LogFAQs > #923919777

Ok you know what I can do a slightly better job than that and I've got time on my lunch break anyway. Here's a list of all the Index arcs and my opinion on them. This will only cover seasons 1 and 2, as I haven't finished season 3 yet and don't have the context for what's important and what's not. I will mention that season 3 I think had a dip in quality from 1 and 2. The later episodes (which I haven't seen) were somewhat better received, but I suspect that's just because the story is reaching the climax and everything's coming together rather than the anime adaptation doing a better job, if that makes sense.

I will mention that every arc has either new characters introduced or important things that happen or something like that, so ultimately if you like the show just don't skip anything imo. But anyways:

Index Arc--season 1 episodes 1-6: Do not skip. From a quality standpoint this isn't a fantastic arc, but it's very important for establishing Touma and Index as characters (and some other recurring characters), as well as important things about the world which you wouldn't have gotten through Railgun.

Deep Blood Arc--season 1 episodes 7-9: Probably one of the more skippable arcs. It's not great, and I don't remember much important happening here? Especially if you don't care about Index as a character and to be quite honest why would you? I do think this arc might be where Alister Crowley is introduced who is an important character, but if you just know the basics you'll be fine: He's a guy who's always upside down and has a voice that sounds like honey. He's a magician who's opposed to most other magicians and is also the founder of Academy City, and he's one of those characters who's always planning something. That should about cover it.

Sisters Arc--season 1 episodes 10-14: Since you already watched Railgun you could skip this, but I don't know that you'd want to? It's still very good in the Index anime also. It doesn't cover anything that the Railgun anime didn't however, though I do think it did a slightly better job portraying Accelerator.

Angel Fall Arc--season 1 episodes 15-17: Don't skip. Not super important in the grand scheme of things, but it does introduce one important character and I also think this arc is pretty good.

Three Stories Arc--season 1 episodes 18-20 (also ep. 1 of season 2 iirc???): Don't skip. A few different things going on here, but overall I think it's some of the best content in the anime and also the Accelerator stuff in here is very important for the remainder of Index as well as the Accelerator anime.

Kazakiri Hyouka Arc--remainder of season 1: Maybe skippable but I wouldn't recommend it. Overall not a fantastic arc which would be the only reason to recommend skipping it. It is important context for future arcs, but the stuff that's important is mostly magic/technobabble sort of stuff related to the newly introduced character (Kazakiri Hyouka) that honestly isn't going to make much sense regardless. As long as you keep that in mind you might be okay.

Continued in a second post
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Oh woops. Putting Advokaiser in my sig like this until I think of something more clever