A Certain Magical Index III

Episode 12

So Acqua of the Rear, who was the antagonist in the last arc, is now going to be the good guy in this arc? Fortunes certainly change fast in this story!

Of course, he's hardly the only former villain now playing for the good guys, with Oriana Thompson more directly serving as an ally to Touma, but his turnaround is vastly more abrupt. At least it was foreshadowed to some extent, as flashbacks over the last few episodes have shown that he has a past connection to Green Princess, and this episode reaffirms a loyalty strong enough to put his life on the line even while injured. Perhaps under all of that Right Hand of God crap, he still fancies himself as a knight? Whatever his motivation, he prevents Green Princess's execution by Red Princess, whose motives I now have to wonder about. She pontificates in front of Index about how her goal is to aggressively extract Britain from the magic/science battle that's been brewing, but her methods seem way too heavy-handed and extreme for such a goal. Taking over the country? Sure, but Green Princess poses zero threat to her and could have probably been won over as an ally if she tried. Promptly executing her betrays a medieval degree of ruthlessness. Of course, her followers are sporting medieval armor and weaponry, so I guess that fits.

The bulk of this episode is a scattering of scenarios that play out all over Britain, whether it's the Queen and Laura Stuart acting way too flippant for the situation, a certain posse of nuns trying to avoid squaring off with knights, or even a whole fleet of witches taking off from a flying base; really, where did that come from? Sherry, the golem master from the final story arc of the first season, also pops up again, though whose side she's on is unclear, and Kaori Kanzaki gets her butt kicked once again; for supposedly being the equivalent of a tactical nuclear weapon, she sure gets tossed around a lot. Her assailant is the royal aide who took the side of Red Princess, who's apparently divine-level strong within Britain, even able to go toe-to-toe with Acquar without breaking a sweat. It makes for a great national defense asset, but if he's only that powerful within Britain, then he's limited on offense.

Of course, Touma has to do something since he's present, so he ships off to meet Index while Oriana moves to fight Sherry, which sounds like it'll be interesting to watch next episode. He instead winds up meeting Floris, the leader of New Light (the quarter of sorceresses at the heart of the shenanigans last episode). How and why she ended up this way isn't clear; her group was working in conjunction with Red Princess, who showed that she wasn't shy about trying to take them out. So why leave Floris merely as a depowered prisoner instead of dead? It feels like some story is missing there.

Whatever the case, the hazy filter used throughout much of the episode to simulate foggy conditions dragged down the visuals more than enhanced them, and the main action scene was between two guys with big swords power-bashing each other, so there wasn't much dynamism to the battle. Still, we're in the midst of an action-driven storyline, so more interesting battles should still be coming.

Rating: B-

A Certain Magical Index III is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.