Before we begin, here’s my track record with this property: I watched the first “Index” series and generally liked it. Tried watching “Railgun” and gave up after a few eps, finding it incredibly trivial. I know nothing about the source material except what I learned from following the first Index series, and the fan comments about it.

So what of the first episode of Index II? Not much exposition, that’s for sure – I found myself struggling to remember who some of the supporting players were and where things had left off. Our core cast appears to be the same – Touma, Index, Biri-biri and Accelerator appear to be the leads again judging by the OP and ED, with some of the bit players from S1 in supporting roles and some of the supporting roles from Railgun as bit players.

This wasn’t an especially exciting or transformative into ep, but it brought back memories of what made S1 fun. Contrary to most fans’ opinions I like Index – I still find her cute and rather amusing. Touma is still playing the sad-sack – the nice guy trying to live a normal life in extraordinary situations where misfortune seems to follow him. This time it’s his homework, apparently an entire summer’s worth procrastinated to 8/31 and due the very next day. Index is no help here, fixating as usual on food and dragging Touma off to a family restaurant where his homework is destroyed. Index is kidnapped (now there’s a surprise) leaving Touma and Sphinx the cat to search. They run into Biri-biri – back in the supporting role – and it seems to me that they make it more obvious that she has a crush on Touma than the first series ever did, though that could be my faulty memory. The blush and the “Oh, you don’t have my number!” – the funniest moment of the ep – could hardly have been more obvious.

The whole plot surrounding Index’ kidnapper never really made much sense and was pretty much a waste, but this show is really about Touma stressing out, Index being cute and Mikoto blowing things up – and we had plenty of those things, so I’m not complaining. Looks like next week we launch into the first major arc of the season and the action will step up a notch.