SCRIPTThe Toaru franchise is more known for its complex terminology and elaborate world building than for its plot. In the story, magic and science are at war all over the world, but the viewer spends the series in a city where most people are teenagers with superpowers who get to have generic adventures. The story sounds great on paper because the author put a lot of work in explaining the various magical and scientific powers that many characters possess. The plot however is as typical as it gets when it comes to light novels. Despite the variety in themes and special abilities the protagonist is a seemingly normal teenager who is evaluated as level zero (at the bottom), yet with his power he defeats everybody with a punch and makes his harem bigger by the day. Level zero indeed; so much for all the amazing techno-babbling that makes sense. It’s all improbable physics canceled with a broken power and it comes down to a harem. Oh, and of course there is going to be a lot of talking during battles which comes down to childish morality, friendship, and macho one-liners.CASTThe characters are a colorful bunch of stereotypes that take their sweet time to develop, and even when they do they are usually thrown in the background, never to be important ever again.- 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 more than a platonic lover for 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 screen-time she gets, the better the show is. If that is the case, she was a very bad choice for a lead character to name the character after.- 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 VALUESThe animation holds well for the time it was made. Action scenes are very good if all you want is fancy lights and big explosions. However, they follow 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.LEGACYThere 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, a shonen fan, and you somehow find panty shots of minors to be sexy, 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 made 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 the transition from one plotline 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. The fan service goes up 300%, degrading the females into mostly eye candy than respectful characters. It was apparently the only way to maintain the interest of the audience around people the author doesn’t plan to develop.- Railgun 2 is also improved in terms of plot and characterization, and it’s considered to be the best season. It still spends a lot of time in cute girls doing cute things and nothing more.- Toaru 3 was supposed to be a super exciting continuation of the previous season, but it took so long to come out nobody cared about it when it was finally here. The storytelling continues to be confusing, the plot is still the same generic crap people could even find done better in Black Clover, and in general it was forgotten very fast.
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