A Certain Magical Index Review: The Hero Who Forgets His Own Sacrifice

I have a bad memory. Not in a tragic way — I just forget things. Birthdays, where I put my keys, the names of people I met last week. For most of my life I thought of it as a flaw. Then I read the first volume of A Certain Magical Index, and the last chapter did something to me I didn't expect from an action manga about espers and wizards.

The boy at the center of this story spends the whole arc fighting to protect a girl's memories. And then, in the final pages, he loses his own. Not metaphorically. He forgets her, forgets everyone, forgets himself — and he smiles and lies and tells her nothing happened, because he doesn't want her to cry. I closed the book and sat there for a while. I had picked it up expecting a punching-wizards comic. I got that. But I also got one of the saddest hero endings I've read in a shonen series.

Quick Take

• Touma Kamijou has no esper power worth mentioning — just a right hand that cancels any magic or ability it touches, and the worst luck in the world
• The worldbuilding splits reality into science (Academy City's espers) and magic (the Church), and the manga lets the two systems crash into each other constantly
• 33 volumes in Japan and still ongoing; rated T (Teen) — action violence and some fanservice, nothing graphic

Story Overview

Academy City is a metropolis built to mass-produce espers — students whose brains are scientifically pushed into developing superpowers, ranked from Level 0 to Level 5. Touma Kamijou is functionally Level 0. His only ability is the Imagine Breaker, housed in his right hand: it nullifies any supernatural power it touches, esper or magic alike. The catch is that it also seems to cancel his own good fortune, so he's permanently broke and unlucky.

The story starts when a girl in a torn nun's habit falls onto his balcony. Her name is Index, and she's a member of Necessarius, the magic-handling arm of the English Puritan Church. Her mind contains the Index Librorum Prohibitorum — 103,000 forbidden grimoires, memorized perfectly. She tells Touma she's being hunted by magicians, and soon two of them arrive: Stiyl Magnus, a fire mage who fights with runes, and Kanzaki Kaori, a swordswoman who attacks with wires.

The central twist of this first arc is the truth about Index. She's told — and Touma is told — that her perfect memory will overload and kill her brain unless her memories are erased once a year. The whole thing looks like a tragedy with no villain. But the real cruelty is a manipulation: the Archbishop of Necessarius lied to Stiyl and Kanzaki, ordering them to play the role of enemies so Index would never form bonds before each wipe. Touma refuses to accept that the only options are a yearly erasure or death. When the spell threatens to take Index's mind, he decides that if this is a system the world built, he'll break the system. And he does — but he pays for it in a way the people he saved never fully understand.

The series then opens outward into Academy City's darker science side, most notably the Sisters arc, where Touma collides with Accelerator, the city's strongest esper, over an experiment using thousands of cloned girls. The manga, drawn by Chuya Kogino, follows Kazuma Kamachi's light novels through these arcs across its long run.

Characters

Touma Kamijou — The hero whose power is the absence of power. He can't shoot lightning or read minds; he can only cancel what other people do, and then close the distance and throw a punch. What defines his arc in volume 1 isn't his strength, it's his stubbornness: he flatly rejects the premise that Index has to suffer, and he keeps moving forward even when everyone tells him there's no answer. His reward for winning is to lose his own memories. He wakes up not knowing who Index is — and chooses to hide it.

Index — The nun with 103,000 grimoires in her head. She's childlike, gluttonous, quick to bite Touma's head when she's upset, but underneath that she's a person who has been used as a living library and lied to about her own death. The horror of her situation — that the people closest to her were ordered to pretend to be her enemies — is the emotional engine of the first arc.

Stiyl Magnus — A chain-smoking magician who fights with fire and runes and seems, at first, to be a straightforward antagonist hunting Index down. His real position is more painful: he loves Index and was forced by his superiors to act as her hunter. When the truth surfaces, he turns from enemy into reluctant ally.

Kanzaki Kaori — A saint-class swordswoman who attacks with steel wires (her Nanasen technique). Like Stiyl, she's been cast as a villain against her will. In the climax she's the one who actually saves Touma at a critical moment, using her wires to throw Index off balance so the spell can be broken.

Accelerator — Introduced later as Academy City's most powerful esper, a Level 5 who can manipulate vectors. His arc in the Sisters storyline turns him from a remorseless experiment subject into one of the franchise's most morally complicated figures.

What I Love About It

It's the ending of the first arc, and specifically one decision Touma makes after he's already won. The fight is over. The spell threatening Index has been destroyed by his right hand. But in breaking it, his Imagine Breaker also wipes his own memories — he loses everyone, including Index, the girl he just bled to protect. And when she comes to him, anxious, he tells her he was only joking, that his memory is fine, that nothing was lost. He lies. He says that even if the memories are gone from his head, they'll always stay in his heart. He does it so she won't cry over a sacrifice she didn't ask for.

What gets me is the asymmetry of it. The whole arc is built on the idea that memory is identity — Index's life is defined by what she's allowed to keep and what gets erased from her. And then the manga quietly does the same thing to the hero, except he carries it alone and tells no one. It reframes everything that comes after: every adventure Touma has from that point is being had by someone who already lost the person he used to be, and decided that didn't matter as long as the girl on his balcony was safe. For a series that's mostly famous for a guy yelling and punching wizards, that's a startlingly heavy note to end the first book on, and it's the reason I kept reading.

Memorable Scene ⚠️ Spoiler Warning

The climax of the Index Arc, when Touma decides to destroy the spell. He's surrounded by what looks like an unbreakable rule — the Church's system, the "she dies or she's wiped" logic, presented as the will of God himself. And Touma's response is essentially: if this world really runs on your system, then I'll destroy that illusion first. He drives his right hand into the magic and cancels it.

There's a smaller beat in the manga adaptation I love just as much: at the very end of the confrontation, before he collapses, Touma throws a single punch at Kanzaki — the saint who's been hunting them — and it's enough to make her stumble. It's not a power move; he has no power. It's the punctuation mark on his whole character. He has nothing but a hand that says no, and the will to use it on anyone, esper or saint or God, who tells a girl she has to suffer. Then he falls unconscious, his memories already slipping away, and the reader realizes what winning cost him before Index does.

Pros & Cons

Pros

• A genuinely tragic, well-constructed first arc that ends on memory loss rather than a clean victory
• The science-vs-magic worldbuilding is dense and internally consistent
• Touma's no-power power makes for fights about will and positioning, not raw stats
• Long and still ongoing, so there's a lot to read once it hooks you

Cons

• The cast balloons fast and the later arcs can be hard to track
• It carries the light novel's habit of long explanatory stretches before the payoff
• Touma's stubborn-hero speeches are either inspiring or repetitive depending on your tolerance — this won't work for everyone

Is A Certain Magical Index Worth Reading?

Yes, if you want action with an actual emotional cost underneath it. The first arc alone — a hero who protects a girl's memories and loses his own — justifies the entry. Be warned that the worldbuilding gets sprawling and the cast gets large, so it rewards patience more than a casual flip-through.

Who Is This Manga For?

• Readers who want a powered-up action series with a melancholy streak
• Fans of detailed, rules-based magic and esper systems
• People who came in through the A Certain Scientific Railgun spinoff and want the main storyline
• Anyone who likes a protagonist defined by stubbornness rather than strength

Similar Manga

Title	Its Approach	How A Certain Magical Index Differs
A Certain Scientific Railgun	The same Academy City, told from esper Mikoto Misaka's side, tighter and more grounded	Index follows Touma into the magic side and the wider science-vs-magic war
Mob Psycho 100	A massively powerful kid who'd rather not use his powers	Touma has almost no power at all — his hand only cancels
The Irregular at Magic High School	Magic-academy action with heavy systems and a calm overpowered lead	Index's hero is unlucky and reactive, not a cool calculator

Official English Translation Status

Yen Press licensed the manga for North America and has been releasing it in English since 2015, with the series ongoing alongside its continuing Japanese run.

Where to Buy

Read the first volume. If it doesn't hook you, put it down. It'll hook you.

Start with Volume 1 →

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