Tag: A Certain Scientific Railgun

A Certain Scientific Railgun S

A Certain Scientific Railgun S

A Certain Scientific Railgun S anime series cover art
A Certain Scientific Railgun S Cover Art

Introduction

A Certain Scientific Railgun S is the sequel series to A Certain Scientific Railgun, which is a side story of a Certain Magical Index. I also watched A Certain Magical Index II before this series, which is something I’ll get to in just a bit.

For reference, the proper viewing order apparently goes like this:

  • Index
  • Railgun
  • Railgun S
  • Index II

But, the order I viewed this series in is:

  • Railgun
  • Index
  • Index II
  • Railgun S

So, you see, I kind of swapped things around from start to finish. The reason I swapped around Railgun and Index was because I was more interested in Railgun, so I simply wanted to watch that first. However, the real issue comes with my swapping of Index II and Railgun S.

You see, Index II came out three years before Railgun S, but apparently you’re supposed to watch Railgun S first. How does that make any sense? Needless to say I watched these two parts in release order, not the order you’re “supposed” to watch them.

Sisters Arc Overview

The fact that I swapped around Index II and Railgun S had the most impact on the first arc of this series since it was actually covered in both parts. I think watching Index II first kind of spoiled the fun of this arc in Railgun S, but at the same time I think the same would be true in the other direction as well.

It’s almost like how Fate/stay night: UBW and Fate/Zero both spoil the endings of each other, so no matter which order you watch them in you’re ruining something for yourself. And, that’s not the only similarity there is between the RailDex and Fate series.

So, just what is this arc that also appears in Index II? It’s the Sisters Arc in which we learn that Mikoto Misaka has 20,000 clones of herself running around Academy City getting killed by Accelerator. This is by far the best arc to date in the RailDex series, so it was a bit disappointing for it to be redone in this fashion.

Accelerator vs. Touma Kamijou from the anime series A Certain Scientific Railgun S
Accelerator vs. Touma Kamijou

For the most part, Railgun S focuses on how this arc begins and then through the middle, whereas Index II picks it up from the middle and concludes it. Seems fairly straightforward then, right? Just watch Railgun S first and you’ll be good to go.

Well, yes, that does appear to be the easy way to solve the problem except for the fact that, as I mentioned, Railgun S came out three years after Index II, so there’s no logical reason to watch Railgun S first unless you have this information before even starting the series.

The other issue, however, is the middle portion of the arc where the two parts overlap. There are actually entire episodes that are just reused in Railgun S from Index II.

The idea of these two parts is that you can see the same events from both the perspectives of Kamijou and Misaka, but it doesn’t actually work out all that great. You see, there are episodes in which they’re both main characters, and so these episodes have essentially no differences between Index II and Railgun S.

At times like this it really feels like the RailDex series was originally meant to be a visual novel with a bunch of interconnected routes to take.

Febrie Arc Overview

The second and final arc of Railgun S is the Febrie arc, in which Misaka & friends find a mysterious little girl named Febrie. While the previous arc is tied into the events of Index II, this arc is more of a sequel to the events of the first season of Railgun.

In the first season of Railgun Misaka learns that there’s a dark underside to Academy City, and through the Sisters Arc she finds that she was unknowingly connected to it. In the Febrie arc, Misaka begins to directly challenge this dark part of the city.

She learns that Febrie is a fabricated human, or homunculi, who was created to be used to gather information on the various Level 5 espers. And, not only is Febrie seen as just a tool by her creators, but she’s seen as disposable as well once they get what they want.

Mikoto Misaka from the anime series A Certain Scientific Railgun S
Mikoto Misaka

You see, Febrie needs to take a special medicine in the form of lollipops every couple of hours or her body will break down. But, she only has a certain number of these lollipops left. So, Misaka & friends must bring down the Academy City underworld and learn how to produce Febrie’s medicine before time runs out.

Really, while this arc had some good fights, I wasn’t all that interested in it. Maybe it was because it didn’t have best boy Accelerator, but maybe it was also because some of the events just made very little sense.

For example, Misaka learns that the Tree Diagram, the super computer in space that Academy City uses to function, doesn’t actually exist. But, wasn’t she the one who shot it down in the first season of Railgun or something? I seem to remember that being something that happened.

Also, one of the OPs showed us some pretty cool tag-team fight scenes involving Misaka and Kuroko, but we never actually got any of this in the series. The fights against the other Level 5 espers would have been so much more entertaining if we got to see Kuroko fight alongside Misaka.

New Characters

There are a decent amount of new characters introduced in Railgun S, but the ones I’ll be focusing on are essentially an esper hitman squad known as ITEM. This team is made up of Mugino, Frenda, Saiai, and Rikou.

Shizuri Mugino is the leader of ITEM and one of the few Level 5 espers in Academy City. Her ability is known as Meltdowner and is essentially a laser that can burn/melt through anything. However, since her lasers are made of electrons, Misaka is able to deflect them with her own Electromaster ability.

Frenda is the only member of ITEM who doesn’t seem to be an esper. Instead, she specializes in explosives of all kinds, which doesn’t always make sense. To truly be effective, she needs time to set traps all over a potential battlefield, which is fine, but we also see her pull heat-seeking rockets out of her skirt.

Saiai is a Level 4 esper whose ability I don’t quite understand, or at least don’t remember the explanation of it. She’s able to either harden her body or create some sort of hardened force-field around herself. This can then be used either offensively or defensively, but since it has no range, it’s not the best ability around.

The final member, Rikou, is another Level 4 esper, but one without an offensive or defensive ability. Instead, Rikou’s ability is better labeled as a support ability. She’s able to pinpoint the direction and possibly distance of any esper she’s ever encountered by recognizing their AIM fields.

Conclusion

Overall I’d say A Certain Scientific Railgun S was a 6/10, just like the first season. I just don’t really feel like the RailDex series can be rated any higher than that, but maybe the upcoming Accelerator season will be able to change that.

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A Certain Scientific Railgun

A Certain Scientific Railgun

A Certain Scientific Railgun anime cover art featuring Mikoto Misaka and Kuroko Shirai
A Certain Scientific Railgun Cover Art

Overview

I finally finished the first season (2 cours) of A Certain Scientific Railgun after going through it at a pace of around one episode per day. Season two, A Certain Scientific Railgun S, will be coming much later since I’m going to focus on watching other anime before starting that one.

These series are also side stories of a series called A Certain Magical Index, which I have also not seen. Eventually I’ll probably watch those as well, but not any time soon.

This series takes place in a city known simply as Academy City. Here, as you might expect, there are a variety of schools which give the area its name. However, the schools in Academy City are special in that they’re for people who have psychic abilities.

The overarching plot of the season is that there are some bad people in Academy City who are trying to make what’s known as a “level 6” esper (level 5 is currently the maximum). However, most of the series is episodic and doesn’t have anything to do with that plot.

This is my main issue with the series. Instead of making a 24 episode series where most of the episodes are essentially filler, why not just make a 12 episode series where most of the episodes are plot relevant?

While I feel that’s the major drawback of the anime, there are other things I felt the anime did really well which I’ll mention later.

Characters

The protagonist of this series is Mikoto “Railgun” Mikasa, a level 5 esper with an electromagnetic ability. While she’s nicknamed “Railgun” after her signature move, firing a coin by using her body as a railgun, she can also use electricity and magnetism in a variety of other ways.

Kuroko Shirai is Mikasa’s roommate and friend. She’s a level 4 esper with a teleportation ability and serves as a Judgement officer (basically teenage police).

The other two main girls are less interesting. First we have Kazari Uiharu, a level 1 esper (I think) who has an extremely specific and not very useful ability which I won’t mention here. Uiharu is also a Judgement Officer along with Shirai even though she’s only a level 1.

The final girl is Ruiko Saten, a level 0 with no manifested psychic ability. She only becomes useful in the final episode of the season and her main purpose seems to be to show how regular humans feel about being surrounded by all the espers.

Mikoto "Railgun" Misaka from the anime series A Certain Scientific Railgun
Mikoto “Railgun” Misaka

Conclusion

I think I had this series rated at a 6/10 all the way from episode one. It’s a pretty good series, but it’s just barely a pretty good series as far as I’m concerned. If it had been fully episodic it would have been a completely average anime rated at a 5.

I mentioned earlier that there were some things I liked about this series though. Specifically, I like how the psychic abilities were handled.

Let’s use Misaka as an example first. Her ability is electromagnetism, and although she frequently uses her railgun move, she does use her ability in a variety of other ways.

At no point does obtain some new ability or powerful attack. Rather, she uses her defined ability in creative ways to get the upper hand, such as using magnetism to walk up walls that have steel rebar inside them.

We see Shirai use her teleportation in similar ways without breaking from how her ability was originally explained.

The other thing I liked about the series was that while the abilities of characters such as Misaka and Shirai were explained and seen a lot, the abilities of other characters weren’t even mentioned for most of the series, but I didn’t even notice.

For example, Uiharu is one of the four main characters and we, the viewers, know she’s an esper. However, we don’t find out what her ability is until the final arc of the series and yet at no point before that did I wonder what her ability was.

You could probably argue that it’s just bad writing since her ability is useless anyway and so doesn’t affect the story, but I found it to be an example of good writing.

Her character was so well-defined, with the exception of her ability, that I didn’t even notice I was missing that piece of information until it was explicitly given to me later on in the series. When she reveals her ability she also mentions that none of the other characters knew what her ability was either.

In contrast, we learn what Saten’s ability would be, if she could manifest it, pretty early in the series even though it’s useless because it doesn’t technically exist.

As for the second season, A Certain Scientific Railgun S, I’m hoping Saten will be able to manifest her ability because I want to see the different ways she comes up with to use it like Misaka and Shirai have with their own. On the other hand, I’m expecting Uiharu’s ability to stay useless.

The first OP for A Certain Scientific Railgun can be found here.