In my eyes, there are generally two kinds of strongest works. The first kind stays entirely true to reality; the author does so because he is talented enough to do so and doesn't have to create anything fantastical in order to tell a good story. The second kind is anything but true to the reality of everyday life; the author is able to create compelling and innovative original characters, ideas, and situations, and juggle them in a sophisticated way that allows him or her to convey something that often can't be conveyed as masterfully by talking about the world as it is because it is easier to understand the world by looking at what it would be like if some aspects of it changed.

Index is in its own category. It describes reality by both being more realistic and more crazy as a gigantic clash of ideals than anything else. Its strength lies in its originality. It fully engages ideas and situations that other authors would be afraid of tackling either because they're so controversial or simply so hard to faithfully represent. But Kamachi Kazuma is a true super-genius.

In the sprawling cast of 100's of characters are many of my favorite fictional characters. There is no such thing as an unextraordinarily well-written character in index. It has the best worldbuilding, the best motifs/themes, the best plot twists, characters, etc. and it's deep, not a waste of time. The author anticipates what the fanbase wants and always throws curveballs. He is extremely prolific and is a true genius, and he genuinely cares more than I've ever seen another author care. He bucks all tradition and develops his plot in every which way possible and does so exceptionally masterfully. He already has three side-stories that introduce main plot elements because his series isn't a normal one, and it has its own way of presenting a brilliant world. The strongest point is that he'll teach you things even while you just read it for pure enjoyment in a crazy fantastical story whose match you might not find in any other novel on this site including all the CN's, LN's, and KN's. However, it's definitely the case that if you pore through every page and try to figure things out more, then you'll be rewarded and you'll notice tons of tiny details that are subtly introduced and never outright said until they might come into play 5-10 books later.

There are many times when people stick with something after an unextraordinary start and see it become truly amazing. And they really wish that they could find the right words to convince other people that they'd truly stumbled upon something amazing. The anime for Index sucks in comparison. If you've seen the index/railgun anime and concluded that this series isn't very good, please reconsider and try reading the novels. The novel is primarily interesting because of the motivations of our protagonists and their underlying principles and how they clash in a gigantic clash of ideals. That is completely discarded for action in the anime. This makes the anime fun for people who've read the novels, but unfortunately it doesn't work the other way around. If you agree with some of my other reviews, please give this series a chance. I feel frustrated that it isn't popular. It deserves to be much more popular. If it weren't for its underwhelming anime and for the fact that it was written before LN's were written in such a way that considered how easy it was for anime to adapt them, it would have probably become one of the most popular series in the world.

The books aren't too long, and they start off way better than the anime. There are a few turning points in the series. Starting from the epilogue OT 6 the story improves dramatically. At the beginning of OT 13 Index truly gets into its own, this is where the season 3 material would be if it ever happens... From there on it's better than anything else I've read. Volume 20 and on is another improvement. And at the end of NT 6 and on is another dramatic improvement it improves in quality again. NT 17 and on is an even more dramatic improvement. There is no filler, no wasted content. Only true genius. Please give this story a try if you have the free time--you likely won't regret it.

The Toaru universe is incredible. There are rules for how magic works, and similarly for the espers. There is a balance of power in the world and unseen forces lurking in the shadows. The setting of Academy City is really good. I had heard positive things about the world-building in this series before, but I didn't take it that seriously, after all, I had never really cared about that kind of stuff in other series. But it really is one of the best things about the Toaru series. The thing that opened my eyes was rather a small thing, in the first volume, there is a magician who uses Nordic magic: they set up spells using runes, because in the Toaru universe, runes are a magical language that can be used in sorcery. Or in volume 4, replicas of objects with magical properties, such as the Cross from Christianity, also derive a smaller amount of magical power from the original as part of Idol Theory. Espers on the other hand have their powers cultivated with drugs and use them by projecting onto their personal reality, which then becomes reality. I could go on, but all I am trying to illustrate is how cool some of the laws behind magic and ESP are in this universe. This all gets a lot more interesting when you see what kinds of magical and scientific abilities Kamachi has in store for you.

When I talk about the Toaru 'universe', I really do mean it. This is a big media franchise, there are the 3 mainline Index novel series (52 books total) as well as 3 spinoff manga that follow other protagonists, in addition to side story novels, visual novels and anime original content. To illustrate how much I have enjoyed this series, I used to just read novels on my kindle. Toaru has changed this. My bookshelf is now completely filled with Toaru. I have 23 of the 24 english volumes released and have volumes 1-16 of the Railgun manga and 1-4 of the Astral Buddy manga. I had to buy a bigger bookshelf because of this series.

The best volumes so far were volumes 1, 3, 4, 13, 15. Volume 1 offers a very strong start to the series, volume 2 is not as good a follow up, but stick with it because one of the most loved arcs comes right after in volume 3. Volume 4 does incredible things in fleshing out the magic system, volume 13 is the start of a major shift in the series and 15 gives new perspectives on the happenings in Academy City.

After finishing the final novels of the series, I have to say that the last arc (novels 20-22) are absolutely phenomenal. Kamachi takes all the plot threads he weaved in previous novels and puts them all together for an amazingly satisfying conclusion.

Some of my favorite characters: Kuroko, Tsuchimikado, Kanzaki

Looking at the front cover of volume 1, you might write this series off as some cutesy 2000s series with average art. The covers of the first couple of volumes are a bit rough, but Haimura's skill steadily increases over the course of the series and by volume 17, the illustrations were impactful and consistent and the covers look pretty darn good too. As a character designer he has also made the characters look distinctive and visually interesting, so I have to give praise to his work. I look forward to seeing his style refine further in later volumes of the series.