My knowledge of ToAru lore beyond what’s been directly revealed in various Anime is mostly via watching videos on the Aeon of Horus YouTube Channel. I feel the need to make that clear up front.
I haven’t even seen all of what’s Animated btw, I’ve so far been strictly Dub only with these franchises so all the OVAs and Specials that the Dub has ignored I still haven’t seen.
A detail revealed in the first Arc of A Certain Magical Index that I used to forget about because I generally rewatch later arcs more is Index reveals that Magick began as mages trying to mimic what Esper could do. But if Espers have existed for longer then why are they now so firmly associated with this less than a century old futuristic city-state?
Well that’s where the Gemstone distinction the Anime has never gotten into comes in.
Gemstones are the naturally occurring Espers whose powers do not in origin have anything to do with Academy City’s curriculum. While the term and concept of Gemstones hasn’t been properly explained in the Anime yet two Gemstone Espers have been seen, Aisa Himegami whose ability is called Deep Blood and Sugita the 7th ranked Level 5.
Paradoxically however these Natural Gemstone abilities seem the least Scientific, they seem like the highly magical superpowers someone would have in the Nasuverse.
Academy City’s Espers are the products of an attempt to artificially recreate what the Gemstones are, they are doing the same thing the Mages are just with an aesthetically different method. Academy City was, after all, founded by one of the most infamous of Mages.
The core of how Academy City tries to scientifically explain what Espers are draws on the Schrodinger's Cat thought experiment, just like many Visual Novels. That’s why there is all the “personal reality” talk. But the way Mages powers work also has a similar mind over matter quality to it, remember the villain in Deep Blood was defeated by his own lack of belief in what he could do.
The simple fact that Touma’s right hand can cancel out both feels like proof that they aren’t that different. And that ability is called Imagine Breaker.
Like the Gigalomaniac powers in Chaos;HEad and Chaos;Child both Magic and Esper powers in ToAru seem to have their roots in the Transcendental Idealism of Immanuel Kant.
Academy City produces Espers whose powers seem like SciFi rather Magical abilities because the kinds of minds drawn to and bred by Academy City can only Imagine in Scientific sounding terms.
The Remotes Misaki Shoukuhou uses are normal TV remotes, not things specifically designed for her, they are just a tool to help her imagination. In a way that’s not at all unlike a Magic Wand.
We’ve seen plenty of Magical Abilities that would not at all be hard to imagine as Esper Abilities with only superficially different framing, like Style’s fire elemental powers.
Then there’s how the entire description of what a Level 6 is supposed to be reminds me of the Kwisats Haderach from Dune.
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