To Aru Kagaku no Railgun S - Episode 18 Discussion / Poll

[Bakaizer]

Originally Posted by Chaos2Frozen

Personally I see this as the team's attempt to bring this ship back to calmer waters to appease the other half of the fanbase. Rather than any plot/character based reason.

Most people probably aren't that interested in the talks of darker doings, thats not what they watch Railgun for. I myself wasn't really expecting them to do so either.

what were you expecting, some slice of life anime? apparently toaru verse is always filled with dark entities, and its ones of those things that makes it interesting. mikoto wouldn't be badass if there is no strong enemy to deal with.

[Chaos2Frozen]

Originally Posted by nikohowell

what were you expecting, some slice of life anime? apparently toaru verse is always filled with dark entities, and its ones of those things that makes it interesting. mikoto wouldn't be badass if there is no strong enemy to deal with.

Allow me to clarify my statement-

I myself had zero expectations of them diving deeper into the details of the dark side more than they have to already as they would very much prefer to get back to appeasing the other half of the fanbase as soon as possible.

[Qilin]

Originally Posted by Chaos2Frozen

Personally I see this as the team's attempt to bring this ship back to calmer waters to appease the other half of the fanbase. Rather than any plot/character based reason.

Most people probably aren't that interested in the talks of darker doings, thats not what they watch Railgun for. I myself wasn't really expecting them to do so either.

Well, that's the meta reason, I suppose. However, it still needs a reason that holds up against the story's internally logic if the inconsistency is to be addressed properly.

[Marcus H.]

Oh, it's August 22. The Sisters Arc ends today.

[KholdStare]

Originally Posted by dniv

2. Side characters are not ignored... like at all... though if you only watch the anime... you might believe that...

Yeah, I only watch the anime. Even if I read the manga, this is a thread for rating what's presented in the anime, not what I should have gotten in the manga.

Originally Posted by Triple_R

By the end of the Sisters Arc, I had honestly started to miss Saten and Uiharu a bit. I had started to miss seeing Mikoto interact with the other people in her close circle of friends.

And, honestly, I had pretty much entirely forgotten about Uiharu's roommate, and their mutual friend that was hospitalized. It had been that long since either had significant screen-time.

This isn't a big deal to me personally, and I think the Sisters Arc is Railgun at its best, but I can kind of see where Kholdstare is coming from on that particular point.

Yes, I agree that the Sisters Arc (anime) is so far the best one presented.

[Yingo sensei]

I was hoping for Liberal Arts City Wanted to see the magic and science side interaction/crossover there even if it is only a little bit.

[Haak]

Originally Posted by Qilin

It's related perhaps, didn't she already try doing something like that? Remember earlier in the arc where she tried taking down every facility connected to the experiment, only to realize that it was for nothing?

That was where she realized the futility of trying to take down the system. For every, institution or potential researcher she gets to, even more show up to take their place, especially if we consider knowledge to be shared within Academy City's academe. That was when she switched tactics to ones that work around the system instead of ones that go against it directly. There goes her plans of forging Tree Diagram's predictions and sacrificing herself to mess us the experiment's assumptions. That's where Touma comes in.

Once again, I should say that I think it would be difficult and impractical to find those responsible when you have the entire scientific community of Academy City as the enemy.

And yet at the end of the day, the Sisters were saved from a supposedly impossible situation. The situation has drastically changed and you'd normally expect her to reassess the situation and examine whether it's actually still possible.

I don't think it's so much an absence of faith in Anti-Skill than it is being aware of its limitations. Throughout the arc, there is no sign of Mikoto even considering approaching Anti-Skill to deal with the problem. I mean, she has all the evidence she could even need, particularly all the classified research documents she had to obtain to learn about the project. Even so, she spend her efforts with the goal of stopping the experiments rather than incriminating the responsible parties. From this, it can be guessed that while she trusts Judgment and Anti-Skill for mundane peacekeeping matters, she knows that they are powerless when it comes to the territory of city's dark side.

It can be guessed or it could just be a plot hole, which is what I'm saying.

One of her exchanges with Kuroko is telling in this regard. In the exchange, she makes it clear that becoming an enemy of Academy City, as she resolved to do while heading out to tamper with Tree Diagram, entails becoming an enemy of Judgment as well, which would apply for Anti-Skill as well by extension. As Kuroko puts it, she would protect the peace and order of the city even if it meant going against Mikoto. At this point, it's clear that she views them to be on opposite sides of the fence.

At that point yes, but there's no reason to suggest that's set in stone. Only that, at that particular point in time, Mikoto was fine for it to be like that.

Originally Posted by SilverTalon

Their own health is the only threat they currently face. The only other thing ever threatening their health was the level 6 shift which she knows to be stopped.

Until the the people who started it are finally dealt with, they will continue to be under constant threat.

Um, why do you think she has faith in authority? That was my point... abolutely nothing has happened to give her faith in authority and multiple things which should cause some one to question the ability of those with authority to enforce it did happen. She doesn't trust judgement to protect people or she wouldn't be interfering all the time despite Kuroko telling her not to. She witnessed AS being completely powerless against Kiyama, ordered to drop the Poltergeist investigation against Thelestina, completely ignore the rather numerous facilities she destroyed. She may not distrust individual people, but that doesn't mean she has faith that the institution of Anti Skill can do its job outside of minor day to day matters. She has never really seen AS do anything to stop any of the problems in the anime... AS was useless and those got solved because she did it on her own (with her friends for one of them i guess).

Sure but is there actually any evidence to suggest it has? She interferes with Judgement all the time because she's reckless, emotional and headstrong, but when Kuroko chides her for it she always looks nervous and sorry for it. There is so far nothing that suggests Mikoto has any opinion, positive or negative, on the Anti-Skill, which is just another part of the plot hole.

Thats your opinion which is fine, but I disagree. Railgun is a spinoff. I do not think a spinoff needs to have an incredibly large info dump to explain what is overall something with an extremely minor detail. If you don't want to include the novels, how the city works is fairly well implied in Index II.

That's irrelevant unless it's clear that Mikoto knows about it.

Spoiler for Relating to what he just said from Index II:

Going to be intentionally vague, but no, thats incorrect. I'm pretty sure I know what you are talking about, and that is actually just unfounded fear (because they don't understand the true purpose of the sisters) in some of the characters and there is absolutely no way that event would have endangered them.

Actually, it looks like you're thinking of something else, because what I'm talking about happened in the first season of Index, not the second.

But the sisters are currently safe. They would be in far more danger if Mikoto actually did get all of the AC higher ups held accountable. AC is watching after them now. You remove all those people running it and get rid of AC and who else is going to protect 10,000 illegal clones?

Who else is going to endanger them?

[Sackett]

I would point out that Mikoto has repeatedly show that she does not trust authority. Instead she prefers to take care of things by herself. Hence her hobby of trolling for punks to punish. That's been a consistent part of her character from her first introduction in both Railgun and Index.

On the other hand, Mikoto has consistently show herself able to ignore unpleasant realities that don't currently intrude on her life. She's a good tactician, but she's not a strategist by any means. She lives in the now, and though she is intelligent enough to recognize that something isn't right in Academy City, (her musing on why there are so many thugs in the City despite it's superior technology), as long as it's not right in front of her she can satisfy herself with protecting the interests of herself and her circle of friends.

It's one of the reasons the Sisters and the Level Shift experiment hit her so hard. It's completely the type of unpleasant thing that Mikoto wants to ignore and pretend isn't going on, and yet she couldn't. The Sisters had her face, and her DNA, and they called her sister, and they were being killed. It was just too much for Mikoto's usual cognitive dissonance to handle.

[Qilin]

Originally Posted by Haak

And yet at the end of the day, the Sisters were saved from a supposedly impossible situation. The situation has drastically changed and you'd normally expect her to reassess the situation and examine whether it's actually still possible.

In the first place, defeating Accelerator was a back-up plan that was put into motion precisely because she couldn't stop the all the institutions responsible for the experiments. Messing up the premises of the experiment was the best she could do with what she had. Also, I don't think the addition of Touma would make much difference when it come to matters of bureaucracy.

It can be guessed or it could just be a plot hole, which is what I'm saying.

Well, it isn't stated explicitly, but I don't think that's enough to justify calling it a plot hole, especially when there are signs that suggest otherwise.

[s07195]

Anyways, I finally picked up the series after episode 17 again, and so here I am. :/
Quite a good episode, though if it stays like this I might just drop it again like season 1. It must be hard for them to create the plot though, considering Index's tight timeline. I noticed they stopped date-numbering chapters for Railgun after the Sister's arc, so maybe they realized the mistake from the Poltergeist arc? (Which admittedly, I haven't watched. :P)