Touma – his is the first that will pierce the heavens. It’s refreshing to see an anime hero who basically fights magic with his bare hand, and science and brawn with his bare hands. His only weakness is Index’s jaws on his head.

One thing about JC Staff, they don’t mess around a whole lot with background information when it comes to Index – they pretty much jumped into the story starting with season one, episode one and assumed you either knew the source material (I didn’t) or would enjoy it long enough to figure out basically what was going on (I did). We’ve jumped seamlessly into a major arc from the original light novels – yet another magical book that everyone seems to be trying to get their hands on. This seems to have led to two new jewels in Touma’s crown – the petite klutz Sister Agnese and the sexy Sister Orsola. She’s the only one that can decipher the book and she seems to have fallen hard for Touma, judging by the scene where to put Styl’s cross around her neck. That cross is absolutely going to be a major plot point before this arc is over, and for now things are pretty confused – the Amakusa may not be the bad guys after all, or at least no worse than the Roman Catholics. Led by the scary Sister Lucia, they appear to be out to kill Sister Orsola to make sure the secrets of the book are never revealed Right now Touma himself appears to be the only friend she’s got, but she’s simply traded one kidnapper for another – Benedict’s army has her now.

Overall, this ep was somewhat less entertaining than the last one. As much as I love the fact that Touma has no superpowers and refuses to even use a weapon, it was a little lame how he took out two of the Amakusa basically by tackling them. There wasn’t as much fun repartee between Touma, Index, Styl and Agnese this time either, as it lost out to the action sequences. The first season was susceptible to these kinds of fits and starts, with my level on enjoyment fluctuating quite a bit from week to week. I like the humorous side of this show much more than the fast-paced stuff, and while I didn’t love her as a lead I have to admit the eps with Biri-biri as a supporting character were among my favorites.  She’s missed in this arc.