To Aru Majutsu no Index - Character Discussion - Kamijo Touma

[tsunade666]

Originally Posted by LG-MAX

Obviously he did not trash of the underworld, but do not think it is generally an example of a person who has a decent life. Would this impression is the fault of the anime? or his hero mode status outshines the rest? or I do not know the real Jesus?

if you compare him to the others then his hero status outshines all his other faults. Plus his end result is still better than Shiage and Accelerator's record.

What post did you quote? you quote my post but leave the content out.

[LG-MAX]

Originally Posted by tsunade666

if you compare him to the others then his hero status outshines all his other faults. Plus his end result is still better than Shiage and Accelerator's record.

What post did you quote? you quote my post but leave the content out.

can obfuscate, but they do exist, I believe that when you judges someone should take into account everything it did.

the quote is:

they would probably already pregnant if touman is in that world he even need to lock himself inside his bathroom to stop doing a crime at night

[tsunade666]

Originally Posted by LG-MAX

can obfuscate, but they do exist, I believe that when you judges someone should take into account everything it did.

the quote is:

ah. that one. From different thread. If people take account everything one did then there should be more Mikoto haters -_- but she has a cult. Even if she is always making Touma into target practice >_>

sending few million to billion volts against someone will not kill them

[dniv]

Originally Posted by tsunade666

ah. that one. From different thread. If people take account everything one did then there should be more Mikoto haters -_- but she has a cult. Even if she is always making Touma into target practice >_>

sending few million to billion volts against someone will not kill them

Lol. Though honestly Touma is the way he is because he's desperate.

Take Mikoto, I'm pretty sure that what she did in Railgun S was likely worse than what Touma did... I don't know, it all depends on your point of view.

[Kenju of the Right]

Originally Posted by LG-MAX

has potential to be a rapist,

are you freaking serious

[dniv]

Originally Posted by Kenju of the Right

are you freaking serious

It would probably be counted as reverse rape? Though he is technically "evil" since last volume.

[LG-MAX]

Mikoto destroyed laboratories, she has not killed, threatened, or did really horrible things. the only "good" character in some way done something really bad was the Hamazura in vol 22.

Furthermore, the question I raised was not to compare the deeds of Touma with the other characters, but that it is strange that many fans see him like Jesus.

[Kenju of the Right]

no he isn't and Touma would never do anything like that, saying he needed to lock himself inside of the bathroom isn't meant to be taken so seriously

even thinking of Touma doing anything sick as rape is ridiculous.

''hitting women'' isn't an evil thing. What do you think they're little babies or some shit? They can fight and handle themselves
Not to mention that they were out to kill Touma

does not mind cheat in games (vol 14),

who hasn't cheated in a game? and its a game!

you guys are trying real too hard to make Touma seem ''edgy'' and ''not so pure''
it just looks crazy

[tsunade666]

but he is not pure -_-

[LevelSeven]

@kenju of the right, you dont believe that he is evil now?? he tries to help a mass-murder b*tch who killed a hugh amount of innocent people only for a selfish goal ,

where i must say that EVEN accel and fiamma killed because of a 'good' reason,
accel: he doesnt wanted to hurt or kill people...
fiamma: wanted to save the world....

othinus: wanted to go back to her own world (which sounds, as if the grimoires in her head messed more up than we knew), in short: SHE IS EVIL and touma tries to SAVE HER, which makes him into someone who helped a being MORE EVIL than Hitler......

or i understood your post wrong

[Kenju of the Right]

i mean that of course he isn't a saint but to say that he's evil is an over statement

considering the fact that he isn't actually trying to bring any ill intentions

you could say that after what happened in Version Alpha but saying he's a big bad evil man is a bit too much

[SmokinFerret88]

I wouldn't call 'going home' as selfish as opposed to 'human nature'.

If you found yourself in a world that wasn't your own, you'd of course want to go back right? True she could have just adapted and lived in the world she was currently in, it still wasn't 'her home'. I mean, look at Odyssey, he had settled in various places for a while but eventually knew that he needed to return from whence he came. Same thing with Othinus; she wanted to go back to that place.

Yes she killed innocent people in the process, but there still stands the possibility that things would have changed if she had succeeded. If she had gone back to her world, would the events of Baggage City and Hawaii have occurred still? If so, all those lives lost would have never been lost at all.

The only person who would have been lost was Touma.

So is the desire to go home really that selfish? Is it wrong to try and leave a place you really don't belong to? Once her chance to leave was gone, she took the only remaining path available and chose to die rather than stay. That was a direct conflict to what Touma believed, because in exchange for returning to his 'home' she was forced to give up her ticket for his sake.

She demonstrated selflessness in that moment, and Touma did the exact same in my eyes as well. Because he turned his back on the world he was apart of. Basically tearing up the ticket given to him and chose to stick with her and face this 'unknown world' where everyone is his enemy.

[LevelSeven]

yeah, he isnt really bad, maybe i wrote it wrong

i wanted to say that he is not good, afterall he protects a monster now, and from my point of view: she shouldnt survive this....

i know how i could break toumas 'iron' will to protect her: i will show him how much pain she created all over the world, humans who lost everything only because of her selfish actions, if he really insists to protect someone like that: the only way i could describe his behavior would be.....crazy.....

EDIT: @smokin..

the same applies for accel and fiamma but they are still 'the monster who slaughtered innocent clones' and'the one who caused WW3' ,

they also followed selfish reasons but First: it wasnt in such a large scale (WW3 is debattable)
second: they goal was for the sake of others,
in my eyes: they are far-far-far more 'nicer' than othinus, who (even if it is human-like) only for her going home brought nothing but Chaos/fear/death for the world,

and (in my eyes: the goal is second to the methods used to acomplish it): accel as Level 6 would/could also revive every dead clone,
fiamma would/could also revive every death human back,

but in the end they was stopped, to say that othinus isnt so bad because (maybe) the innocent humans wouldnt die is rather odd.....(by accels/fiammas goal it was clear)...

[dniv]

Originally Posted by SmokinFerret88

I wouldn't call 'going home' as selfish as opposed to 'human nature'.

If you found yourself in a world that wasn't your own, you'd of course want to go back right? True she could have just adapted and lived in the world she was currently in, it still wasn't 'her home'. I mean, look at Odyssey, he had settled in various places for a while but eventually knew that he needed to return from whence he came. Same thing with Othinus; she wanted to go back to that place.

Yes she killed innocent people in the process, but there still stands the possibility that things would have changed if she had succeeded. If she had gone back to her world, would the events of Baggage City and Hawaii have occurred still? If so, all those lives lost would have never been lost at all.

The only person who would have been lost was Touma.

So is the desire to go home really that selfish? Is it wrong to try and leave a place you really don't belong to? Once her chance to leave was gone, she took the only remaining path available and chose to die rather than stay. That was a direct conflict to what Touma believed, because in exchange for returning to his 'home' she was forced to give up her ticket for his sake.

She demonstrated selflessness in that moment, and Touma did the exact same in my eyes as well. Because he turned his back on the world he was apart of. Basically tearing up the ticket given to him and chose to stick with her and face this 'unknown world' where everyone is his enemy.

Spoiler for NT 9:

But Othinus's issue is the same as most people who try to make a Utopia or do whatever, the end justifies the means. Here it's not really clear whether what she did was right or wrong. To us it's hazy, even to Touma it has become rather hazy, but to everyone else in the world she is evil.

The thing about Othinus is that only Touma and her are really capable of probably making an accurate judgement about whether she is in the right or the wrong. This is because he's seen a part of the endless things that she's been through. You can't understand a God unless you go through some of what they've been through in other words.

After all some of her values are really messed up. She doesn't even believe in identity and takes it as arbitrary. That's somewhat f'ed up.

The main point that should be made here is that Othinus was only able to come up with scenarios that she has experience with, because otherwise she wouldn't have been able to come up with the idea to show them. Even if you are omnipotent, you are limited by the actions you can come up with to pursue in any given situation, even if you would be capable to doing action x if you had thought of it. This is why we have to remember that she probably went through all of these terrible scenarios and much more throughout the course of her life. She wouldn't have been able to imagine and orchestrate these living hells unless she was well acquainted with them.

Too much pain and suffering probably dulled her senses somewhat as well as her being away from her home, and this is probably why she turned towards war and abandoned her "humanity" somewhat. Without someone to understand you, it doesn't matter if other people are there, you are just alone. Ollerus touched a nerve in NT 8 as well when he told her that she was alone, and that Ollerus couldn't understand her.

This is why I'm saying that Othinus has clearly suffered a lot more than most of us can imagine, and this is why she is the way she is, and how she can commit such atrocious acts without thinking much of them. In the end, it almost seems like she subscribes to Nihilism after all she's been through, and that right there would make it hard for anyone to be able to criticize her and be right in criticizing her.

In fact, since it seems she's a Nihilist, and given what she's seen, perhaps even correctly so, I feel like saying anything about her morality is extremely difficult except for the fact that she isn't really evil, just lost both in mind (her morality) and in body (her solitude away from home).

Originally Posted by LevelSeven

yeah, he isnt really bad, maybe i wrote it wrong

i wanted to say that he is not good, afterall he protects a monster now, and from my point of view: she shouldnt survive this....

i know how i could break toumas 'iron' will to protect her: i will show him how much pain she created all over the world, humans who lost everything only because of her selfish actions, if he really insists to protect someone like that: the only way i could describe his behavior would be.....crazy.....

EDIT: @smokin..

the same applies for accel and fiamma but they are still 'the monster who slaughtered innocent clones' and'the one who caused WW3' ,

they also followed selfish reasons but First: it wasnt in such a large scale (WW3 is debattable)
second: they goal was for the sake of others,
in my eyes: they are far-far-far more 'nicer' than othinus, who (even if it is human-like) only for her going home brought nothing but Chaos/fear/death for the world,

and (in my eyes: the goal is second to the methods used to acomplish it): accel as Level 6 would/could also revive every dead clone,
fiamma would/could also revive every death human back,

but in the end they was stopped, to say that othinus isnt so bad because (maybe) the innocent humans wouldnt die is rather odd.....(by accels/fiammas goal it was clear)...

So you make some interesting points, but I want to point out some important things.

Spoiler:

1. Nowhere has it been said Accel could revive any clone if he became level 6. And at that point in time he didn't care about them at all because he saw them as dolls and not even worth keeping alive.

2. Nowhere has it been said Fiamma could revive any back from the dead, and he didn't care about individuals he cared about some grand ideal that would make him a hero. That's arrogance. Yes, he wanted to fix the corruption in the world, but at the same time he was banking on the fact that people are foul beasts at heart, and that as an initial assumption already makes him on very shaky ground to think he could actually help anyone other than himself at all.

3. Their goals were for the sake of others. I agree with that. But all three goals were twisted by the corruption of supernatural powers that they were using. Othinus was like a singularity, and was therefore far more powerful, and therefore had her ideals twisted much more by her powers. (i.e. it's like why level fives have such skewed personalities compared to level 0's). This is why Othinus's motivations might have been hard to understand. However, given the ideas that she was harboring in her mind, I don't think she'd be able to understand or agree with the idea that helping others can accomplish something or is meaningful. She became a God of war after all. And if we're talking about messed up people Aleister's very likely right on top way above her even if you don't agree that she's not all bad.

4. The scale of the incidents were arguably the same except there was one difference... Othinus could reverse the problem afterwards... (maybe). Accelerator was going to use Plasma to cover the entire world. Fiamma was almost creating a cataclysm in order to jumpstart his plan to reset the Aeon. These were all people who went through great tragedy and therefore had very twisted goals/ambitions (that was said by Kamachi in NT 9 about why villains had their motivations).

5. This is the one I won't hesitate to analyze because I completely see your point and it's very reasonable. Anyway, here is how I see it:

Subpoint A: Touma is protecting someone like Othinus from the entire world.

Subpoint B: Othinus is a "mass murder", twisted, and "insane."

If these were the only two points to consider I would completely agree with you, but there's a large problem.

Subpoint C: Touma went through hell and wanted to return to his world. He went through hell and even destroyed a world where his friends were happy because he wanted to be able to return to his home with his "real" friends. That's completely reasonable... But, when he did this he realized Othinus was doing the exact same thing. She wanted to return to her home with her real friends, with people that she knew, even if she had to destroy another "fake" world with happy people, who didn't know about the "real" world.

Then Othinus gives up on returning to her world because she's happier to be in a world with Touma, a person who can understand the current her after all the hells that she has been through. She wants to protect him because she understands him as well and wants him to be able to return to his home so he can find what he's looking for. She basically sacrifices everything and returns to a "fake" world that wants to kill her when she was only trying to her "real" world and does this to let Touma to return to his "real" world.

This is the problem. Touma is protecting her for three main reasons.

Reason 1: Touma ended up doing the same thing as Othinus in her position i..e trying to return to his world even if he ended up killing lots of people that were now alive in this "fake" world. So he understands what she did completely there.

Reason 2: He feels guilty for what he did to his friends and he kind of wants them to take it out on him. He feels like he doesn't deserve their immediate trust/and friendship after the terrible decision he made to return to his world and see them, so he's making himself the villain just like Mikoto tried to do in the bridge scene during the sisters arc.

The third reason makes the other two reasons look very small in comparison though.

Reason 3: When Touma was alone in Chapter 7, all he could do was choose to kill himself. He had no right to choose to do anything else from the fake world's perspective. Kamachi even said it himself:

Originally Posted by NT 9 Best quote

If the world had peace, it was likely that no one would complain.
If the world had peace, it was likely that no one would raise any questions.
If the world had peace, it was likely that everyone would ignore the process used to reach it.
If the world had peace, it was likely that everyone would rejoice at the result.
If the world had peace, it was likely that everyone would say it was right.
That equal and selfish answer would crush the convenience of an individual. But there was no other option. Justice had already been lost. Only the fossilized relics remained.
Needless to say, peace had great value. Past history proved it was worth considering the sacrifice of half the world just to acquire.
If it could be purchased with a single life, anyone would leap at the chance.
Historians would praise that great deed of mankind, a new number would be carved into the list of great dates, and even a holiday would be made.
All of humanity would smile as they committed that murder.
Grinning and armed with that theory, they would look away from the truth and rejoice in their lukewarm and unpleasant peace in which everyone forgot what justice is.
This led to a question:
Did the person wish to cling to a world like that?

So Othinus was sacrificing herself ready to die in order to protect the "fake" world that Touma lived in, for the same reason that Touma was ready to commit suicide in chapter 7, because it would be better for the "fake" world that way.

This is why of course Touma just can't leave her alone. He's doing to Othinus here exactly what the Will of the Misaka Network did to him: he's allowing her to be selfish, because the moral issue here isn't black and white. Why do we want to Touma back in the real world and feel happy about it? Well, it's the same reason Othinus would want to be back in her real world and feel happy about it.

From that point of view, she wasn't even doing anything wrong... and just like Kamachi said before... this is why...

Originally Posted by Kamijou Touma

I don’t want to fight anymore. I don’t want to oppose a monster like that. I was never fighting because I wanted to. It’s just that I always saw someone holding back tears in some horribly painful situation. Even if they cried and cried, no one would have complained, but they put up with it anyway. …And I couldn’t allow it to go on.

Right now what Othinus is doing to return Touma to his world is what Mikoto was trying to do by sacrificing herself in order to stop the experiments. Even if her death would have been heralded as a sign of justice to the entire world, she still would have died, and they wouldn't have even known about what she went through, they would have completely ignored that, deluding themselves into thinking that they were completely in the right with their action and that she was pure evil.

In the end, him protecting Othinus makes complete sense to me for that reason... because if he didn't, he'd be letting a lonely girl sacrifice herself for the "good of the world." He'd never let that happen, ever. That's how he has always been.

Yeah this was a long analysis, but I think it's one of my better ones, and while making this analysis I realized NT 9 was much better than I thought it was especially because of what I just realized while making that analysis.

[dragon1412]

Originally Posted by LevelSeven

yeah, he isnt really bad, maybe i wrote it wrong

i wanted to say that he is not good, afterall he protects a monster now, and from my point of view: she shouldnt survive this....

i know how i could break toumas 'iron' will to protect her: i will show him how much pain she created all over the world, humans who lost everything only because of her selfish actions, if he really insists to protect someone like that: the only way i could describe his behavior would be.....crazy.....

EDIT: @smokin..

the same applies for accel and fiamma but they are still 'the monster who slaughtered innocent clones' and'the one who caused WW3' ,

they also followed selfish reasons but First: it wasnt in such a large scale (WW3 is debattable)
second: they goal was for the sake of others,
in my eyes: they are far-far-far more 'nicer' than othinus, who (even if it is human-like) only for her going home brought nothing but Chaos/fear/death for the world,

and (in my eyes: the goal is second to the methods used to acomplish it): accel as Level 6 would/could also revive every dead clone,
fiamma would/could also revive every death human back,

but in the end they was stopped, to say that othinus isnt so bad because (maybe) the innocent humans wouldnt die is rather odd.....(by accels/fiammas goal it was clear)...

like dniv said, your analysis have a few fundamentals problem, 1st Touma himself already choose to prioritized himself and more importantly, he knew that it's impossible to avoid tragedy, the choice Touma and Othinus make is the very same choice, i never heard that either Accel lv 6 or Fiamma can revive the dead. show him tragedy in the world mean nothings aslong as all the people in the world is ignorant of what they went through. And the Alpha world already put him in that situation where the entire world is against him.

[Goldzero]

i just went back to railgun tv trope and noticed touma became somewhat of a scrappy during railgun S season 2 where he took the spotlight from mikoto and made her look like a damsel in distress which psst quite allot of fans.

seems to imply the Japanese fans were quite psst as well.


i know this was random but felt like bringing it up for some reason.

[dniv]

Originally Posted by Goldzero

i just went back to railgun tv trope and noticed touma became somewhat of a scrappy during railgun S season 2 where he took the spotlight from mikoto and made her look like a damsel in distress which psst quite allot of fans.

seems to imply the Japanese fans were quite psst as well.

For people who don't care about the series and just care about Mikoto, of course that would happen.

[SmokinFerret88]

Originally Posted by Goldzero

i just went back to railgun tv trope and noticed touma became somewhat of a scrappy during railgun S season 2 where he took the spotlight from mikoto and made her look like a damsel in distress which psst quite allot of fans.

seems to imply the Japanese fans were quite psst as well.

They need to remember that Railgun is a spin-off of Index. In that sense, Touma can enter the scene if he damn well pleases. Besides, the Misaka cult would never have let Accelerator live it down if he actually fought and beat the stuffing out of her had things gone the way she planned.

They give Accel enough grief over killing clones. Imagine how much ammo they would have if he actually hurt her.

[Goldzero]

Originally Posted by SmokinFerret88

They need to remember that Railgun is a spin-off of Index. In that sense, Touma can enter the scene if he damn well pleases. Besides, the Misaka cult would never have let Accelerator live it down if he actually fought and beat the stuffing out of her had things gone the way she planned.

They give Accel enough grief over killing clones. Imagine how much ammo they would have if he actually hurt her.

funny part about that whole info was that the complains i saw were mostly hate towards accelerator rather then kamijou himself. i knew there were quite a few complains but i didn't think it was that bad. most i seen were good compliments towards kamijou and accelerator though.

then again, mikoto fans do tend to jump to conclusions too much and overreact whenever bribri gets hurt or saved. there are reasons why they are looked down at by the fanbase and other anime viewers and many tend to be good points(though not all of them are bad).

[allfictions]

Originally Posted by Goldzero

i just went back to railgun tv trope and noticed touma became somewhat of a scrappy during railgun S season 2 where he took the spotlight from mikoto and made her look like a damsel in distress which psst quite allot of fans.

seems to imply the Japanese fans were quite psst as well.


i know this was random but felt like bringing it up for some reason.

That wasn't there before, originally, only Uiharu and Harue were in that section. Then some butthurt fan came along and added Touma. Since I didn't want to create an edit war as TvTropes frowned upon these, I counterargued it by pointing out the absurdity of the complaint given that it was originally Touma's story (calmly of course, so that it wasn't reverted back). That's why I registered on TvTropes in the 1st place, because the place was so Railgun sided, I had to tone down a lot of bullshit, and even then I can't change stuff too much.

Be glad you have one of your own over there keeping watch, people.

(Besides, most of the complaints are in "Your Mileage May Vary", which is bound to contain things you disagree with)