User blog comment:The Lord Reader/Touma's fights for anime-onlys/@comment-3969505-20200225165254/@comment-25431873-20200304194008

'''the final judgement is gonna be by eyeballs looking at the TV screen (and to some extent i agree with them). '''

I mean, why? We know the anime is a very imperfect adaptation that leads to erroneous conclusions that outright contradicts the novels. It only seems you agree with flawed analysis based on the anime because you already dislike the character. Like this for example:

Touma is blander then bland, a walking black hole of boredom, a chewing gum with no taste (skip unecessary repetitions of the same claims but more vulgar) he vast majority of his heroic adventures and shenaningans were purely reaction/passanger based, he was never the original proactive driver in any of them, he was constantly dragged, pushed and manipulated into these situations and adventures 

This is pretty much not I ever saw it, and the anime compound this misunderstanding. the anime really underplays Touma's motivations or seems to depict him as an aimlessly drifting only to be pulled in hard situations. Like without his internal narration it's very difficult to potray what's really going through Touma's head without the right facial expressions or body context cues and for all of Nagai's faults (like the endless self written fanfiction filler he keeps throwing into Railgun), he's at least pretty good at showing character outside of pure monologue. Nishikiori, known primarily for his 'comedy' anime directing is actually pretty great at hitting comedic cues. The slice of life scenes of Index I & II were really good despite the admittedly poor animation. But when it came to actually showing inner conflict and struggle...

...he kinda falls flat.

Retreading the steps of the first season in the light novels one thing I really noticed how much Touma never actually seems to feel like he's just dragged into things, like you proclaim. And he's never as blase as the anime makes him seem either. He's often scared, reluctant, judgemental, deceptive, but he pulls through anyway. I remember reading Deep Blood and pausing over Touma's inner thoughts on that extra 100 yen meaning the difference between Himegami's escape from Misakawa. Touma does not do things because he's the protagonist, but becomes the protagonist because he can't help not doing anything. He is unabashedly selfish in his heroic actions- he does thing because he can't stand not to, not because of a desire to sacrifice himself for the sake of others but if he doesn't do anything it'll make him angry and frustrated.

"Touma is bland" is wrong if it's only based on the anime where his inner self doesn't shine through, and saying he is bland based on the LN just seems like misreading him.