「改竄」 (Kaizan)
“Tampering”

Oh boy here we go. If one hasn’t already learned from previous iterations of Railgun, it’s that a) angering Misaka is never the best of plans, and b) an angry Misaka always leads to the most spectacular fireworks. And what coincidence we now have angry Misaka ready to rightfully electrocute some baddies. Gentlemen, Railgun T starts now.

Probably the biggest shocker of this latest arc isn’t so much that another relatively unknown level 5 in Misaki is being given a liberal dollop of character development, but just how far Misaki is going in her plans. Kidnapping Sisters and scheming for who knows what end sure (it’s the usual Railgun in action), but mindwiping galore—and of those who don’t seemingly have anything to do with the Sisters? Yeah something is up with that. Misaki wouldn’t go to the trouble of erasing Misaka’s friends’ memories just for the hell of it after all, or seemingly manipulate the memories of a good chunk of Academy City to boot just to keep Misaka away from the centre of action. No, our starry-eyed princess has more in mind than simply playing around with cloning, and it has to do firmly with Misaka herself.

On the other side of things as well are those friends, and well, no surprises there either. You can bet for example all the mystery around Saten’s shadow metal and the very real attempt at disappearing Uiharu means another plotline is about to interject itself into our current level 5 catfight (spamming Latin websites in this universe certainly screams shady), while the likes of Kongo ensure that Misaka won’t be entirely without help once she starts trying to shake her company. It’s anyone’s guess just where we go from here with all these disparate pieces, but with one hell of a level 5 ability to face down and half the plot yet to come into the open, there’s no doubt we won’t be lacking in fun and games for a good while to come.

After all, this latest conflict just happens to be personal.

 

Preview

17 Comments

  1. “Probably the biggest shocker” :boom: I see what you did there :laughing:

    Fun episode. I kept expecting the plot to move quickly to the captured sister, but
    there’s more going on and the story appear far deeper than a simple kidnapping.
    What I though was a simple plot filler (shadow metal) seems to have a greater
    connection to the story than I thought. The shadow metal metal may not exist,
    but now I gotta wonder is that a story spread by the baddies to cover something up?

    The thing that isn’t really clear to me is does Misaki know about the sisters,
    or does she think she got the actual / real Misaka? (Gawd, I really have trouble
    sometimes with similar sounding names in Anime – do they do it on purpose:question:)

    Of course I laughed when Misaka was confronted at the ambulance station
    by three guys (and others) holding an aluminum ladder. You know, just the
    sorta thing to spread that Misaka love between them!

    Can’t wait ’till next week!

    mac65
    1. If you remember, the guy helping Misaki out was the man in charge of security at the labs in Railgun S. So he’s well aware of the Sisters, and he and Misaki had a brief conversation back at the start of Railgun T where she mentioned them.

      orange
  2. I’m sort of wondering if they’re either going to pick up the pacing or rush Dream Ranker if thats being covered like some have said. We’ve got 6 chapters in 4 episodes. Leaving 22 chapters remaining of this arc.

    Will be interesting to see things take a more sinister turn in anime form, poor Misaka..

    Lyfe
    1. If that’s true (I don’t have / am staying away from reading the source),
      then I wouldn’t mind if they did this “right” and didn’t do Dream Ranker
      this season at all, but made another season altogether for it. Right now,
      this is a very fluid Anime and I’d hate to see it rushed / spoiled just to
      fit that 2nd arc in a two cour season…

      mac65
      1. We’re at the end of Chapter 48 of the manga for reference. It feels like another “Sisters Arc” situation to me which was 15 episodes covering 22 chapters. Daihasei starts at Chapter 43 and concludes at Chapter 70(28 chapters). I expect when the arc reaches its climax we may see more chapters covered but there’s no way this arc is done in 12 episodes. The arc afterwards Dream Ranker is another 28 chapters too. The sublime pacing doesn’t give them enough episodes to fit two sizable arcs into this season.

        Lyfe
        1. Rather than thinking about it in chapters, it’s better to look at in in page count. The chapters in the manga got shorter later on after all. Daihaseisai ran for like 880 pages compared to Dream Ranker’s 708 or so. So they aren’t actually the same length at all. We already know they left out the Mitsuko chapters due to the anime changing her introduction (shame I really liked them) and they didn’t adapt Rainbow’s End. The railgun manga editor has also said that Awaki’s bonus chapter during Dream Ranker won’t be adapted.
          For Pancakes, the editor already confirmed that they are covering both daihaseisai and dream ranker this season, no anime original arc this time.

          orange
          1. Fair point, I didn’t consider that. It has been quite a few years since I’ve read these arcs(Yay for monthly manga chapters, sigh). So in terms of episode counts how do you think they’ll handle these two arcs? They can’t keep the 1.5 chapters per episode pace forever.

            So something like

            Daihaseisai – 15-16 episodes
            Dream Ranker – 9-10 episodes?

            Lyfe
    2. IIRC this season was confirmed to have two arcs so it’s anyone’s guess whether the latter half will be like last season—i.e. amine original—or if this arc will rush in its second half to make space for Dream Ranker. I wouldn’t bet on too much rushing though, Railgun’s writing has always erred on the side of faithfulness over speed.

  3. Always thought Misaki’s power was scary. Just as scary seeing it in action since it looks like she’s putting it to efficient use. Looks like she covered her bases.

    Can’t tell how much she’s targeting Misaka, but I suspect her mind wiping Misaka’s friends was caused by Uiharu’s hacking attempt. Sure looked like there was a lot of preplaning involved in a short period of time.

    theirs
  4. Favorite episode so far as the show is starting to get serious. And apart from the very first shot, animation was mostly on point as well.
    The pacing feels so nice after last year’s Index desaster.
    Glad that you’re covering it.

    boingman
    1. The daihaseisai is a seven day long festival. Touma’s game of “tag” with Oriana took place entirely on the first day. The fireworks during this episode are the same ones that happen when Touma wins at the end of that arc in Index. Then we move on to day 2 during this episode.

      orange
  5. In all honesty, I still don’t get what makes Misaki such a popular character. Is it her character design? Something in her story arc or her implied backstory with Touma? (Which is still LN-only and yet to be portrayed in animated form.) Or perhaps even the amount of “off-brand” doujins/fanart she’s in?

    All I know is to be leery of those with mind-control powers. Something about losing your own will and being bent to another–while doing something you normally (or subconsciously) would never do–qualifies as a primal fear. And if it’s Misaki really doing all this*, she’s dangerously close to going full-on Kilgrave/Purple Man (from the Marvel-Netflix Jessica Jones TV series)…

    (* – To say nothing of Misaki’s possible links with the “Dark Side” of Academy City. Though I won’t discount the possibility that it might be “something else.”)

    But yeah, can’t wait to get to the bottom of who kidnapped Misaka Imouto 10032. (Perhaps they’re also linked with the Disciplinary Action group from Accelerator?)

    Incognito
    1. This is her introductory arc, (yes she appeared in railgun before index), so you aren’t really supposed to know anything about her or trust her. I’m of the opinion that it’s also her best arc, unlike those people who like the other backstory arc in the novels. That fell pretty flat for me, unlike the backstory here. And yes, her powers are always worrisome. That never goes away.

      orange
    2. I think for Misaka it’s a combination of design and personality. She’s a tomboy through and through with strong writing/development and a tsundere personality for spice—not that common a combination for tomboys in anime. This makes for more playfulness, spontaneity, understanding and than your usual female lead as cute becomes an extra rather than the main selling point. Add on the popularity of tomboy characters in general and it’s not hard seeing why she acquired such a following IMO.

    3. You do realize this is Misaki’s introductory arc in the anime right? You barely know anything about her at the time being as an anime-only viewer, so why bother asking what makes her popular? It will just be spoilers.

      She’s popular because of her eventual backstory from the novels which explains her behavior and why she shows animosity towards Misaka, which I doubt the anime this seaso will cover. You can easily look it up and spoil yourself if you really wanted to know.

      YanDaMan263

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