A Certain Scientific Railgun, Episode 1 (anime)

[elfs]

So, I just watched episode one To Aru Kagaku no Railgun (eng: A Certain Scientific Railgun), which has to be just about the stupidest super-powered girl, yuri-on-the-hoof anime series yet. The setting is basically an entire city turned over to the study of Marvel-style psionics: telepaths, telekinets, etc. etc.

The heroine, Mikoto Misaka, is the most ass-kicking telekinetic the city has ever seen. Her power manifests as electrical charges, so she has the nickname "The Railgun," and with a handful of coins she can destroy whole armies. She's introduced during testing; while her roommate and the sterotypical stuck-up rich older girl trade barbs, they're suddenly flung on their asses by a shockwave from the school pool. The roommate preens about how powerful this new girl is, they need to use the entire olympic swimming pool just to slow down the quarters she tosses. At the end of the epsisode, Mikoto, her friend Kuroko, and two other characters are introduced, and Mikoto becomes friends with an innocent and un-superpowered girl. They interrupt a robbery, and when one of the villains kick said girl in the face and then tries to escape in a high-speed car, Mikoto flips a coin in the air, and when it falls in front of her she destroys the car with it. All what you'd expect from an Episode 1. "Hi, here's our main cast, we're all magical girls, and here's what the heroine is capable of doing."

The art's quite good, although it devolves way too often when the plot get silly.

What is really sad about the series is the way it's already basically yuri hentai: Kuroko conspires constantly on how to convince Mikoto that they should both go to a love hotel, and in one scene even manages to get her hands under Mikoto's shirt and feel her up. Men show up in this episode only when being arrested.

I kinda want to watch this series, because I kinda like Mikoto: she's got a mix of personas all battling for identity: super-powered heroine besieged by fans, insecure girl unsure of her powers, stuck-up idol, stage-frightened but capable of powering through. But the extremely poorly-handled lesbian crush annoys the Hell out of me (shocking, isn't it?). Kuroko's crush on Mikoto isn't sexual, or romantic, or fannish, or... or anything. It exists because the writers want it to exist, and not because either character would otherwise really want it.

Comments

[nojay.livejournal.com]

It's a pretty formulaic series, derived as a spinoff from another formulaic series ("...no Index") which is itself derived from an ongoing long series of light novels. Good enough to pass the time but not really worth a rewatch.

The only interest I found in its story was the divide between the psionic rich kids and the Level Zero have-nots which is explored in more detail later in the series. The action mainly involves Blowing Shit Up with crazy-eyed Bad Guys and Scientists in White Lab Coats (often the same person) doing a lot of "As you know, Professor..." to fill in the time between their Evull Experiments on Helpless Young Children in Secret Underground Laboratories. Step and repeat for twenty-six episodes.

[atheorist.livejournal.com]

I liked no Railgun, at least the next few episodes after the first, though the crush was annoying. The way I interpreted it was that people really do get too-young-to-be-sexual crushes on older, awesomer people, and the culture of writers/artists/managers that produce the show can't (or won't) depict that.

Possibly they need to devolve into silly easy-to-write easy-to-draw fanservice every once in a while, to introduce energy into the story, possibly they think the viewers need this to stay interested.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

The whole "yuri as fanservice" thing has been building for a while. It's as if the writers said, "You know, yuri really worked for the Maria Sama and Hime series, let's see if we can build on that. But instead of building narrative tension around that, let's just get it out in the open in episode one that one character wants Hawt Lesbian Sex. That ought to be fanservice enough. Narrative tension is for weenies."

Except narrative tension, the whole will-she, won't-she, is-she, isn't-she, was the whole freaking point. Yukino's coming out in Mai Hime episode 23 was one of the best scenes.

No wonder a lot of people on rec.arts.anime have been complaining about the rank formulaism of the current season.