SCRIPT
The Toaru franchise is a typical shonen adventure with a nice premise. This is why most people like the show by the way, because the premise sounds nice. Magic and science are at war so let’s spend most of the series in a city where most people are teenagers with superpowers. The story feels great on paper because the author put a lot of work in order to explain the various magical and scientific powers that many characters possess. There is a lot of techno-babbling trying to explain magic, and at the end of the day it’s all bullshit because it’s magic. The protagonist is a normal teenager who is evaluated as level zero, yet with his power he can defeat everybody with a punch. Level zero indeed; so much for all the amazing techno-babbling that makes sense. It’s all improbable physics canceled with a broken power.
So down to it, it plays out like a typical light novel adaptation about teenagers fighting with superpowers. Despite the variety in themes and special abilities, the scriptwriter hardly tried to offer anything more than the basic fighting shonen formula. They are talking a lot during battles and whatever they say is not deep philosophy or the fringe science of superpowers. It is just typical speeches around superficial morality, friendship, and macho one-liners. And because this is a light novel, we of course need to have fan service and harem, just because.
CAST
In a similar fashion, the characters are a colorful bunch of stereotypes that take their sweet time to develop and even then it is not done in any significant way. Most are in fact only given some attention when they are introduced before being thrown in the background.
- The most prominent example of this is the lead girl Index, whose name is even in the title of the anime. Although she is supposed to be the key character in the war because of her hidden knowledge, she is offered some immersion and drama before she becomes nothing but a platonic lover to the lead character. Not only that, but as the girls who like the lead male keep increasing, her role becomes even less and less important to the show in general. Some say this is good because she is very annoying and the less air-time she gets, the better the show is. If that is the case, she was a very bad choice for a lead character to begin with.
- The lead male, Touma, is the stereotypical shonen protagonist, predictably owning a broken power nobody else possesses, nobody can block or defeat, it is never explained why he possesses it, and he uses it to shout juvenile morality speeches, protect his loved ones and save chicks by punching them in the face. Hooray for techno-babbling that makes sense. He then he goes to heal in a hospital before everything repeats in the exact same way in the next arc. Hooray for creativity.
- The support characters have even less importance to the plot. Each arc usually ends with Touma saving one girl and adding it to his personal harem, which of course increases in nudity as the episodes go on, because the scriptwriter had no idea of what to do with them once their introduction arc was over. The girls are objectified and treated as fapping material, doing nothing but coking or being naked. A result of the scriptwriter, wasting all his time on writing techno-babbling bullshit, instead of character development.
- The only villain most of the fans care about is this psychotic guy named Accelerator, and even he is just a crazy strong guy who wants to level up by killing lots of people. So much depth.
- Mikasa is the favorite girl for most fans, to the point she got her own side story. She is otherwise an average tsundere with superpowers, mass cloned so everybody can have his own personal waifu.
PRODUCTION VALUES
The animation is rather fluent, there is a nice color palette, and a catchy BMG. All that still can’t change the feeling of watching completely generic looking characters and eventually forgettable songs.
Action scenes are very good if all you want is fancy lights and big explosions but they are otherwise following a very standard and repetitive formula that makes them uninteresting in the long run. You know the drill, they macho talk, the lead gets trashed, they macho talk, the lead gets up full of resolve to protect his friends, they macho talk, the lead wins. Thank you very much; I am watching this since Hokuto no Ken came out.
LEGACY
There are definitely far better shonen than this one, with far better handling of their stories and characters. It’s a good time waster if you are still a newbie and a shonen fan but nothing great in the longrun. Generic characters doing generic things with poor reasoning and cheap plot twists with lots of pointless techno-babbling is all you will get. If you expect a lemon twist to your average soda, Toaru is just tab water in a fancy glass.
Minor details about the seasons.
- Toaru 1 had little to no overall plot amongst its story arcs. Some excuse it as the introduction to the setting and the cast but story-wise it is still pretty much a disjoined series of almost stand-alone missions.
- Railgun 1 was just a storyless spin-off just for kicks, done to please the Misaka fans / Index haters. It is considered far more enjoyable that Toaru 1 but still has zero story to tell.
- Toaru 2 does a much better job at having a better overall plot but then again the transition from one segment to another happens in a rushed and poor way that confuses anyone not aware of the novels. Plus, it leaves most of the older characters as background decoration and ends openly at a point that is almost a major cliffhanger. There is a lot more to show in a, supposed, upcoming Toaru 3 series.
- Railgun 2 is too improving in terms of plot and characterization and it’s currently considered to be the best season yet. It still spends a lot of time in cute girls doing cute things though.
One of the biggest hooks ends up being the fan service. It was low-toned on Toaru 1 but gets rather overboard on Toaru 2. The Railgun seasons opt for more moe appeal but they follow the same principle of degrading the females into mostly eye candy than respectful characters. That is plain distasteful; but then again it is the only way to maintain the interest of the audience around people the author doesn’t plan to develop.
