January 21st, 2012 
AstroNerdBoy OK, I’m Going to Watch “A Certain Magical Index”
Having gotten into the canon A Certain Scientific Railgun manga, followed up by the canon anime adaptation of said series, I have found myself with a desire to go back to the root of this series, namely A Certain Magical Index (Toaru Majutsu no Index/とある魔術の禁書目録（インデックス）). While I may attempt to get to the actual light novel origins, for now, I am going to watch the anime adaptation of the series that launched a franchise.
As with Railgun, I will not be blogging Index on an episode basis, but rather on a series basis. So, I’ll watch the first series, blog it, then watch the second series and blog it. Then, when the movie comes out, I’ll be ready for it.
To try to avoid story spoilers, I’m not researching beyond what I learned from doing some research for Railgun after finishing that series. So, I’m not sure if these two Index anime series are considered canon as the Railgun anime is.
Regardless, I’m looking forward to watching this series.
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I recommend you also read the Light Novels, they’re awesome. The anime adaptation is quite close to the novels.
I’m going to try to do so, but I can’t make any promises. ^_^
I hope you like the series! (Not every Railgun fan does, as the series are pretty different in tone)
Everything from Index I and II is adapted from the light novels and the anime covers slightly more than half of the material that the author has written so far (Kamachi has very consistently been cranking out new novels about every 3-4 months since the series began in 2004 and shows little sign of ending soon!)
However, the anime is definitely a compressed form of the material (especially in Index II which covers 8 volumes compared to 6 for season I), so things may seem to move very quickly. No important material was actually skipped, (one or two irrelevant red herrings were) but events were sped up and explanations of events were cut down from being fairly extensive in the novels to often the bare minimum in the anime. This can cause the plot to become a bit confusing at times as a lot of complicated stuff is going on in this series.
So if you have time, and like the anime the novels would be a very good idea to read.
Thanks for the information. ^_^ I will try to read the novels, if I’m able.
The Railgun series is a spin off of the Index series, and the Railgun manga is written by the author of the Index novels. So, it’s all canon =D
I had read that the Railgun manga is canon, but also that Kamachi-sensei wrote the stories for the anime adaptation, thus those are considered canon as well. The anime adaptation of Index is what I wondered about. ^_^