The most awkward moment of this episode was Mikoto's disdain for the blimp. She said: I can't stand it when humans are following the directions of a machine... This... was... different from the end of season 1... when her previous memories like in episode 1 of this season... when she met Kiyama's school kids... were about how they had the happy memory with the blimp... and them telling Kiyama that they love her... This just shows how much Mikoto has changed mentally because of the out-of-this-world events that are part of the experiment. She really is becoming neurotic!
In other news:
The opening and ending are really growing on me. I don't see why everyone wants to see them gone...
The pouty face was so cute!
That house didn't look like it belonged to an uber rich family... hmm... That's strange...
The background tiles were also off for the wall. I'm not sure if that was just a weird brick design though...
Once again: cute little Mikoto was adorable. I lolled when she said: there aren't any
heros around who would save me
Mikoto shows how she is different from when she was younger when she was helpless and only relied on her mother. That she acted like that back then is actually hard for me to imagine considering what her personality is like as a level 5
I like how Mikoto is expressing how she wishes the current situation was a bad dream. She's regretting what happened: denying the clones their initial existence I'm guessing, not just their deaths. Is that not tense enough for anyone?
The fact that she finally accepted reality here was nice to see. But she still hasn't seemed to accept the clones as thinking individuals instead of just soulless scientific replications of her... or at least she would deny that.... Mikoto will take responsibility though for this. That's good at least. It's better than helplessness...
Then Mikoto says she hopes everyone else doesn't get in trouble because they were friends and wipes her watering eyes... how is this not a somber mood? I'm confused...
I find the mention of remedials from Touma funny. It goes to show how little he knows about Mikoto. I guess that's expected... He already seems really chummy with her... It kind of feel weird here seeing it... I guess this will make future stuff all the better... (especially now that we have Mikoto's perspective of Touma...) and because we know/see that she is being self-centered right now (understandably so).
@MISAKA10032 saying Biribiri is the cat's name lol.
I appreciate how she didn't want to give an explanation. It shows it's hurtful. I appreciate that.
The word defect is also painful. That definitely sounds off.
She takes offense to the fact that Touma says the cat doesn't like her. That seems like a human emotion if you ask me.
Caring about an animal's well-being is also a human-like emotion that seems somewhat strange for a clone. It's nice to see. We're seeing the clones learning and the radio noise network making the changes so that the clones slowly start to become more emotional like human beings. It was nice seeing this happen with MISAKA 10032 and Touma.
The scene with 10031 hurting because of what Mikoto said was also well done. It was painful... I don't understand the earlier complaints. The fact that the researchers even pointed out that it's weird seeing someone who looks exactly like you and speaks like you makes me point out what I said before again...
Also, the scientists were worried about MISAKA 10031. That was surprising. They seemed genuinely concerned. It might have been brief/subtle, but I think it's kind of nice. It shows them as not complete monsters
Here we see that Mikoto is fully responsible for MISAKA 10031 to be okay with dying because Mikoto would deny her existence.......... (that one time)..........
The janitor said it's getting dark out. Since today is supposed to be the last day, according to Mikoto when she told Kuroko... what's she going to say to her when she goes back?....
Spider-Mikoto was nice. It actually looks pretty cool. I find it funny that she got this much stronger in like a few days from season 1. I mean season 1 ended like 1 day before this season... right?
I like the explanation for Mikoto's way of making the scientists credibly stop the experiment. It makes more sense than in the manga.
Her evil smile seems weird. Anti-hero Mikoto
The whole scene with MISAKA 10032 and Touma and Dog
shows how Touma brings out the best of the clones. He treats them like people and they start to develop emotions. Since he's not commenting about how weird she's acting (not knowing emotions), I'm guessing he's used to people who are bad emotionally
... It's easier for Touma to do this because the clones don't look and speak like him... and he doesn't know they are clones. That's interesting to see.
Also, the fact she named it Dog shows that she already is capable of understanding irony. (She even smiled when she thought about it lol) I think Shinobu's goal with the clones is happening naturally anyway... just slowly. There needs to be outside intervention from people like Touma who are just nice for it to happen though.
He mentioned Index and Himegami. Yay.
We saw MISAKA 10032 getting mad.
He made fun of her personality... lol.
And she said he had a mental deficiency
x 2
She vaguely understands happiness by this point it seems.
The scene with Accelerator was badass. Nice contrast to the other scene. One is very human. The other scene is very unhuman with actions/emotions far removed from daily life.
Accelerator also mentions that the dolls execute their mission without even a sound. Was this him being impressed
Accelerator didn't look too happy about doing the experiment at first... he seemed kind of lethargic about it...
"I don't want to hear apologies from someone that is about to die." He says this after grunting...
Even Accel is showing a slight hint of humanity...
I like how Mikoto randomly carries a handkerchief with her
. A tokiwadai thing I presume...
We now have confirmation of seeing how exactly she uses her powers to hack objects. That's pretty cool I guess. That's like a quantum computer level of hacking! It makes sense I guess.
Since July 8th was originally only like 10 days after the original air-time of the episode. It feels kind of more real
The picture of its destruction looks cool.
Also, I just noticed. It was nice seeing here the difference from season 1. Season 1, the blimp represented the kids getting better again and saying Kiyama we love you. Here... the blimp was... people following the orders of a machine... This is an example of how this crazy situation is making Mikoto slightly neurotic in her thinking...
Seeing the cat by itself was painful.
The preview made me really excited for next episode.
Furthermore, the fact that the events with Touma and Accel were taking place so close to each other partly shows how messed up the situation is... people don't know about the horrible things that are happening so near by... Seeing all of the people walking and the realistic background images and music, this really felt like a "real life show" in some ways. The characters were more human.
For all of the people who either wanted despair this episode or who thought there wasn't enough action, IMO seeing human content in an anime is very welcome and impressive. It really made me enjoy this and made me appreciate the quality JC staff is putting into this. It's more realistic as a show, more like real life than a sort of Disney movie which has happy endings and evil characters who are defeated... I will note that even though I originally gave this a 10/10, the subtitles clearly made this episode much better... honestly on par with episode 8, 9, 10. I'm not rating this episode based on the action. I'm rating it on how we see the clones learning emotions and how MISAKA 10031 is depressed and how Touma's interaction with MISAKA 10032 is nice. Also, Mikoto's change in attitude from when she was little to how she is now, her disdain of the blimp that made the ending of season 1 super happy (this was the most emotionally awkward part of the entire episode)..., Accel's more human side(?), and Kuroko's awkward relationship with Mikoto because she didn't shock her. The most depressing part of the episode was Mikoto almost crying and her worrying about her friends getting in trouble. All of these things made this a great episode. You can just watch another anime or skim this anime if you didn't like after you watch it with the subtitles. You're obviously only a fan of 1/2 or a third of the different genres in this show if you didn't like this episode and liked episodes 8, 9, 10 instead... (not being offensive, just pointing out a fact...)
Yeah: that was my ridiculously long episode review. I feel like this was a very underrated episode when watched raw, which is why I made it this long. So if you complain about the length, watch it with subtitles before you criticize it. (Exceptions include those people who understand 100% of the raw and notice every aspect of what is going on with their first or second view
)... ( I had to see this 4 times to get this analysis...
)
P.S.
For viewers who already happened to know about the destruction of Tree Diagram. This is supposed to be exciting as well. It's a common theme in mystery novels that the reader knows something the main protagonist doesn't (like an important plot detail) and it adds to the suspense. This is especially true when we know that the main character is going to be very disappointed (like in this case). I feel like it worked well, at least for me. The episode should be fine for this reason for Index viewers, Railgun Manga readers, Index LN readers, and Railgun S only viewers...
Compared to the manga: this is overall better. I like the time they are taking to make the arc happen. I understand some people would prefer other content. But I personally was really excited about seeing this emotional arc handled properly, and it is being handled very well. The fight scenes are great and the painful emotions are portrayed well. They are now exceeding my expectations by developing all of the characters so far.
I don't know why: Can't people like mushy stuff as well? There was also good music, a good setting, and good content....
This episode is more realistic in terms of what would be happening and should be therefore more appreciated. I mean: it's fine if it's badass. But Railgun S is supposed to be more realistic as a show (this seems to be what J.C. staff is aiming for). Critics would probably rate this high, I'm guessing.
