define everything wrong with the series and why I am forced to refer to it as a guilty pleasure.* Pedo miniskirt nun. Pander more, I dare you.
* Virgin porn - accidentally stumbling into the bathhouse, waking up to find her sleeping on top of his futon in her underwear. Less and less tolerable as time goes on. Seriously, can we just have some fucking once in a while?
* Exposition from hell. I swear, virtually nothing happens for half the fucking book while all kinds of shit gets explained at great length.
* Purple prose attack. While ridiculously obvious psychological attacks being the single best way to make a character's feeble mind crumble is a long standing tradition in Japanese fiction, Jesus Christ does that shit get laughably overwrought in this fucking series.
But damn were the good bits fun. Sure, I really hope the balance tips back towards the good in the next volume, but even this, the weakest volume so far, had oodles of awesome.
* The Amakusa style - Japanese Christians forced to adapt their magic to be undetectable by opressive rulers, so all their spells consist of sitting around and eating hamburgers or chatting with friends or fiddling with their hair. All precise ritualistic symbolism that even other magicians would never notice.
* Index's new bad ass attack (the fact that she's useful at all now is already a big step forward) involves calculated undermining of the mob mentality of fanatical true believers, and is so effective the army of evil Catholic nuns are forced to poke out their own ear drums to fight her.
* An army of evil Catholic nuns
* And said pedo mini-skirt nun, who does a hilarious about face from virgin porn bait to Hellsing level psycho religious nutzoid: "Marrying a heretic is a sin akin to bestiality!" she says, viciously kicking the other nun on the lying liar of a cover.
But I think it is definitely time for me to read something with actual merit for a while.
I'm still not really sure how you got into the series in the first place, and I need to go back and watch more of the anime. It sure don't start off strong, maybe a bit of miniskirt pedo nun action would help spice things up a bit.
ReplyDeleteI'm also not sure how the retarded anime cheescake works in prose format. It sure as hell ain't that titillating when presented visually, I can only imagine how arousing the descriptions must be...
They definitely make my skin crawl.
ReplyDeleteBut early on he had a neat trick of making them funny, or at least the reactions to Sudden Nudity were funny, which made it tolerable; this effect has started wearing off of late.
Is there any word out there on whether or not more Index anime is forthcoming? The 24th episode just sort of stopped it all in its tracks, right there at the end of only volume 6.
ReplyDeleteWell, they did the spin-off show this season; rumor had them going back to the main series next fall. Nothing official, though.
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