「拡散」 (Kakusan)
“Diffusion”

Know what’s better than successfully installing a new motherboard and CPU after a day of hair-pulling labour and troubleshooting? A computer that actually works the way it’s supposed to? Well, you’re not wrong, but I’m hard-pressed denying Railgun’s latest first place. After all the previous buildup it was nothing but action this time around, and if earlier finales are anything to go by, next week’s will easily match its pace.

Given Railgun is science-side Indexverse, I should probably be unsurprised a reasonable (somewhat) answer existed for Doppelganger’s abilities, but colour me intrigued we received some sort of explanation. While rapidly growing microscale muscle fibre is a little farfetched even for future science (oh how many a biologist wished slime mold could be made to function like that), it certainly led to a lot of fun and games as we got the Railgun fight I know many were looking forward to. And hey, it’s hard getting better than blown budget concrete Godzilla going up against its electromagnetically coalesced iron version. And with spacecraft-sized railguns (heh) to boot. Also cannot fault Leader finding time to join in on the festivities, because if there’s one thing this show keeps on doing well, it’s giving everyone a moment to shine.

Going forward, however, it’s a little more straightforward seeing how this arc is going to end. Ryouko for example pulled the expected sacrifice line, deigning to off herself in order to satiate Doppelganger, although as anyone can tell you, such things never work in practice—and not just because waiting is annoying and no one has time for that. Given the nature of the Indexverse in general the more likely options are either a soul fusion (because the fusion dance is always entertaining as DBZ has shown time and again) or the elimination of Doppelganger via surprise mechanics. Whichever one transpires is anyone’s guess, but at least we can happy knowing the rest will morph into the happy go lucky denouement stuff that gives Kuroko her time to shine and Saten one final moment to reveal the daily Uiharu fashion choice.

It’s going to be a sad moment seeing Railgun end next week, but without a doubt I’m still looking forward to seeing what this finale has in store.

 

Preview

15 Comments

  1. “You fight mass with mass.”
    This part has a number of misdirections, the doppelganger’s abilities first and foremost, but there’s one more to be revealed and it’s a bit of a doozy.

    oranges
  2. I liked the first two seasons of Railgun immensely but hate Index. I don’t like the magical girl or the no magic boy. They both are deus ex machina BS to me and I just can’t stand the plotline or anything about it.

    Unfortunately the first half of this season felt and was very “Index” so I’ve basically dropped it at this point. Is it worth going back and watching the second half? Is it more Index or more Railgun? I just wish they would keep these shows separate, I can’t be the only one who feels they are totally different vibes of shows.

    Alice
    1. I’d say it’s worth giving the second half a shot. While there’s some focus on secondary characters not directly part of the Railgun cast, it’s definitely more Railgun-esque than before and you should easily find plenty to like about it. The screenshots these past few weeks for example should show that Misaka is no damsel in distress here 😉

    2. Seems like Railgun to me. Personally couldn’t stand Index and surprisingly liked Railgun. But I can count the number of Index episodes I’ve seen in one hand, so I can’t say I know what Indexy is.

      theirs
        1. I’d like a sizeable time jump for the Railgun material to bring it to the end of the Index New Testament material. By the time any such anime adaptations of said material occurs they’d at least wouldn’t be so far behind and constrained by existing events.

          Fans would find it jarring as heck but itd at least put Railgun on an equal footing with Index.

          Lyfe
          1. The Railgun Manga is ~2.5 months behind the current Index Arc and as Mikoto is involved to a degree in a lot of NT Arcs I think we could put bigger skips there. But I want an Arc at the beginning of November were Misaka thought Touma died in WWIII as the Star of Bethlehem crashed into the Arctic Ocean.and maybe even an Arc during the beginning of WWIII …

            1993espada
          2. Railgun establishing an own canon is very unlikely with the direction Index Genesis Testament is heading right now. At leas not with Mikoto or Misaki. You would need another cast or let Kuroko, Uiharu and Saten go their own way.
            And I don’t think a lot of Source-Fans would want a seperate Railgun Manga.

            1993espada
  3. Had to think long and hard on why Seike was on that plane. Then remembered his power. Zero friction ski jump with rocket assisted take off sounds fun. Probably gave a bit of help in the air and the final descent too.

    Really like the SCAVENGERS here. Showed a lot of good team work.

    ps. When the motherboard and CPU works, next is to hope that the graphics, storage devices and peripherals work properly too. 😛

    theirs
    1. At least I was only replacing the mobo (with ram) and CPU haha, things went swimmingly after realizing Windows 7 isn’t the best OS to try and get working on a gen 3 Ryzen board XD

      Graphics is next on my upgrade list, or at least will be whenever the RTX 3080 actually becomes available in-store 😛

  4. When I saw Mikoto create a giant iron sand golem, only one thought came to mind: How many tons of tamahagane (“Jeweled steel,” the raw steel needed for making katanas) can one get out of that?

    That being said, that scaled-up railgun was battleship-grade. (Noice.)

    Also loved Scavenger’s big damn hero moments this episode. But I wonder if Misaki (and by extension, Mitori Kouzaku) already knows that Scavenger is a Dark Side group, yet didn’t bother to tell Mikoto?

    Microscale muscle fiber tech… I’m assuming that’s a step below the nanosuit technology from the Crysis series (which was based on alien Ceph tech).

    On an off-topic note, congratulations on your PC upgrade, Pancakes. As much as I’d like to upgrade to a Ryzen rig, Windows 10 is still kinda sus–to borrow an Among Us meme. (Adware-like promotion toward Windows 7/8 users, issues with data privacy, ill-timed forced updates, and the like.)

    Incognito

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