Toaru Kagaku no Railgun

[Kraco]

Looks like we are finally getting a promising arc. No more nonsense stories of minor characters' daily lives. Even though it's still a bit early to say but nevertheless the basis of this arc seems to be some sort of an amalgam of the AIM fields and mass control stuff we have seen before. Unless that all was nothing but distraction stories invented by the no doubt wicked antiskill woman, whose smile right before the credits was nothing but suspicious. But who knows.

I hope this arc lasts till the end of the series, sparing us from more rubbish episodes.

[Marik]

[Nipponsei] To Aru Kagaku no Railgun ED2 Single - Real Force [ELISA].zip

[Kraco]

Marik posted by accident only a music release, so here's the real thing:

Episode 21 - Mazui





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Uiharu had no lesser self-confidence issues than Saten, I reckon, based on this episode. She seemingly wants to be needed and relied upon so much that her old friends don't anymore matter at all if she has to choose between them and this new person she has known for a couple of days. Kind of cold, if you ask me, unless she was brainwashed by the level 2. I guess even level 2 is enough for that if she keeps doing it for hours. Seriously, though, I find plots like this annoying. Especially since Uiharu herself should be a part of Judgement and is even proud of it. But suddenly if it's her friend - that she knows nothing about - then there simply can't be anything worth inspecting over there. She should be fired from Judgement for being so biased.

[Archangel]

Is raigun a shoujo now...?

[Kraco]

Is raigun a shoujo now...?

Despite all the doujin suggesting otherwise, I don't think Touma has yet managed to turn Mikoto into a woman, so I'd say the answer is yes.

Other than that, what do you mean?

[Archangel]

I mean that despite being cataloged as a seinen all we've gotten out of this show is lovey girly flower power

The manga went on depth on the sisters and how Misaka "dealt" with the whole situation giving meaning to that tag but the lighter tone set by the anime adaptation makes me reconsider calling it such.

[ The above is a light spoiler regarding a possible Railgun S2 ]

[Kraco]

Who the heck categorizes Railgun as seinen?

[Archangel]

AniDB for one, and pretty must every manga website

[Buffalobiian]

loli/pseudo-loli = seinen pretty much, from my observations.

Likewise, big Oppai everywhere more often than not is shounen.

[Ryllharu]

[Mazui]​_To​_Aru​_Kagaku​_no​_Railgun​_-​_22_[h264]
[Mazui]​_To​_Aru​_Kagaku​_no​_Railgun​_-​_22​_[XviD]

Mazui's tracker was down the other day, back up now.
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This was a mixed episode for me. The exposition lately has been a nice change from the fairly vapid character development episodes, Mikoto humor was in prime form again, and Uiharu's power was revealed.

On the other hand, Uiharu revealed her power to her ultra new best friend and continued the annoying subplot of hating Kuroko and Mikoto without a good reason to do so. I like Uiharu, but they haven't even given a good reason for why she'd become so much more attached to Haruue to the point of condemn her friends. The only thing I can think of is that she wants to make her new roommate feel welcome by becoming her ally, but repeatedly calling out your other friends is not the way to welcome someone new into the fold. It's getting annoying, and thankfully Saten called her out on it this episode. With any luck Saten will push her harder next episode, maybe even bitch her out, and then we might get the real reason Uiharu has suddenly turned into a bitch. If not, and it all turns out to be manufactured drama for drama's sake, then I'm going to be really pissed.

Concerning Uiharu's power, it sounds lame, but I can't help but think the reason that she is still a Level 1 is that she isn't thinking creatively enough. She did admit that she needs to touch it, so that limits the effectiveness since she isn't immune to burns/frostbite, but if she can just get over that hurdle, she could be immensely powerful. Being able to lock things at a constant temperature (perhaps even a constant state of any property) could allow her to do some pretty nasty things.

If Uiharu does manage to grow in power, she could use a little help from any other esper to do pretty much anything. Somone who can add heat or energy (Mikoto) could allow Uiharu to ramp up the heat in anything since she breaks the Zeroth Law of Thermodynamics. She prevents equilibrium from being achieved. Or vice versa with cold. If she could extend this ability beyond thermodynamics, she could essentially "lock" a region of space. All esper abilities would become useless, along with the cessation of any other dynamic imbalance of forces. Mikoto relies on being able to manipulate the difference and alignment of nearby electrons to generate her charge. If she powered up, Uiharu could prevent that, similar to the way a certain someone else does it. But rather than negating, things would "pause" and not fire, but still exist once Uiharu stopped.

[Kraco]

The new best friend is a telepath and I still reserve a chance to hope she's actually brainwashing Uiharu to be her ally. She's only level 2 but considering they spend a lot of time together, she has had all the time to do it ever so slowly. Actually that would be the best tactics anyway rather than an even more sudden change everybody would have noticed for sure. She just hides her villainous true personality behind the victimized and sad mask of a really good actor.

It doesn't seem to me Uiharu much cares about her own power. Like you said, it has tremendous possibilities in fact but when have we seen her train at all? All she cares about is doing rather unchallenging work at Judgement, and that's it. She doesn't have any ambitions whatsoever and without ambitions it's pretty hard to actively strenghten your personal reality.

Waking up the comatose children would be actually quite easy, and Mikoto even knows it. All she would need to do is to get Touma, make him lay his hand on the head of one of them and then that person could be waken up medically or otherwise and there would be no chance of going berkerk with the esper powers. Of course if waking up is not the actual problem but staying sane while awake, then that would solve nothing. But they seemed to me making a big deal about the moment of waking up specifically.

[RyougaZell]

Uiharu´s power is pathetically lame.

First sample... if Im reading things correctly... they have a small chance to slightly make up for all the recent... failure.

[Kraco]

The difference and alignment of nearby electrons:

Episode 23 - Mazui

[Ryllharu]

Not that it wasn't fairly obvious that MAR was up to no good, but the abruptness with which Telestina went evil made it hard to take seriously. One minute she's cool, collected and mean (ripping out Kiyama's hair and crushing the data) and the next she is full-on psycho-Beatrice from Umineko.

You'd think that grenade launcher fire would attract a lot more attention than one Kongo Mitsuko who happened to be in a nearby hospital. Anti-Skill should have immediately gotten authority to take down MAR, not have to "work something out" after the girls gather Misaka out of the hospital and plan their move at their headquarters. Someone (other than Anti-Skill during an operation) just used heavy ordinance in the middle of the city. MAR is a "rescue" team, and shouldn't have the authority to just blow up whatever they want.

I was also a bit disappointed that they didn't show how Kongo rescued Misaka. We know she has a power similar to Kuroko (but teleports in fewer dimensions) but we've yet to see her actually use it.

Those gripes aside, it was entertaining, and I'm eagerly awaiting Misaka blowing up half the city or whatever else needs to be exploded.

[Kraco]

The finer aspects of script writing certainly leave much to be desired in this show. They didn't even try to make Telestina plan forward at all, which was a total opposite to how she was acting in the beginning of the arc. It could the experiments turned her into a mad psychopath but then she should have been like that from the beginning, not only suddenly now. It's not like she indeed could do whatever pleases her when she finally has the human samples. Unless she indeed has no other plan than to wreck the whole city with a huge poltergeist incident and only needs moments of time for it.

A decent script writer not bowing too deeply in front of the shounen textbook would have made Telestina use the law to her own advantage. That is, would have forced Mikoto & co to attempt to break the law to rescue the children. I don't care what Archie says but this isn't really seinen script writing - unless Telestina only wants total destruction and thus has no worries in the world anymore.

Still, the thing that really bothers me is not the dodgy writing of this arc but the fact Touma doesn't anymore interact with Mikoto...

[Archangel]

It's incredible how a show about a human electrical canon can be so weak in terms of action. Without that and lack of MisakaxTouma this show is all about the annoying yuri undertone and Kuroko ( redundant? ), that although amusing hardly carries the whole anime as far as i'm concerned

I'm ready for this to be over ( i was ready about 10 episodes ago actually ) and for an Index S2 announcement by the end of it

[RyougaZell]

I'm ready for this to be over ( i was ready about 10 episodes ago actually ) and for an Index S2 announcement by the end of it

Likewise.
I wasn't expecting much when this became filler land anyway.

[Marik]

[Mazui] To Aru Kagaku no Railgun - 24 [F64E8354].mkv
[Mazui] To Aru Kagaku no Railgun - 24 [XviD] [6B24D544].avi

[Ryllharu]

Let's see if I can keep track of all the terrible clichés this episode. These are things that are so incredibly overused and retarded that I can't help but groan every time one of them came up. It isn't unusual to see a few of these at a time, but all of them crammed into a single episode?

• Konori is riding a motorcycle that she never used before now.
• Giant robot destroys part of a freeway showing itself, no law enforcement cares.
• Giant robot was somehow built to withstand all of the hero(ine)'s powers.
• Villain(ess) has "studied" the hero(ine)'s powers extensively to develop this mech.
• Organized militant force (Anti-Skill) is defying the higher-ups to "do the right thing."
• Villain(ess) literally says, "I know all your attacks!"
• Immediately before proving her wrong, Hero(ine) says the line, "This is my full power/strength/resolve!" line.
• Villain(ess) emits a "WHAT!" exclamation while appearing to be destroyed.
• Villain(ess) reappears when the heroes are about to achieve victory.
• Villain(ess), renders heroes helpless, then proceeds to enter tirade about how predecessor didn't go far enough, and will finish their research.
• Set pieces glow in a manner that is not readily apparent what purpose such luminescence serves.
• "Powerless" side character saves the heroes.
• Villain(ess) reveals another device, that was "developed based on [heroine's] powers," but is "definitely stronger."
• Hero(ine) and Villain(ess) enter into a beam power contest, or other arm wrestling analogue [insert...insert song].
• Heroine easily wins, despite having been at some manner of "disadvantage."
• Set pieces perform opposite function by glowing in an opposite color (or cool versus warm colors).
• Character who didn't do all that much brags about doing it all in the epilogue sequence.

This whole episode was pretty much shonen clichés chained together to form storyboards and a plot for the episode. While it was pretty to look at, I couldn't take it seriously at all. I thought the last episode was bad with Telestina firing grenades in the middle of the city right next door to a hospital. No one cared then, but when the highways are destroyed by a giant freaking robot, still no one cares? We should have at least seen more emergency personnel, even if MAR has enough authority to mysteriously make them have to withdraw. The media should have picked it up. Nothing there either. The episode ends with all of this somehow happening secretly. Multiple explosions, railguns going off, giant robots, vans flying through the air, and no one bats an eyelash...wtf.



But it wasn't all bad. On the positive side of the this episode:

- Mikoto actually called the robot "ridiculous," which was exactly the same thing I thought the moment she said it.
- Kongo's air rocket power was actually really cool. Kuroko was right in the first episode, it certainly isn't very elegant for a "teleport" power, but Kongo knows how to use it and it has a few unique applications that Kuroko's power doesn't. Kongo could probably create traps with it, since there is a short time delay before they go off.
- Kuroko was badass fighting the grenade launcher guys.

[RyougaZell]

While I certainly welcomed the expansion of Kiyama Harumi's story and the awakening of the kids I could have lived without Telestina and all the crap they pulled. I pretty much agree with Ryll's rant above.

Anyway. Since the series ended I can speak it freely now. Every damn episode after episode 13 is filler. All of them. Everything was pulled out of their asses because the real 2nd Arc hasn't finished in the manga. Which is god damn shame since its awesome.

I, even with my Mikoto-tardness, hate what they did to this show. Episodes 1 to 13 where good. Fourteen onwards where mostly a pain to watch. Specially those centered on the lesser characters. Though I did like Harue and Banri.

Glads its over though. Oh...and I was dissapointed they didn't announce a Season 2 of Index after the episode ended. We definitely need that. We still have 16 un-animated Index novels. And Im quite looking forward for some of them.

And my last rant, that in no way can be described as a spoiler since you guys have already seen Index, I was completely dissapointed Misaka 10032 (or any other serial) didn't make it into the ending scene as a cliffhanger.