First Impressions / To Aru Kagaku no Railgun

Summary:

With Kurozuma clearly alive, Konori questions why he didn’t get back in touch with her, but he notices her Judgment armband and tells her that he’ll disappear soon. Konori spends the next few days away from the Judgment office, and since Mikoto and the others are curious about her relationship with Kurozuma, they go to her apartment and meet her roommate. This roommate reveals that Konori used to be a member of Big Spider and had felt that she belonged with them. She was really attached to Kurozuma, and as Mikoto learns later when she finally tracks Konori down, he had disappeared one day long ago after walking into what he knew was a trap. This along with how Kurozuma had felt that Konori didn’t truly belong there had led her to where she is now. As Mikoto is confronting Konori, Kurozuma himself appears and explains that he had been hospitalized and then detained until recently.

Kurozuma now intends to shut down the group that he created, and since Konori can’t stop him, she decides to go after him. Mikoto and Kuroko stop her along the way and give her her Judgment armband, and they go with her to the Big Spider hideout. Kuroko disables the gang’s guns and Mikoto blows up the Capacity Down system, but Konori halts them from doing anything further, and she and Kurozuma take care of all the thugs. A desperate Hebitani then reveals that he’s wearing a dynamite belt and tries to justify what he did by saying that this was the only place they belonged and that he had to become Kurozuma to bring Big Spider together. The real Kurozuma, however, brings down Hebitani with two punches, and he notes that the place where you belong is where you can be yourself. In the aftermath which includes the arrival of the Anti-Skills, Kurozuma lets Konori arrest him, and she feels grateful towards him.

Preview

This turned out to be a decent episode, but I have a hard time calling it really good. I mean, I think the J.C.Staff crew did everything right here: I liked how they developed Konori’s past with those scenes that emphasized the color red – shades of Schindler’s List perhaps – and I can appreciate how they based the story around the theme of belonging. It was nice too to see Konori actually make good use of her power and get her own action sequence, brief though it may have been. The problem is that the episode left little impact on me, emotional or otherwise, and given the material and what they’ve been able to do in the past, this could have been more powerful. Of course, it probably doesn’t help that my frame of reference is a story arc much longer than this one, but regardless, this wasn’t as strong as I’d hoped. The one thing I did find interesting though that Hebitani was on the phone with someone about the Capacity Down system, and that person is likely related to the plot in the near future.

41 Comments

  4. Capacity Down intrigues me – it’s not mentioned in the manga (yet?) and I’m really curious about the person who provided Hebitani with it. So, we have a Level Upper and a Capacity Down; what will they think of next?
    Capacity Down is like Touma’s right hand…anyways, I think Touma would be useless against someone who’s also level 0. I don’t remember where I read this, but wasn’t level 0 also rare? I vaguely remember there were 5 or 6 level 0’s in Academy City…anyone wanna check it out?

    ciq666
    Reply

  5. I guess you are talking about Level 5’s. There are only 7 out there at the moment and Mikoto is one of them. So people might hear about them often but it should be very rare for them to actually see them. I LOLed hard when the thugs saw Mikoto totally blasted off the wall and the Capacity Down machine with her Railgun. They were like, Holy s–t, is this girl “the Railgun of Tokiwadai”? This is baaaad, Man.
    As for the Level 0’s, I think there are over 2 million students in the city and about 60% of them are Level 0’s.

    DC/AC
    Reply

  7. Why would Touma be useless against a level zero?! Heck, that would be much easier a fight for him!! He wouldn’t have to deal with powers and just need to punch his opponent out.

    SomeKindaNick
    Reply

  9. This arc ended much earlier than I expected, but I guess dragging it too long on these Skill Outs for too long wouldn’t be good, especially when I’m feeling rather indifferent to the characters involved, except our main girls plus Konori, who’s received quite a lot of development. It does seem that this short arc serves more as a red herring for the mysterious provider of Capacity Down.

    And please do pardon my ridiculous ignorance, but what do you guys mean when you say DFC? I’m having trouble googling for what DFC stands for, you see…

    Kinny Riddle
    Reply

  10. Nah, Touma is not that strong. He’s a decent street fighter, but remember how Tsuchimikado beat him without a sweat? Accelerator solely relied on his abilities, physically he is very weak, probably almost anyone could punch him out :]

    It was good to see Mii in action, but I’d actually prefer an arc concentrating on Kuroko and/or Uiharu. Especially Uiharu. I feel the creators put them in the background too much. Maybe four main characters were a bit much for a short series like this?

    Jurkasz
    Reply

  14. @Megaman0: It’s quite apparent that they aren’t doing Accelerator in this series (which is for the best in my opinion since we’ve seen it once before). He most certainly would have been in the new OP if they were doing that arc. I haven’t read all of the manga, but I’m 99% sure that these episodes and the rest of the series are anime original. Someone please correct me if I’m wrong.

    curious one
    Reply

  19. @ciq666 Level 0 isn’t rare. Komoe just said that since there are Level 0’s that there are scientific rules that haven’t been explained yet. There are plenty of Level 0’s in the city, including people who used the Level Upper and people in Skillout.

    akani
    Reply

  21. Schindler’s List?? hehehe cant believe u took it there! but true. so in the end it all came down to boob talk LOL. and what gives with konori”s power?? for a level three THAT WAS CRAP! it was the railgun fame that had those niggas Sh!tting bricks. ahh lets just give everybody their own spinoff ,how bout To Aru Kagaku no Sado-kun??

    BROOKLYN otaku
    Reply

  22. Err so Mii power is x-ray vision ? It was used so briefly can barely tell. She should have used the jacket without a shirt.
    Sister’s arc what’s left of it ? I mean create 10K of them have them killed and how many are left 20? It will be nice if they develop the story with the live dopplegangers left to see what happens to them.
    As for accelerator my bet is that he will go on in Index not here.

    Island Esper
    Reply

  23. Biribiri is getting awfully preachy, in this episode it was like the idea of someone having a different perspective than her was unfathomable. Needs more Touma as usual. Would love to see a Touma/Kurozuma episode where they are just going gangbusters on people.

    So Very Odd
    Reply

  24. So is Railgun going to be a show that focuses on the usage of devices that affect the power level of the characters? I mean Index was more focused on magic and its plots were definitely deeper that these ones. Plus having a gay protagonist that is arrogant of her powers is annoying.

    MisoSupi
    Reply

  26. >>All this filler is painful.

    You assume that this is filler. I’m willing to bet it’s not – that everything we’ve seen so far since the last story arc will tie in together eventually. Only time will tell.

    Well, at the very least there was no Touma. Any episode without Touma is a good episode.

    mlh
    Reply

  28. does anyone notice that kurozuma gets arrested for assault, but somehow misaka isn’t in trouble for massive collateral damage? (I am assuming, given the size of the hole in the wall, that her railgun probably destroyed the next two buildings or so)

    bob
    Reply

  30. I think Misaka can vary the power of her railgun shot, much like when she held back her electric attacks while fighting Kiyama, so she just used just enough power to destroy the “capacity down” van behind the wall, and maybe the wall of the next building.
    While not common knowledge among students and thugs that she is the “Railgun of Tokiwadai”, the Antiskills and Judgement know, but seem to have been instructed to leave her(and the other level 5’s, presumably) alone to lead a somewhat worry-free lifestyle. Boob jokes were for the fanservice–gotta drink that premium milk!
    Who’s the big bad wolf that Hebitani(snake) before he fought real Big Spider Kurozama?
    Mii ability may seem weak, but maybe at higher levels she can see through where ordinary x-ray cannot(see through lead; take that Superman!), and maybe she can use it to see at different layers. Maybe she can use it to see through illusions like the “dummy check” invisibility ability or the distortion ability that guy had who Kuroko (while using her ability to collapse a building)fought awhile back.

    samu
    Reply

  31. @mlh
    Only Level Upper and a few more episodes are in the manga. The second arc of the manga doesn’t seem will be animated, specially since it hasn’t ended in the manga. All this episodes are thus anime-only. Even if they tie them to the final arc, it doesn’t change the fact that they are anime-only, or as we call them, filler.

    RyougaZell
    Reply

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