***Warning, the following may contain spoilers for A Scientific Railgun and A Scientific Railgun S. Reader discretion is advised.***
Series Synopsis
Academy City isn’t the easiest place to live. Sometimes the aspirations of science don’t know when to draw the line. Morality is often stuck in a gray zone.
Despite this, Academy City's filled with remarkable individuals. Among them is the legendary Level 5 electro master known as the Railgun. But to her friends, she's Mikoto Misaka (voiced by Rina Sato).
Through hard work and dedication, Mikoto has become a force to be reckoned with. Unfortunately, the road getting to this point hasn't been the smoothest. Some of her most naive mistakes are ready to come back and haunt her. Mikoto’s biggest challenges are on the horizon.
However, these are not challenges she has to face alone. The same determination which strengthened her power has given her an unbreakable support group. Mikoto will need every bit of help if she hopes to save the ones who are important to her.
Series Positives
It’s taken me four series to figure it out, but I think I’ve settled on something. It’s been bugging me ever since A Certain Magical Index. While this doesn’t excuse that series’ lack of explanations, much of it has cleared up. For you see, A Certain Scientific Railgun is a prequel. At least it better be. Otherwise, it’s back to square one.
The timeline to this entire franchise is confusing as hell. And if it only relied on the strength of Index, I may have given up a long time ago. But that’s where Railgun comes in. It took what made this whole series great and put it to good use. In fact, it did such a good job at this, it makes both seasons of Index unnecessary.
Index I and II were convoluted and too big for their own good. I did enjoy both. Neither were bad. Annoying for sure, but not awful. They had plenty of fantastic ideas. Yet, instead of nurturing the best of the best, it insisted on doing them all. Index failed to establish a focus. And any focus it did have was soon lost.
Yes, I watched Railgun out of order by mistake. Yes, there might be some bias which has arisen from that. Who knows what I'd be saying had I not screwed up? This is a glaring possibility. To be honest, though, I don’t think it matters.
Index was Index. It was what it was. There’s no changing that. Well…I say that now. In a moment, I may find myself in an awkward contradiction.
Railgun was far and away the superior. And as for Railgun S, it was the sequel this series deserved.
Simple and On Point
I haven’t made this argument in a long time. But it’s a core belief of mine when it comes to storytelling. Simplicity breeds flexibility.
What I mean by that is, shoving a bunch of s@#$ into a story doesn’t make it good. This leads to a lot of dead weight. There’s so much going on, it’s hard to know what to pay attention to. This isn’t a problem only for the audience. This is a problem for the storyteller. When there are too many routes to take, it’s harder to decide which one to take.
Also, there’s nothing wrong with starting small. Nothing says everything has to be grand right out the gate. Build the world, build the setting, build the characters that are going to be with us. But above all, establish the rules.
When there’s an understanding with how things work, it’s easier to get invested in a story. The fewer the rules the better. Simple reason, it’s easy to keep track of them. If a story keeps adding exceptions and doesn't acknowledge those exceptions, it will suffocate.
This is the difference between Index and Railgun.
Index kept doing things. It tried to one-up itself whenever it had the chance. Boss battles, I don’t what else to call them, were common. And they just happened. Characters were not getting stronger. They were only dealing with the problem. Not solving it.
Because of that, you get the ending of Index II. A horrid mess of “what the hell is going on?” That didn’t need to happen. That didn’t have to be the final outcome. Had Index made one or two problems key, and focus on those, think about what could have been.There were characters worth caring about. Characters who you wanted to route for. Had Index spent more with its characters and nothing else, there'd be less to worry about. Confrontations would have had more impact because they would have felt rare. And they would have felt important.
This is the strength of Railgun and Railgun S.
Railgun had a big cast. They were lots of things going. And Railgun S added to this. Except there was progression. It wasn’t “do everything at once”. In the entirety of the Railgun series, both seasons, there were only four major problems. The rest of the time got spent establishing why these problems were important.
Destroying a city. Igniting a revolution. Experimenting with human lives. If a story thinks just saying those things is good enough, that’s a problem. Because it’s not good enough. This is fiction. This isn’t real. When bad things happen, yeah, they suck. But moving on. Why should I care about a thing that doesn’t exist?
In Railgun, and particularly in Railgun S, I cared about these things that didn’t exist. Why? Because the show took the time to make me care. The ending of Railgun S and Index II could not be more different. Railgun S took everything it built up to that point and put it on the line. It made everything that happened feel like it mattered.
Mikoto and her friends were the closest they had ever been. And here they were, standing side by side. Facing an enemy none of them had a chance of defeating alone. Plus, it wasn’t just them. Many of the characters they had helped or interacted with gave their support.
This final battle was exciting. It was intense. It was nail-biting. And it was pretty damn cool too. Was it big? Was it grand? Was it over the top? Yes, and it was great. Railgun earned the moment. It didn’t rely on pure spectacle.
This is why I love Railgun. Was it a perfect series? No. Did it make mistakes? Yes. Index struggled because it seemed like it was trying to outnumber its mistakes. Railgun and Railgun S tried to overpower them.
Series Negatives
I won’t hide what I did. The Positive section of this review was just me explaining why I think Railgun is the superior series. If you want a more detailed explanation on what was good about Railgun S, just take a look at the original review. It would be me repeating myself.
That said, the original Railgun was stronger. It was a lot more entertaining. And it was a lot more fun. Railgun S was still great in its own right. I can't deny how much I enjoyed this series. Again, this is a great squeal.
But Railgun S had a job. It got the job done and it did it well. Yet, for a large section of this season, it wasn’t allowed to be Railgun. Instead, it had to be a bridge for Index. More to the point, it had to be a crutch for Index.
Of the two arcs in this season, only the second felt like a Railgun arc. The first was from Index. I’m not saying it was inspired by Index. No, it was directly pulled from Index. This wasn’t the first time we’ve seen this story.
For a solid chunk, as in most, of Railgun S, the show was about putting a stop to the Level 6 experiment. The one that dealt with Mikoto’s clones. If you’ve been following along with me, this was the same exact thing from the first season of Index. The only difference was, we got Mikoto’s side of the story.
This whole set up was fascinating. Index didn’t do this story wrong. In fact, it was the best arc to come out of Index. It gave us Touma’s greatest moment. It was also one of the darkest points of the entire franchise. Plus, it introduced us to Accelerator.
Railgun S gave us the same exact setup. Yeah, it was from Mikoto’s point of view. But many of these scenes got pulled straight from Index. Many of them without any alterations. And even though it was a copy/paste job of Index’s greatest achievement, Railgun S made it better.
The clone arc fits so much better here than it ever did in Index. It gave more context. It filled a lot of the gaps. It was a complete story. Did you think I was joking when I said Index became unnecessary? I wasn’t. For some reason, Index, the original and main plot, needs Railgun. But Railgun, the side story, doesn’t need Index.
Odyssey. This is all well and good, but why is this a negative. It seems like you enjoyed quite a bit.
This is true. But how Railgun S pulled this off I have a fundamental problem with.
To make my point we need to operate under two separate assumptions.
The first one is, let’s assume a person has only seen the Railgun series. They could get through this arc with little problem. They may even get a better picture of what happened then if they only watched Index. The problem is, Railgun S expects the viewer to have seen Index.
Some details were unsaid. Or, many details got left in, that didn’t make sense with Railgun alone. For instance, we got a lot more backstory with Accelerator (voiced by Nobuhiko Okamoto). This was perfect for those who have seen the entire franchise. We know why we should care. But for someone who has only seen Railgun, this would appear pointless.
Along with that, Touma (voiced by Atsushi Abe) got a lot of screentime. A lot of unnecessary screentime. Sure, he appears throughout Railgun. But not a lot of detail's given about him. He just some guy Mikoto keeps running into. Also, I’m not a hundred percent sure his name was ever mentioned in Railgun.
The second assumption is the one I fall into. Let’s assume someone has seen the entire franchise. We’ve seen these scenes already. We know what’s going to happen. We’re waiting around for some new information. We get that, so that's nice. Yet, the show kept cutting back to scenes we already know. For me, I didn’t care to watch all them again. So, I skipped a lot of it.
I’m not talking just small, one or two-minute bursts. There were solid ten or fifteen minutes worth of show I ignored. The only ones I watched again were the ones liked the most. I shouldn’t have been able to feel like it was okay to do that. And then not get punished for doing that.
This is why I consider this a negative despite thinking it did a better job than Index. This is a production and storytelling problem that shouldn’t be encouraged. On one hand, a show is skipping details. On the other, it’s doing unnecessary padding. It worked out this time. There’s no guarantee it will work again.
Final Thoughts
Was this even a review? Maybe it was in the big picture sense. My thoughts on A Certain Scientific Railgun S can be summed up in three words.
It was good.
The same characters you’ve come to know and love return. The story was on point. The series only focused on what was important. It even improved on Index’s best moments. Sure, it did this in a problematic way. But it still pulled it off.
Though I recommend the whole Academy City series, I give special importance to Railgun. If nothing else, this is the one you should be on the lookout for.
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