A Certain Scientific Railgun is definitely one of the better spin
offs that I've ever seen/ read in my time. I say this because a show actually finally picked a character that not only was very strong, but who also had an interesting enough story line to stand on its own. I definitely do think that Railgun could stand alone and is definitely a show that you could watch without needing to see A Certain Magical Index.
I have started this show twice, once, I watched the first two episodes and was put off by Kuroko Shirai and her weirdness, but eventually I was able to overcome it and power through the show, and I'm definitely glad that I did because I really do like it.
It definitely starts out a little slow since they're just trying to introduce all these characters that were either not shown in Index, or were not as prominent as say Kamijo and Index. But from there it does manage to pick up, coming up with story lines that lie parallel to Kamijo's story from Index.
Speaking of Kamijo, I did think it was kind of funny that they managed to make him look like just a totally casual dude who never really does anything of note until the final arc. The same thing kind of happened to Misaka in Index, but she gave off such an attitude that you could tell she wasn't just a casual human, not to mention she's ranked third among all the espers... so I would think that she wouldn't just sit around and do nothing.
.jpeg)
Also, let's just talk about how cool it is that this show has a main character that is not only a female, but is also super OP. That really doesn't happen that much, normally the girls start out as weak and then get much stronger, or they start out as super strong but then they show that they have a weakness. And while Misaka does definitely show weakness, there is never a point where her own weakness paralyzes her so much that she can't go on. And I'm a huge fan of that.
Relatable content: don't mess with a sister's eyebrows. Like, what even was that first arc, a girl went on a date with a jerk who thought her brows looked a little wonky and laughed at her?? Then she made it her mission to ruin the eyebrows of pretty girls everywhere... totally casual right? Maybe this is the reason that there are so many eyebrow tutorials on youtube, so that we can stop this kind of disaster, one janky set of brows at a time. Also, it was totally not fair, at least Miho had her jacked up bangs to cover her brows, but what about Saten and Mitsuko? How long did they have to deal with that crap??
Another thing that this show did well was address people who were low level or even level zero espers and their want to gain more power. It was one of those things that I didn't necessarily think about all too much, I mean it did cross my mind occasionally, but not a lot. But when it was brought up as like a serious thing that people were doing until they passed out into a coma, I was like, man, I'm glad they talked about this, because there's no way that no one in this whole town was trying to increase levels so that they could move up in ranks. And I totally related with Saten's efforts to gain powers because she was a level zero. Also, I'm a little salty that no one slapped the stupid mug right off that crazy ho... they were just like, 'oh, she's suffered a lot', she's been punished enough.
Definitely throughout the whole show my favorite arc was the sisters arc. I liked how it showed the other side what went down in Index and even though I didn't think that it was that incomplete in Kamijo's version of the story, getting to see the same events play out in Railgun, I got the feels for Accelerator because I don't think his story was properly explained in Index until the very end, but in Railgun, we got to see even more of the story and he has a tragically troubled past. I feel for him. And I'm glad he finally get's Last Order to forever be his new bestie. They're perfect. And she totally makes him a bearable character.
Overall I'd rate this show 4.5 out of 5. It has good action, character development, and writing. My favorite ship throughout the anime: Misaka x Kamijo. Favorite arc: Sisters arc. Favorite character: Frenda... I don't know why though.
But yeah, watch this if you haven't. Or if you have. It's a fun time.
.jpeg)
