September 29, 2026
I'm a big fan of the anime A Certain Scientific Railgun, or Toaru Kagaku no Railgun if you prefer. Railgun is one of the many spinoffs of the massively successful Toaru Majutsu no Index (A Certain Magical Index) series, which is arguably defined more by its spinoffs than by the original series. Another such spinoff is called Toaru Anbu no ITEM, or A Certain Dark Side ITEM, which is getting adapted into an anime for the fall 2026 season. ITEM is set one year before the events of Index, and follows some characters who show up in Seasons 2 and 3 of Railgun and somewhere in Index.
I'm quite hyped for this show. Index is apparently a well-written story, but the anime is really bad and I don't care enough to go read the light novels. Railgun has so far been under the charge of a different director than Index, is based on a manga instead of a light novel series, and has been consistently decent to great, depending on arc. The ITEM source is a handful of light novels, written by the author of Index himself, and the ITEM anime is being directed by Nagai Tatsuyuki, who directed Railgun. The production is also bringing back a band that did one of the endings of the third season of Railgun, which was a fantastic song, and I already like the characters this show will follow. It's a perfect storm to get super hyped and then totally disappointed!
In any event, a friend who studies Japanese far more rigorously than I do (but also watches way less anime) recently got a print subscription to Newtype. Newtype is the anime magazine in Japan and it's really cool to look through, even for shows I couldn't possibly care less about. The October issue included a single page about Toaru Anbu no ITEM, and I've translated it here. This is not a machine translation, I did it by hand with a dictionary and Google on standby, and I didn't use any AI. I did turn to DeepL to check a couple sentences where I could not make heads nor tails of the meaning.
I won't be uploading it in any higher quality because I'd like to keep Kadokawa off my back.
I've left a little bit of that unpolished translation stink in this because a) I don't really want to rewrite the whole thing and b) I think it's charming. I've chosen to write all names in East Asian name order, that is, family name before given name.
There's a lot of text here, but it doesn't really say anything new, especially if you already know about these characters and about ITEM. The whole premise of this story and these characters is that they're part of the "dark side" of Academy City, the Toaru series setting, employed by the vaguely-capitalist-dystopian companies and schools that run the city to suppress dissent and keep a pretty heavy hand on the citizenry.
The fifth girl's appearance invites them even further into the darkness. The fourth Toaru series work since Toaru Majutsu no Index began is finally being adapted into an anime. The dark side organization ITEM's daily life and relationships have already appeared in other works, and now the deep darkness will be drawn. This work takes place about a year before the events of Toaru Majutsu no Index and Toaru Kagaku no Railgun. As something of a prequel in relation to the whole, it's a recommended place to start the series for newcomers.
Kamachi Kazuma is the creator of the Toaru series, which depicts the near future where science and magic intersect. [Editor's note: this is something of a tagline for the series]. The setting of this work is the massive Academy City, located in the Western part of Tokyo. The total population is 2.3 million people, 80% of which are students, who follow a curriculum intended to develop their abilities. [Editor's note 2: the "abilities" in question are esper powers]. It is also famed as a living-dream-like education institution with scientific and technological prowess far exceeding the rest of the world, where anyone can hone their ability and live in safety... Abilities range from Level 0 (none) to Level 5 (extremely powerful) in a total of six levels. The Level 5s are ranked from 1st to 7th, by technological applicability and potential utility to Academy City.
4th rank Mugino Shizuri is the leader of the group ITEM, part of the larger force known as the "dark side", which takes on dirty work that must remain shrouded in secrecy. As a Level 4, wielding the ability Offense Armor, the ability to freely manipulate atmospheric nitrogen, Kinuhata Saiai takes pride in her ironwall defense. Level 4 Takitsubou Rikou uses her AIM Stalker ability to seek out and pursue the target. Finally, although Frenda Seivelun is a Level 0 with no ability, she uses her immense self-confidence and explosive devices to poke fun at the battle from the vanguard. These four girls compose the elite battle unit ITEM and find themselves asked to handle all sorts of work. This animation is by J.C. Staff, who have handled all the adaptations of this series so far. The director is Nagai Tatsuyuki, who directed all of Toaru Kagaku no Railgun, the character designer is Kimoto Shiyuki, who also helped with storyboarding, and the music is by Maiko Iuchi.
[Editor's note 3: Kimoto Shiyuki is not the "original character designer". These girls have shown up in the other animes, but their artstyle has been significantly revamped for this show. Maybe Kimoto designed their anime forms back in 2013 when they first showed up in Railgun S? In any event, the "original character designers" for this show are Kiyotaka Haimura, who did original designs on most of the Toaru series across media formats, and Nilitsu, who's done a few things including ITEM original character design, according to the Anime News Network encyclopedia.]
The cast is: Mugino Shizuri = Ami Koshimizu, Takitsubou Rikou = Aya Suzaki, Frenda Seivelun = Uchida Maaya, Kinuhata Saiai = Chinatsu Akasaki, all continuing their roles as these characters. Furthermore, Hana Hishikana is playing the mysterious Hanano Choubi. Choubi, the fifth girl, appears suddenly before Mugino and her comrades. Their meeting brings ITEM even further into the darkness...
For everyone in the dark side that supports the schools from behind the scenes, everyday life is a battlefield. Although ITEM leader Mugino Shizuri is a high school student, even if it's summer break, the calls for underground work don't stop. The more that ITEM proves themselves to be an elite unit, the deeper they find themselves.
Takitsubou has a calm personality and a gentle way of being (upper left). Frenda has a wide circle of friends and lifts everyone's spirits (lower left). For a person on the dark side, Kinuhata seems relatively sensible, but she gets lonely easily (upper right). Hanano is a scared-small-animal sort of girl with a weak constitution (lower right). Together, all four girls cooperate with Mugino's plans.
Mugino Shizuri is dark side organization ITEM's leader and the 4th ranking Level 5 in Academy City. She's a mediator and viewed as an onee-san by the rest of the group. She's surprisingly short-tempered.
The big pink text at the left says roughly "Fall is their plaything". The red gradient text says "A thrilling story for a bright autumn."
The Japanese title of the show is とある暗部の少女共棲, with the final four-kanji words furigana'd to アイテム (ITEM). The actual kanji there read shoujo kyousei, approximately "girl symbiosis". All the Toaru series titles are written this way.
I think it's cooler if I end this post with a link to the show's trailer. Once the show's finished, I might write a follow-up post. This isn't primarily an anime blog but I think a little is fine.