A Certain MoeMoe Railgun S – Ep.8 + Ep.9

For episode 8 there’s not much for me to say, because of that and because it was going to be a bit behind anyway, I figured it’d be best to combine them into one entry. So, 8 was basically the introduction of ITEM and mostly focused on the battle between Mikoto and the little exploding doll tossing girl whose name I couldn’t give a shit less about because ITEM just isn’t an interesting group of characters to me whatsoever.

Aside that, it was nice seeing some more terrorist-mode Biribiri given she’s really cute in that outfit (I still vastly prefer her normal hair, but her clothes are cute, which works out for me once her hat gets tossed and her hair falls back into place), and getting to see her really fight again was cool. She hasn’t really been getting a chance to show off her power or abilities lately until now. It’s too bad she’s too good of a person to actually finish a fight though, she could have at least knocked the girl out to keep it non-lethal and non-damaging. She’d rather avoid hurting people more than she has to – but she’s usually smarter than this, she even figured someone else was coming so there was no reason to waste time like that. Either way though, it was nice seeing her in action again and the fight was handled well – it took almost the whole episode but didn’t feel dragged out, and this is just the start of what’s to come.

Episode 9

Nine features Biribiri walking or standing on more walls and ceilings than anyone in every Spiderman movie combined.

Seriously, I don’t think 10

seconds of time

ever went by

with her in view,

where she didn’t

end up on a wall instead of the ground.

It was actually really cute seeing her go sliding around on walls and falling onto that instead of the ground. Watching her get all beat up wasn’t very nice though, not last episode and not this one either.

It’s especially shitty because the only reason they really put up any fight at all is the fact she’s horribly worn out. She’s been non-stop using her powers and fighting without rest for days aside a few naps here and there – then having the doll girl fight her just used up even more of her energy. I know Meltdowner is TECHNICALLY the second strongest level 5, but given Biribiri is working at less than 50% strength and energy while fatigued as all hell I can’t imagine she’s all that big of a deal in comparison to the railgun. Biribiri is clearly just a smidgen below her in ability strength, I mean she’s surviving plenty well against Melt Downer (with a team of 2 more) and her own fatigue and wounds holding her back. It’s not like when she fought Accelerator while she was perfectly fine and in full health, he fucking wrecked any chance of her doing a damn thing to him legitimately – he’s actually powerful. Melt Downer just seems lucky that she’s tired. I’d actually argue that Biribiri is the second most powerful and the system they use to measure ability levels has a clear flaw.

EDIT* – From what you guys in the comments told me, Mugino (Melt Downer) is canonically weaker and also lower in the list of level 5s than Mikoto. I can accept that as true. I knew she seemed way too weak to be supposedly stronger than Biribiri. Thanks for the correction!

Speaking of meltdowner, we’re introduced to her and a literal cokehead who is high as shit the entire episode.

Again, I don’t much care for ITEM. They feel like Index-tier generic battle shounen characters, not people who belong in Railgun. They’ve got no depth, no personality, no character to them aside cookie cutter traits of the worst kind. Even their looks are generic and feel overdone and try-hardish. What’s extra shitty is that from what I’m told Accelerator actually develops and becomes his own well made character instead of the extremely stereotypical super evil guy he is now – yet I’m pretty sure ITEM never does. They are just always “look how hardcore we are”, edgy, and uninteresting cliches. Hell, it’s so bad that even the cute tomboy one I don’t like much at all because she’s got less personality than the clones.

On top of that I don’t think it was ever explained how children got made into a mercenary hitman unit hired to KILL other children, nor how this is allowed even in Academy City – they aren’t exactly a secret team nobody knows about, like most fucked up things in the city. Well, whatever.

While that’s all going on we got to see the Queen doing her thing and apparently helping out by trying to put emotion into the clones so that they’d fight back on some level, at least maybe just showing enough human emotion that Accel or the scientists would stop treating them like trash. It was nice seeing her proactive instead of doing mostly-worthless and more just annoying to Accelerator shit like the money cards. I like that they showed her resolve – enough to actually shoot someone yet still kept to her beliefs she recently found – being shown through her purposefully aiming away from any vitals and just to injure.

The Queen also makes a good argument against their own resistance – even if they stop what’s going on what would happen to the clones? Well, hopefully we’ll find out for Biribiri’s sake.

Anyway, they were both good episodes and watching Biribiri pretty much run around on walls for 48 minutes was pretty fun.

Until next week, be power smart and conserve electricity ~biribiri