Toaru Kagaku no Railgun S  (J.C. Staff) – Genre: Action, Comedy, School, Sci-fi

Episode 01 – “Railgun”

Man, I totally forgot how awesome this series is. From the huge modern city atmosphere to the great characters, Railgun offers up a lot to like and is back and better than ever. This particular season focuses on one of the arcs from the main Index light novels, so going into this without having watched any of the previous seasons may not be a good idea. For me, I’ve only seen the first Railgun seasons, which I enjoyed. This time around it seems that the plot will connect more with the main series, as we can expect to see more of the Level 5’s in action.

In this first episode, we’re reunited with the fearless foursome as they work together to take down a gang of thugs. Well, this mostly involves watching Mikoto annihilate them with electricity. At the school library, Mikoto has a rather unfriendly encounter with the beautiful “Queen” Misaki Shoukuhou, the strongest Level 5 at Tokiwadai Academy. Nicknamed “Mental Out,” she possesses the ability to control people without them even knowing. She has a personal dislike for Mikoto because her electric field actually blocks this ability of hers. Misaki also has some strange but very pretty eyes.

The rest of the episode involves the girls going with one of their friends to the hospital to visit a bedridden friend of hers. Unfortunately, one of them gets taken hostage forcing the girls to take action. Despite Kuroko ordering Mikoto to not do anything hasty again, Mikoto finds herself rushing in to save her friend before she’s taken off in a helicopter. The bad guys would have probably gotten away, but they accidentally took Mikoto’s bag which contained a present. Naturally, she and Kuroko teleport to catch up to the helicopter and blow it up with Mikoto’s trademark “Railgun.”

What I really like about the series is how likable every single character is. We have Kazari Uiharu’s simple innocence, Ruiko Saten’s mischievous playfulness, and Kuroko Shirai’s undying loyalty for Mikoto. Still, I would have to say that my favorite character has to be Mikoto. In this episode especially, we get to see the different sides to her personality. Well, she’s mostly hot-headed but I guess it comes out in different ways like when she confronts Misaki or when she tries to pick out a get well present for her friend. Gotta love Biri-biri.

While nothing much happened this episode, it was a nice reintroduction to the world of Academy City. The animation looks fantastic so I have to give J.C. Staff major props for that. The OP (“sister’s noise” by fripSide) shows off a lot of new characters, many of which appeared in Index series. It’ll be exciting to see how all of these characters converge, though I’m a bit worried that I’ll be missing out on some stuff since I never watched the Index series. Maybe I should get on that…

B.W.