Toaru Kagaku no Railgun T - Episode 1 - 10 Second Anime

Mikoto Misaka, AKA The Railgun, is about to start the big sports festival where Academy City's schools compete against each other. Season Premiere.

#1 - "Super-Powered (Level 5)"

First Thoughts.

Has it really been almost 7 years since we saw Mikoto the Scientific Railgun animated on TV? The second half of that season was one of the first shows I ever blogged here. That brings back memories, especially as I experimented with images, gifs, video, sound editing, blog post writing format, and some HTML and CSS. It's been a long seven years since then. Also, J.C. STAFF back then always made Railgun "prettier" than Index, so I really hoped that would be the case this year. Considering the flat, scrolling picture drama with some strange washed out filter applied to every frame that Index III was, and the pure disappointment of what Accelerator turned out to be, my expectations were really low coming into the first episode.

Thankfully, Railgun continues the tradition of being the most vibrantly colored and animated with special attention to movement and depth of all the other ToAru anime adaptations. I hope this continues for more than the first three episodes too.

Hmm.

If you asked me what the "S" meant in the title for the Toaru Kagaku no Railgun S seven years ago, I would tell you I have no idea. This year, J.C. STAFF gave us a T at the end of the title. Let me smack my forehead. That stands for "Third!" Which meant "S" back then meant "Second," as in second season. I suppose they weren't thinking that far ahead for the first season, since that had no "F" in it...

Also, my mind is having memory whiplash problems because the events of this story happen right before Index III starts. Seeing the people involved in the alphabet soup Accelerator parts of Index before they got blasted by Accelerator is disconcerting. I'm sure that feeling will get worse as the season progresses.

Heh.

Yass! All the Level 5's are getting an introduction card. Ha. All the Level 5's will get their own scene too. There's seven of them, but number 6 is the mysterious one we've never seen. The minor plot of the first episode is that the steering committee of the Great Superstar Festival wants a couple of the Level 5's to read the Athletes' Pledge during the opening ceremonies. Good luck with that, since half of them are "dark" entities of Academy City.

Well, as the number 3 Level 5, Mikoto is the most accessible and "normal" of that bunch. Except, she's too normal and doesn't like public speaking, so reading off some Athlete's Pledge worldwide is too much for her. Trying to get the other Level 5's to do this seems weird to me, since it's supposed to be an inter-school thing. Maybe it's like lighting the Olympic torch where it can be anybody, not just a participant.

This steering committee is being very thorough. They somehow got Mugino's phone number to ask her.

The mysterious 6th rank Level 5? We don't talk about him… It's the legendary Rank 7 Level 5, Sogiita Gunha. Ha. His card doesn't list his psychic power, because they don't know how it works.

Mikoto is such a helpful young lady. And she charges your phone for you too! These kids are great, trying to use their powers. She's even letting the children help her repair the teddy bear. She's just the best big sister ever. They called her "shorts-wearing lady."

Here comes the plot for most of the season — some sports festival.

Yay! Saten and Uiharu! They introduce the Great Superstar Festival that is the background for all the action. There it is! The signature skirt flip!

Ah. Kuroko is still in the hospital from the events of last season. Almost 7 years ago! In a way each of these arcs introduce the bad guys who form Accelerator's GROUP that we saw in Index III. The one who hurt Kuroko is Musujime the teleporter whose friends were in lockup. I want to see which GROUP member shows up in the Daihasei Festival arc.

Ha! Kuroko is so happy to see her Onee-sama. Silly me. I just realized that Railgun S and Railgun T mean "S" for "Second" and "T" for "Third."

Kuroko's "training" doesn't match Mikoto's memories… Saten doesn't have any psychic powers, but she's a good reader of emotions. She knew when Uiharu was feeling worried and she tapped into Kuroko putting on a brave face for not being able to participate in the sports festival or handle the enforcer duties of Judgement.

I love me some Mitsuko Kongou! She's so proud, but she wants to be a good friend to Mikoto and Kuroko. Ah. Kuroko arranged Kongou to be her replacement partner in the sports festival. She's a level 4 like Kuroko, so that's not bad.

Finally! We get to see Misaki the other Level 5 animated for more than a couple of seconds here and there. She can't use her mind control on Mikoto because of her strong E-M field. Mikoto's reaction to her is perfect. "Geh."

I hope we get an explanation for why Misaki needs a battery powered remote control to work her abilities, but it's also the main weakness she has against the Railgun.

Ugh. Will the eye catches give us the episode titles in the middle of every show?

This is bittersweet. Mugino's group ITEM is still alive. She hasn't yet gone crazy and tried to kill them all during the events of Index III.

More bitter sweetness. Kakine and SCHOOL are hanging out before their beatdown from GROUP and Accelerator in Index III. They should have had Railgun T broadcast before Index III! My mind is going through whiplash here. What's up with this? This scene with SCHOOL went from 16:9 to cinematic aspect ratio. That's the hard sell — kids like angel wings!

Ehhh? /Accelerator voice. I don't even know why the Steering Committee bothered to approach him with this trivial matter. Thank goodness I have this small scene here so it can be my last memory of Accelerator instead of what happened in his show last year. Gag. Ho! He's too busy babysitting! Can I get a "Misaka, Misaka" from Last Order during this season? Please?

I love hearing Mikoto say "geh." She says it a lot. Ha. She met one of her sisters buying cake. Of course. Playing rock-paper-scissors would take a while with the Misaka SISTERS.

Lots of hot bloodedness associated with the sports festival. Here's the most hot-blooded one of all, Gunha. Whoops. Railgun is going to have clean up his mess.

Eh? Now they don't want to ask Mikoto to say the pledge because she gets caught up in disasters? I guess that kind of risk-averse thinking doesn't care about whether she causes them or stops them.

Fun. Misaki has different remotes for making her minions do different things.

Oops. Kuroko got caught with her album full of Onee-sama pictures.

In the end, they got Gunha and Misaki to the do the Athletes' Pledge ceremony. Guts!

The opening credit sequence is at the end. Thanks for that! The animation quality looks exactly the same as the whole episode. This gives me hope that the "quality" will stay consistent for the whole season. Perhaps the animation dip will only happen during the 6th or 7th episodes. Just keep it going as long as possible!