Fall 2009 First Impressions: A Certain Scientific Railgun

Mikoto or Kuroko? Mikoto or Kuroko? Hmm, Mikoto was my favorite character from A Certain Magical Index, but I loved the few moments Kuroko got screentime. Now that she’s going to get more screentime… I’m going with Kuroko! She’s deliciously yuri and anti-Touma to boot! So I will not tread on Mikotoism’s territory.

Fansub group: Mazui

Things I liked:

• RAEGING YURI KUROKO!
• Love the voice work. It’s also interesting hearing Kanae Itou as Saten, because Mii-chan was the first role I heard her in, and Saten is a much different character.
• No Touma, no Index. More Mikoto, more Kuroko is a recipe for awesomeness.
• Character designs are great, animation is solid. It’s pretty much the same high quality that we saw from Magical Index.

Things I didn’t like:

• There really wasn’t much I disliked from this episode. Mazui unfortunately didn’t include the OP, so I didn’t get to see it, but the brief glimpse of Touma in the ED was more than enough. Ugh, the thought of him showing up to ruin this show really bums me out. Maybe they’ll give him some sort of magical condition that turns him into a mute.

Random other thoughts:

That shower scene was an awesome moment, and I was really tempted to put the screenshot up, but this is a family friendly blog. And uh, I don’t want to end up in jail like Zyl.

Welcome back Mikoto – by far the most interesting character from Magical Index. Even though this is Mikoto’s show, it seemed like there wasn’t that much focus on her. I imagine this show is eventually going to get an overarching plotline that carries it through the season, but I actually really liked the standalone style of the first episode. I think this would be a show where it could be just as interesting as a series of disconnected episodics.

I wonder if we’ll see MISAKA, Last Order and Accelerator at any point this season. That was the second most interesting arc of Magical Index, sans the stupid ending.

A Certain Scientific Railgun was one of the few series that I was actually anticipating this season, and the first episode delivered everything I wanted: RAEGING YURI from Kuroko (actually, I thought she was pretty restrained), a lot of lighthearted, funny moments, a little bit of action-flick bombast, and a good amount of fanservice. I’m definitely going to watch this one, and am considering writing about it. My hesitations are a.) whether or not this is a 24+ episode season, and b.) my previous experience writing about Magical Index. To be fair, it was when I was just getting started, and I didn’t exactly know what I was doing. And the show really sucked in the beginning. But that experience gave me bad memories. However, with a new director, maybe this spinoff won’t suffer from the same issues (bland storytelling and terrible pacing) like the original. We’ll see how it goes in the second ep. Maybe I’ll use Railgun as a testing ground for different posting styles.