天下制覇

Mechs inside mechs inside mechs!

Impressions:

Essentially everything I said about last week’s episode also applies here, along with a healthy dollop of complaints from the last arc conclusion episode. Approximately 8 minutes of this episode has the two OPs as insert songs playing in the background. Ugh. Although, I have to admit, the corniness of these last two episodes has definitely been the highlight of Railgun. There’s nothing like seeing a 120 pound girl be hit with a few tons of steel claw, then detonate it in front of her face and come out of it with a few scuff marks. The entire MAR team going rogue still makes no sense, the plot is being shoehorned in out of nowhere literally moments before the villain bites it, and Telestina riding around in a mech inside of a mech is pure hilarity. If she comes back, I hope she makes it four nesting mechs deep.

That said, at least the first half was really pretty good, if rather nonsensical. Kongo stole the show when she pitched a SWAT van through two helicopters though. After that, Misaka riding around on a car was just lame. I don’t even want to talk about the SUPER RAILGUN or the fact that after taking Telestina out, they just assumed she was done for. The second half was back to the usual Index/Railgun standards though. About five minutes of villain exposition followed by Saten putting her bat through a monitor (apparently Skill-Out’s control is tied into… a monitor… also, it hurts espers now too) and the corniest rail gun vs rail gun final shot with the original OP playing. Bullets are not beams, dammit. I don’t demand much scientific plausibility from this show, but come on here. Shouting does not make a bullet bigger.

Final thoughts at the bottom.

Final Thoughts:

Once I gave in to mocking Railgun relatively mercilessly, this became much more entertaining to cover, and I blame all of you for egging me on. Okay, perhaps I also blame the complete lack of weekend shows too.

Despite the last two entertaining episodes though (and not usually for the right reasons), this still really is barely maybe an average show and really has just made me appreciate Index all the more. Direct comparisons are unavoidable… so I won’t avoid them. This was plodding, needlessly melodramatic about the strangest things, and perhaps its greatest strength, corny through its big dramatic moments. Arc for arc, the two shows had about the same number of protagonist morality speeches and the same amount of exposition. One show just finished arcs in 3-4 episodes while the other took 12 and spaced them out side stories about throwaway characters that had barely three minutes of screen time before their dedicated episode and even less than that afterwards. If any of the character development had lead somewhere, it’d be a different story. When drugging up your friends, putting them and yourself in a coma, and almost getting yourself killed just leads to a "friends are important… yup!" speech… no. Just… no.

It could have been so much better… It really should have. Unfortunately, it wasn’t. The best episodes of this show were when they remembered that this series is about people with powers using them. Instead, the ostensibly main characters were typically shoved off into the corner and only brought out to wrap up arcs. It’s somewhat funny how the titular characters are very trivialized in both Index and Railgun. It worked in Index because there were so many more interesting characters to focus on. The same can’t be said for Railgun.

So… if you’re still on the fence about this, I would suggest drinking heavily before you try to watch it, and even then, there’s not too much worth watching outside of the last couple episodes to each arc…. which comes out to about four episodes. Basically, this was a show that had about 8 episodes worth of content stretched out to 24, and it shows… painfully. Here’s to hoping that Touma’s inevitible return will make it all better. I miss you, Touma. Come back to me.