School District 12

**School District 12** (第一二学区, *Dai Jū'ni Gakku*?) is the easternmost School District of Academy City. It is bordered to the west by School District 19, School District 6, and School District 23. To the east, it is bordered by Eastern Tokyo, with its entire eastern side surrounded by Academy City's wall. The district's primary feature is its collection of schools dealing with theology.

## Principles

The district's focus is religious facilities, occult studies and theology schools, from a scientific approach and perspective. Although the district is known for its collection of theology schools, rather than believing in gods, the idea behind them is to research why humans believe in gods and what is needed to keep people in the special psychological state known as 'belief' in the long-term. Most of the research in the district falls under the fields of philosophy, psychology and architecture. The district is home to the **Occult Denial Society** (オカルト否定学会, *Okaruto Hitei Gakkai*?), Academy City's analysis of all things unscientific and supernatural.

While the district has many reconstructions of religious facilities, some with elaborate and detailed constructions, they are shallow recreations from a scientific perspective, with no magical symbols or anything that would matter to the magic side. Rather than asking why people believe in Shinto fortune slips, it would instead be asked what psychological conditions lead people to pay money for them when the outcomes are apparently just determined by random chance, with some buildings' reconstructions nothing more than a model on the cycles and patterns needed to efficiently bring people in and take their money.

Land is something which can't be spared in Academy City and as such, it cannot have big shrines and temples sprawling out along the ground like in other places. Instead, most of the buildings in the district are high-rise skyscrapers with multiple floors and no interior walls, providing more space than the average school campus. Most of the religious facilities in the district are housed inside these skyscrapers' floors - for example, a huge temple garden could be built on one of these floors and even though it is all indoors, one could meditate under a waterfall. These buildings do not just contain one type of religious or mythological facility, with a system of openings for people (e.g. university research teams) wanting a type of temple or cathedral similar to that of leasing rooms in a multi-tenant building. It would not be unusual in these buildings for the ground floor to hold a discount store while the second floor houses a church.

In the case of the building which Kamijou Touma's group and others visited on New Year's Day, a typical skyscraper in the district with glass on all sides and over 50 stories tall, the ground floor had large entrances, a wide-open space with a building guide in the center of the floor, and more than 20 elevators to the higher floors. According to the floor guide, the first five floors were for general information and shopping, the seventh housed a museum, the sixth was assigned to a Christian cathedral, the eighth to Egyptian Mythology, the ninth Buddhism, the tenth Shinto, and the eleventh to Folktales and fortunetelling.

Although most of the district's religious facilities are held in or converted from high-rise buildings, there are constructions in the open as well. Lined up in between the concrete and glass skyscrapers rising like bamboo shoots, there are Greek-style temples (with color patterns applied to a temple with project mapping - likely for researching the theory that the Parthenon was not originally white), giant pyramids, five-story pagodas stone monuments and statues of goddesses, a river with naturally decomposing origami dolls floating down it rather than fallen leaves or flower petals, and elevated streets closed to traffic, along which herds of deer might wander. The place has been described as feeling more like a theme park with replicas of famous tourist locations around the world than a research institute for mythology and religion. The streets lined with various religious facilities give a multi-cultural feeling to it.

## Background

In the past, according to a story known to Kamijou Touma, Aogami Pierce apparently visited the district on an ascetic journey to rid himself of worldly thoughts but found a shrine maiden cute, resulting in professional warrior monks from a neighboring temple being called as reinforcements, with Aogami being thrown out and banned from entering the district again.

## Chronology

### Shinyaku Toaru Majutsu no Index

#### Ichihanaran Festival Arc

*Main article: Ichihanaran Festival Arc*
Silvia, Brunhild Eiktobel, and Leivinia Birdway visited the district during the Ichihanaransai. They complained about district's unpleasant structure.

### Souyaku Toaru Majutsu no Index

#### New Year's Arc

*Main article: New Year's Arc*

On January 1st, many residents of Academy City came to District 12 as part of their New Year's shrine visits. At that time, the Bridge Builders Cabal had also managed to set up a consulate in the district via its acquisition of the Condroniard Republic. Having greeted Touma on New Year's Day, Alice invited him and his group to her new 'secret base' on January 2nd.

On January 3rd, after a battle broke out at the consulate and martial law was initiated, the Transcendents at the consulate went elsewhere in the district and joined with other members of the cabal called in from outside the city as they prepared and performed the ceremony to summon Christian Rosenkreuz (which lasted until January 4th), with Mut Thebes pursuing Touma, Aradia and Anna as they headed across and out of the district in a hijacked Predator Octopus towards School District 15. The trio briefly stopped to stock up at a discount store in the district, where Hamazura Shiage and Takitsubo Rikou were also shopping in order to avoid crowds at the few stores still open.

### Astral Buddy

#### Astral Buddy Arc

*Main article: Astral Buddy Arc*
After Yuuri Senya was returned to her true body, she, Hokaze Junko, and Shokuhou Misaki visited Toomine Kanari's grave in a temple graveyard in the district.