It’s here, it’s here, it’s here! Fresh from the oven (if fresh constitutes of a 10-day delay), we have the third season starring our beloved third-ranked Level 5 esper!

After the failure that is “A Certain Magical Index III”, many fans were disappointed by the incomprehensible finale due to it’s intense pacing and bad story-telling. Luckily for the anime, the saving grace that is “A Certain Scientific Accelerator” aired shortly after, making up for the bad taste left by “A Certain Magical Index III”.

When I first saw “A Certain Scientific Railgun T”’s PV video, I basically leaped out of my seat in excitement.

PV2 | Source: YouTube

Railgun

Let me introduce you to everyone’s favourite tsundere biri-biri girl, Misaka Mikoto:

Shoooting beams with a coin | Source: Tenor

In the “A Certain Magical Index” series, she’s seen as comedic relief, and sometimes supports the main character, although she usually fails to address the main problem because it’s magic on one end, and “science” on the other. Unlike Kamijou Touma, and alike Accelerator, Misaka Mikoto lives on the side of science as one of the city’s top espers (yeah, “science”).

Her affection for the city, her friends and some side effects causes her to blip in and out of the “dark side of the city”, which we see in greater detail in the anime.

vs Accelerator

Both “A Certain Scientific Accelerator” and “A Certain Scientific Railgun” have overlapping settings, but as you can tell from both of my reviews (and the community’s rating on MyAnimeList), the clear favourite is “A Certain Scientific Railgun”. Why?

To me, the main reason is the shown psychological level of conflict faced by both characters. On one hand, Accelerator is the top esper in the entire city, having enough power to absolutely crush the second-ranked esper while being physically crippled. Even though he is no longer the able-bodied Accelerator, he still discovers a way to increase his powers, destroy his opponents and live happily ever after.

Accelerator, being on top of law enforcement itself due to his sheer ability, faces no psychological conflicts after a certain series of events involving a side effect of Misaka Mikoto, no social backlash, no troubles of common man, and no obligations to fulfill; other than to protect a certain someone.

A Certain Someone | Source: Tumblr

On the other hand, Railgun is considered “balanced” by being third-ranked. Being sandwhiched between Level 5 espers causes her to be closer to common man compared to Accelerator, which we do see reminders of in the anime: (i) just like the other students, she’s gravely afraid of the dorm fellow, (ii) she has an interest in Gekota, a mascot character of some sort, commonly seen as childish and (iii) she mostly follows the rules, even though she could probably be above them like the other Level 5s if she wanted to.

These limiters, combined with her simple philosophy of “if you hurt my friends or my city, I’ll make you pay”, makes her story intriguing; in one of the episodes, she is limited by sticking to the rules, which resulted in her friends getting hurt one way or another. As a viewer, you’ll feel frustrated as you watch the anime, and think something along the lines of: “If Misaka was there, this incident would be over in a heartbeat, and no one would have been hurt”.

Other reasons why A Certain Scientific Railgun T is good

I’ve got to say, “A Certain Scientific Railgun”’s supporting cast is top-tier. There are two reasons why I think so: (i) Railgun has a top-tier clique and (ii) the rare interaction between individuals from the dark side and the light side.

Imagine a team comprising of a teleporter, a railgun, a hacker and a 6th sensor, all trained to trust and support each other. It’s quite unimaginable, innit? The teleporter-railgun duo has gotten so popular that it became a saying within the “A Certain Magical Index” series:

Misaka railguns a car | Source: YouTube

And if you think a teleporting railgun is nothing impressive, or you can’t imagine why it’d be impressive, here’s a clip for you:

Teleporting railgun | Source: YouTube

Railgun T also shows the rare interaction between two characters from different sides of the city - one from the light side, and the other from the dark side. This is interesting because if you have watched the other anime within the main series, these characters appear outright villainous with sadistic personalities and seem to hate life itself. It’s quite refreshing knowing that these villains are still human at heart.

One more thing other than the top-tier supporting cast is the interesting and creative story-telling devices. I won’t go too much into it because of the spoilers, but whenever I see these devices, I think: “Is this another episode of Doraemon?”

Conclusion

“A Certain Scientific Railgun T” is a wonderful anime. It has good visuals, sound, an epic opening (the first one’s from fripSide, it literally cannot be bad), and an engaging story.

If you’ve already watched the other Toaru-series anime, watch this one too. You definitely don’t want to miss it, and it doesn’t even cost you a lot of time (25 episodes * 20 minutes per episode == 8 hours 20 minutes, just sacrifice your sleeping schedule and breakfast and you’re good).

If you’ve never watched the Toaru anime, I recommend you to start from “A Certain Magical Index” (I to III), and then “A Certain Scientific Accelerator”, then all three “A Certain Scientific Railgun” anime. It’ll only take you about a week, just ignore your responsibilities!

Note: Some remarks are satire. Satirical identification is left for the reader as an exercise.

Happy Coding

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