[Keroko]

50 meters, according to the Railgun manga.

Originally Posted by Ice Block

Please, don't present these as solid evidence:

Admit it, this is a mistake by the artist (Fuyukawa Motoi).

I fail to see the mistake. The novel had Touma say he could block a shot from Mikoto's railgun, Fuyukama and his team (you didn't think a manga was a one-man thing, did you?) applied what the novel told them. Considering Kamachi never corrected them on that, I'd actually say that this event making it into the manga proves that it's possible.

What you are doing is taking a theory and presenting it as a fact. There is zero proof that Touma can't block a shot from a Railgun aside from theories.

Originally Posted by Ice Block

And this is what you call Flavor Lore. Just because a character claims he can do _______ does not mean he can actually do it. Likewise, any explanations given by in-universe characters are not to be taken as fact unless proven otherwise by events in the said universe (like how Stiyl and Kaori claimed that Index couldn't hold more than a year's worth of memories).

On the contrary, it's the exact opposite. A characters words are to be taken as fact until the statement is proven false. Otherwise you'd be opening a pit hole that makes virtually any debate useless, as any explanation for events can be devaluated by saying 'the character is lying' or 'the character does not know what he/she is talking about'. It is undermining the number one source of information in any media product: The characters.

Originally Posted by Ice Block

And yes, my ESP not Magic argument holds because for all instances that he has used or tried to use his IB, the initial description holds and could be easily explained using the natural laws when used against ESP, while things get a little messy when dealing with Magic. Now, give me one excerpt from the novel which specifically depicts him blocking a physical ranged attack made possible with the use of ESP and I'll gladly step down.

Being that I neither own the novels not posses a shred of knowledge on the Japanese written language, I'm afraid that is going to be tough for me (the piece of the novel I quoted was translated by someone else).

However, simply claiming 'it was done by magic' does not change that the water spell by Misha was water drawn from the ocean and manipulated by her magic. Magic or ESP, the effect of these attacks are the same: A physical attack manipulated by supernatural force. Even if Touma were to cancel the magic, this should not magically -pardon the pun- reduce the force of the water by any means. It should still have the momentum to crash into Touma with the same force as when it was shot by him. It did not. The natural water manipulated by a supernatural force was reduced to non-lethal velocity merely by touching the imagine breaker.

And according to the laws of physics Mikoto's Railgun when properly analyzed should not even work. All she does is charge a coin and flick it. There are no rails to conduct the currents and accelerate the coin (by the way, those conductors would suffer major damage due to the heat released by the coin, thus even if she would be using her hands as a replacement, she would be frying them) and there is no recoil, despite a real railgun producing recoil equal to the force propelling the projectile (ergo, Mikoto should be flying backwards almost as fast as the coin she launched). Yet all of this doesn't seem to stop Mikoto from causally flicking coins without any side effect. Even ESP goes 'Lol! Physics!' pretty often, so using the "physics dictate that he can't!" argument is quite moot.

Originally Posted by Ice Block

Now, there is only one explanation on how he can block the rail gun projectile: it was a mistake, simple as that.

A mistake the original creator did not see fit to correct?

Originally Posted by Ice Block

There is zero evidence that he can't? Well now, all I see are claims that he can. Not much evidence there too. Hence we rely on logic.

Three sources that claim, one source that proves, and no claims nor proof that he can't. You're throwing away four sources of evidence for mere conjecture.