Academy City… is a place to be yourself!
— Misaka

Toaru Kagaku no Railgun, also known as A Certain Scientific Railgun is a side-story of the previous series Toaru Majutsu no Index(a.k.a A Certain Magical Index), and focuses on Misaka and Shirai rather than Touma and Index. Anyone who has seen Index knows who these two are. Misaka, the Level 5 Esper with the ability to control electric and magnetic fields, and her roommate Shirai, who is the Lesbian Stalker character of the series. The initial idea is quite good: Take two of the best characters out of Toaru Majutsu no Index, and make a side-story revolving around them. Sadly, the execution isn’t nearly as good as the concept. The animation holds the same high standard as Index, so does the Voice Acting and the Sci-Fi theme. The Scenario doesn’t, however. A lot of the episodes are fillers, and the story progresses too slowly, taking a bit too many side-tracks. Like Ace Detective Conan(a.k.a Case Closed in some localities for seemingly no reason) most of these side-tracks are later reused, but the large amount of fillers makes the story a bit hard to follow. There are two new main characters, Uiharu and Saten, too. Uiharu works as Shirai’s backup/computer support at Judgement, and Saten is Uiharu’s friend who is also a fan of Misaka. While Uiharu is cute and has a lot of character, Saten only seems to cause trouble, get in trouble, stick someone else in trouble and flip Uiharu’s skirt to such an extent that Uiharu actually catches a cold because of it. I’m not sure why Uiharu still counts her as her friend, as Saten never seems to do anything back for Uiharu. The main characters of Toaru Majutsu no Index, Touma and Index, appears, but only briefly, though Touma appears briefly in the first OP theme. Touma saves Uiharu and Misaka from a Graviton explosion in one episode, is in a heavily altered version of the first scene of Index, tries to help Harumi find her car(which she forgot where she parked, and could only remember there was a traffic light nearby…) and almost gets beaten by Misaka with a chair in one scene. Index appears only once, when she almost breaks a cleaning robot that apparently stole her Donut, and appears along with Touma about one second in the final episode.

Oddly for a side-story centering about Misaka, the MISAKA clones and the Level 5 Esper Accelerator never appears. And that’s just one of the unexplained events here. Something that is good is that it gives several other characters(such as Konori in Judgement) gets more backstory, while some other characters gets more personality outside of the story(like Komoe and the Anti-Skill Duo). Misaka also has an obsession with Gekota, a Frog from a kids TV show, and has several keychains with it on, believes the Frogface Doctor is a real Gekota and wants to go to a Gekota festival in one episode. Her eyes also change to frog-eyes whenever she talks about Gekota, which looks really funny.

This could have been good, if it were better done. Sad that it isn’t.

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Then, would you accompany me to the depths of hell?
— Index

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Academy City is a city that is, according to a tourist guide in an episode, about 20-30 years ahead of the rest of the world. Also, the city is in itself an experiment. 80% of the inhabitants of Academy City are students(thus the name) and about 70-90% of the inhabitants has an Esper Ability – a sort of Superpower that has been scientifically awakened from within a person, such as Misaka being able to control electric and magnetic fields(including those within her own body), Shirai who can Teleport herself and things she touches, Accelerator who can change the nature of whatever object he comes in contact with and Konori who can see through anything. The remaining 10-30%(the exact number isn’t given) is called Level 0, and has powers which is still sleeping – or undocumented superpowers which wasn’t supposed to be awakened. Kamijou Touma is one of those who has an undocumented “power” – Imagine Breaker, which allows him to negate or block any other superpower hitting his right hand. The fact that he has that ability is good, since otherwise the series would have ended two minutes into the first episode – counting the opening theme which takes a half minute.

After a prologue where Touma is almost killed by Misaka Mitoko(a.k.a “Shocker”, or as Touma calls her, “The Biri-Biri middle schooler”, or just “Biribiri” for short), Touma finds an unconcious nun hanging over the ledge of his balcony(it’s just as weird as it sounds, see picture number 2 below), who doesn’t react at all to the fact that she is hanging from a balcony on the thenth floor of a student dormitory, but instead asks Touma for something to eat. It turns out Index is actually a nun from the English Purist Church, the Necessarius faction, and that she has all the knowledge of magic in the world, in the form of 103,000 Forbidden Grimoires stuffed into her head, making her a sort of living library. Index is chased by other magicians(the opposite of Espers, they use magic, as the name suggests. While Espers represents Science, Magicians represents the occult) – or so she thinks – who are after the endless knowledge inside her head. Despite that Index initially tries to keep Touma out of the entire Science-Magic thing, Touma manages to be pulled in anyways when he finds Index lying on the ground, stabbed in the back. Touma then gets involved in a series of (sometimes pretty nonsensical, but still great) events revolving around Esper Powers and Magic.

I can’t really write much about the story, as it would spoil the entire thing. While the story isn’t the greatest one ever, sometimes it gets a bit repetitive, the amazing way in which it is performed more than makes up for it. Toaru Majutsu no Index is a visual masterpiece from start to end, the visuals being in the same class as masterpieces such as Love Hina, and D.N.Angel. The sound isn’t far after either, and while it isn’t the best soundtrack ever(that’s Neon Genesis Evangelion, or possibly Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu), it certainly is good, and really fits into the general atmosphere of the series. Returning to the animation, everything holds high class with natural movements and really awesome special effects. The only real complain about the graphics is the way Accelerator’s Wind Plasma ball looks strange, people sometimes has their eyebrows on top of their hair(it’s only visible on some people though), Innocentius is hard to really differentiate from the surrounding fire sometimes – like in the OP. Speaking of the OP, the first one, PSI-Missing, is one of the best openings I’ve ever seen(although it is still beaten by Neon Genesis Evangelion‘s “Zankoku na Tenshi no Thesis“). The second OP, Masterpiece, is about as far from a masterpiece as you could possibly get, being just a big disappointment all the way through.

This anime is pretty violent, but not particularily bloody(the sequel/side-story Toaru Kagaku no Railgun is however, even if it’s not much blood, you have been warned…), but the violence still isn’t near the class of Soul Eater or Angel Beats!. The story also seems unfinished, seemingly ending in the middle, even providing the start of a Season Two if there ever is one. Since Toaru Majutsu no Index leaves a mess of loose ends, you shouldn’t watch it if you’re expecting something that answers all the questions it raises. If that’s not a requirement, you should watch this no matter what. Touma has an annoying tendency of holding long monologues, but it’s not that annoying. Something that is more annoying is that Index’ personality changes drastically after the first episodes. At first she acts(relatively) mature and has a large impact on the plot, and her knowledge of every magic force in existence is cool, but then she becomes just an annoying nuisance who spends most of the time either whining, causing trouble, scheming something with Misaka or biting Touma. She seems forgotten until the last episode where she is the focus of one of the coolest scenes in the series where she holds her own against a 4 meters tall Clay Golem named Elliot by first using a needle from her coat to reverse engineer and sabotage it’s self-recovery ability and then reverse-engineering and jacking it’s control. That scene is also where the epic quote “I may not be able to use Magic myself, but I can create confusion in the magic!” comes from, right before she makes Elliot trip over it’s own feet.

The only plausible excuse I can come up with(except the mess of loose ends) not to watch this would be if the entire internet would die overnight. And since that’s not very likely to happen, go here and start watching on Anime Season.com!

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