Railgun Manga - Jailbreaker Arc Discussion / Poll

[Kuroageha]

So the new chapter just sweeps this huge plot hole regarding hacker Uiharu under the rug with "once a lifetime happening xDDDD", really?

[salamander750]

Ok, who the hell is responsible for that massive plot hole???

What the hell, Kamachi, what about the fucking angel dragon??/

[dniv]

Originally Posted by Kuroageha

So the new chapter just sweeps this huge plot hole regarding hacker Uiharu under the rug with "once a lifetime happening xDDDD", really?

No. I'm pretty sure that for one it was lampshaded for later and she lied through her teeth. I have my suspicions. Who were those two girls in the flashback with Mikoto? I got some really weird vibes considering that Kuroko was going to comment about the expression on her face but lost the chance to do so. Am I missing something/are they from one of the few remaining side-story novel volumes I didn't read? Anyone?

I really liked some of the character development in this chapter. I have a few very big questions that I'm very curious about. I'm excited for a new arc.

I especially liked the tie in from GT3. Of course Kamachi would use this to setup that arc and vice-versa. Flowed really well thematically. Made this arc a lot darker in hindsight. And considering what happened last volume, I'm kind of curious to see if this will come up again soon in the main series. Would be very interesting.

[tsunade666]

Disaster. That's what I would call this.

[entei08]

Not sure if anyone brought this up yet. But if Kimi is seriously an AC esper, there should be no way for her to turn out to be a Holism esper right? The whole premise of AC esper development is Personal Reality, the theory they operate on is completely different to, if not in total contradiction to a holistic esper. It's the whole reason why Othinus went outside of AC to look for a sample in the first place. When the idea was first brought up, they thought Kimi might be a theoretical holistic esper, which didn't set it in stone so it's still good, but it still felt like they entertained the possibility of seeing an orange sprouting from an apple tree which was very strange to me.

[Sixth]

The jailbreaker arc is promising at the beginning and ended up with mediocrity. This is what happened when you introduce an enemy that too strong for MC to defeat and have to relying on BS to end it. But on a positive note, no Touma saving the day in this arc but at the same time, maybe it is good to have Touma to save the day instead of what they did on Uiharu in this arc.

[tsunade666]

If Touma shows up, that would saved the arc for me. Let him deal with the dragon problem.

[entei08]

You don't even need Touma. Noukan appeared early on and would have been the perfect candidate to deal with this.

[Sixth]

Or even better, don't introduce "dragon" into Railgun.

Let's Misaka fight against someone that she can handle with her power level.

The reason why I think the final fight in this arc is boring because there is nothing Misaka can do against "Dragon" until Uiharu's BS kicked in. Heck, even the fight between Misaka and Raifu is more engaging and fun to read.

[dniv]

I don't understand all of you, but I'm absolutely convinced the thing with Uiharu will come back up later. It's not Kamachi style to make something happen only one by now. Have you all literally learned nothing after reading his whole series? I have no words. It's super obvious this is a parallel to the latest arc in GT and y'all are blind.

[OH&S]

Uiharu's asspull was essentially the final nail in the coffin for this arc. I thought Misaka was holding her own as well as she could. It was only the final problem of the arc (separating Kimi from the dragon) that needed an acceptable resolution to have me be more positive towards the arc. What we got instead was unacceptable.

I've collected my thoughts here:

Fast facts before the main argument:

• The fundamental source of power for an esper is their Personal Reality.
• The AIM diffusion field (hence referred to as AIMDF) is the weak energy field that is unconsciously emitted by an esper. The type of energy emitted is directly related to the Personal Reality of the esper (mainly what ability they have). The AIMDF itself is NOT the esper ability; it’s an unconscious output rather than an input.
• An ability can be affected through the AIMDF by very specific AIM-manipulation espers (like Takitsubou Rikou and Kihara Nayuta) who do so by interfering with the flow of the AIM in order to directly affect the esper's Personal Reality.
• AIM Jammers do the following:
  1. Emits a special e/M wave to diffusely reflect an esper’s AIMDF causing the esper to interfere with their own power
  2. Dissolves your concentration and intentionally leaves you with thoughts that make you more easily tracked by a Psychometrer.
  3. It’ll weaken, but not eliminate an esper power altogether.
  4. possibility to have your powers go out of control; powers that use complex calculations are especially prone to this.
• Uiharu Kazari has the following traits:
  • Level 1 Thermal Hand
  • master hacker who could potentially construct a strong Personal Reality considering the complex calculations she makes; but alas, she is a Level 1.

Problem to solve:

• Need to figure out how to separate Angel Dragon from Kimi who is acting as a power source due to her being a holistic esper (which by itself is BS but entei08's got that covered).
• There is no ability on hand that could do it.

Uiharu's proposed solution from end of Ch. 126:

• "If it doesn't exist... we just have to create it."
• i.e. Create a new ability from scratch that can separate the angel dragon from Kimi.

How the manga says Uiharu achieves this:

1. Directs all the long range AIM Jammers to herself.
2. Materializes her own AIMDF.
3. Uses the AIM Jammers to alter her AIMDF to change her power into something else. i.e. Broke down and reconstructed her AIMDF into something else (BIG red flag right here).
4. Constantly adjusting the AIMDF on a micro level; an inhuman feat none of Academy City's supercomputers can do.
5. Redefine the real world into a digital one.

The main problems with this:

1. AIM Jammers specifically interfere with an esper's concentration; anything requiring complex calculations are a no go.
   Once all those AIM Jammers were directed towards Uiharu, how was she able to concentrate to pull off the feat?
2. If Uiharu is using AIM Jammers to metaphorically chisel her AIMDF into something else, why should that end up creating a new ability in the first place when the fundamental source of power for an esper is the Personal Reality; NOT the AIMDF?
3. How can Uiharu accurately craft a specific new ability using technology she's never used before given that she's not an expert on AIMDFs to begin with?
   How can she possibly know if what she's doing is working?
4. How can Uiharu even pull off all of this when it’s said to be an inhuman feat none of Academy City's supercomputers can do?
   Is Uiharu, a Level 1, performing calculations better than a supercomputer?
5. What ability did Uiharu even create that would solve the problem of stripping the Angel Dragon from Kimi?
   There's some gibberish about redefining the real world into a digital one.
   Is that implying that Uiharu rewrote reality?
   What exactly did she rewrite/modify?
   BTW These are rhetorical questions; the manga doesn't even bother to present any answers to these questions.
6. Independent to all of these questions, how can Uiharu materialize her AIMDF to begin with?
   • This isn't something that just happens on a whim. Uiharu is not a special or unique esper.
     Even assuming the above 5 points hold, there's no reason why an AIMDF should manifest like that.
     This is different from the aggregations of multiple AIMDFs like Kazakiri Hyouka, the AIM Burst and Aiwass who all are focused around a core.
   • More confounding is the mixed messaging from the manga.
     Uiharu was showing signs of manifesting her AIMDF before the AIM Jammers came into play; possibly hinting that ingesting Kimi's blood had something to do with it.
     But if it was Kimi's blood, there's no way Uiharu would know her AIMDF would manifest like that.
     When Uiharu was pulling off the feat, she seemed to know exactly what she was doing; it couldn't have been Kimi's blood.
     So, which is it: Kimi's blood or AIM Jammers or both?
     Regardless, if Kimi's blood plays any part in this, it’s bad writing as a plot element which we know nothing about was used to resolve the arc.

I have to conveniently ignore all of this in order to accept anything about the arc's resolution. If it just made Uiharu's feat acceptable and gave some sort of closure to what happened with the dragon, the arc would have been salvaged because the good stuff in this arc is really good.

Kamijou didn't need to appear in this arc (and would be problematic for its own reasons) but now I wish that he or Noukan did appear considering what we got instead.

Originally Posted by dniv

...I'm absolutely convinced the thing with Uiharu will come back up later. It's not Kamachi style to make something happen only one by now. Have you all literally learned nothing after reading his whole series?

Railgun has never operated like that. Its more bizarre to think that Railgun would change its structure regarding plot elements 14 years into serialization. And whether its comes up later isn't even the main issue. The main issue is that its unacceptable right now at the end of the arc.

Originally Posted by dniv

It's super obvious this is a parallel to the latest arc in GT and y'all are blind.

Please elaborate, dniv. I don't want to hate this arc but no one has successfully convinced me otherwise.

[Kuroageha]

Originally Posted by dniv

It's not Kamachi style to make something happen only one by now. Have you all literally learned nothing after reading his whole series? I have no words. It's super obvious this is a parallel to the latest arc in GT and y'all are blind.

Did you miss the part where the manga editor said it was his and Fuyukawa's doing among other embarrassing things?

[dniv]

Originally Posted by OH&S

Please elaborate, dniv. I don't want to hate this arc but no one has successfully convinced me otherwise.

Sure, for one, this is obviously a parallel to GT3 because it has Uiharu questioning justice and she even goes well what if something bad happened and Misaka goes, well nothing bad happened this time around so it's fine to call it a day. I mean look at the timing when it came out, pretty much right around when and after GT 3 came out. I think the timing isn't a coincidence.

I think that GT3 showed what happened when the adults are gone and the normal safety net isn't there in place.

Spoiler:

I mean literally anti-skill basically went extinct. Uiharu wanted to protect Saten so much she did something bad. And Misaka didn't really have a good answer. And then Kuroko was the one in GT 3, it's a very obvious parallel. I think that Uiharu pretty much set up fertile ground for how what she's feeling now will be relevant after the destruction of anti-skill and how judgment is going to be more relevant now. Hell, I wouldn't be entirely surprised if we got something like the reason Uiharu was able to do what she did is because of Aihana Etsu. Kamachi also showed Uiharu without her flowers for once.

Personally, I think that Uiharu is lying to the audience about what she did. And I think that she's downplaying what's really going on because it isn't the right time to bring it up right now. I don't think that Railgun usually leaves things hanging. Like Gensei was behind all the main incidents, and they had him come up later, and resolved things nicely with him in T. I think it's really likely that this is just setup for later. I guess you could say it's not fully certain, but knowing Kamachi, I think he'll make it relevant later either in the main novel or in Railgun.

I think it's fine if it's not fully explained in the novel right now. It's not like the coins in GT 3 are fully explained either, but I'm not knocking that. You just have to take it for what it is. Whatever Uiharu has or is, it's not entirely clear if it's an esper power or something else or how she did it. I think there may be more to this than meets the eye and it just isn't relevant to this arc and that it'll be relevant later. Kamachi clearly aligns his arcs and plans them out to have specific elements at the proper times, so I think it's super unlikely that he backed himself into a corner or resorted into a one time plot armor. That seems incredibly unlikely. I'm almost certain it'll be relevant again since he introduced it now to the story. I'm just curious as to what it is.

I'm still also super curious about the flashback in the latest chapter with Mikoto and those two girls. What was that? Am I missing something about who they were or do you not know either? The timing with how she got interrupted during it gave me weird vibes especially with the thematic timing of her talking to Uiharu just before.

[Twi]

I mean, in hindsight there are a dozen of different ways you can probably have handled it.

At the simplest, you probably could have just had the AIM Jammers at a higher concentration stop Kimi's black hole generation and because of that it could no longer draw power from her, so it wouldn't stay tethered. If Uiharu had the data then she could have inputted it into the AIM Jammers to account for her previously untraceable power and then calibrated it specifically to stop it.

Then the only issue would be what happened to the Dragon, but they could have had it wilting away because the only reason it could exist outside of Touma was because it was feeding off her power.

[salamander750]

Originally Posted by Kuroageha

Did you miss the part where the manga editor said it was his and Fuyukawa's doing among other embarrassing things?

Uh, I'm kinda lost here, but since when did he said that? I thought it was Kamachi and Fuyukawa are the ones that make this manga

[Kuroageha]

Originally Posted by salamander750

Uh, I'm kinda lost here, but since when did he said that? I thought it was Kamachi and Fuyukawa are the ones that make this manga

His very twitter account.

[salamander750]

Originally Posted by Kuroageha

His very twitter account.

Huh, I find it's hard to believe that an editor would easily admit that he fuck up like that, but thanks I guess