[Marcus H.]

This episode was the kind of shallow pretentiousness which ensures that I will never pick up index...cheap emotional manipulation trying to justify itself through some "deep" or "significant" message. Don't fool yourself, guys: this shit is entertainment through and through.

Calling the transformation of 9982 from "newborn" to clueless girl to experimental subject as "cheap emotional manipulation" is a bit insulting, both to the production team, but also to those who were able to grasp what the production team, and Kamachi by extension, wants to portray. I also notice that in your elaborate speech, I assume that you are not interested in the franchise to begin with.

Countless works of "art" have managed to take me to the brink of tears, but this series will probably never manage it. Because in the end the singular thing which speaks to me in any work is the author's final, ultimate intention, and this series has never managed to show me anything which hinted that the story has something to say on that level.

Too subjective and a bit grandstanding. Railgun isn't trying to be a piece of art, for one.
Again, this is a sign that you're not really investing anything in the series.

I don't mind mindless entertainment, but I'll only take emotion which comes from the heart. Something manufactured will be unsatisfying, no matter the technical skill put into producing it.

This is not Hiyao Miyazaki. This is not 5cm per Second. This is not Ookami Kodomo Ame to Yuki.
Sorry to disappoint you.

Fiction, imagination, and authorship are strange things. Through the power of symbolically represented worlds, single, irrelevant humans are able to wield power over entire fictional realities. Naturally, these worlds create the path to fields of boundless freedom and temptation. In the end, I prefer to properly face reality. Though fiction can make people gods, the things I most want to hear are the simple/important things, which can only be passed from a human to another human.

And immersion in a fictional world is a sin? I disagree. A person can still be capable of absorbing and being absorbed into a fictional world whilst keeping oneself planted firmly on the ground that is reality.