A Certain MoeMoe Railgun S – Ep.13

Late again; Anime Expo took over the weekend and recuperating from it (it takes a heavy toll on my body and the pain ends up wearing me out mentally) took into the week, plus I had a doctors appointment, had some annoying drama going on on another site, and some other stuff. I didn’t even watch the episode until now, so sorry for being late again.

Another episode, another brutal murder of what is essentially herself that Biribiri has to see happen right in front of her. Well, this time there was at least some distance, but she still had to watch it live.

I want her to be able to be happy again, so I hope this arc finishes soon. As exciting, interesting, and pretty much fucking amazingly well done as it is, the constant nonstop torture of Mikoto is just getting to be too much. Not in a “the show is bad” way – but in a “please give her a break already” way. I’m very excited for the post-Sister’s arc summer vacation stuff, I really need some happy Biribiri and the other girls for once after 13 and still going episodes of just nothing but her being hammered and seeing horrible things and not getting any respite. It’s terrible and I really want to feel the relief that those episodes will bring along with the conclusion of this arc. I don’t know how long this’ll still go, but I hope the arc ends in the next few episodes, it’s just so dark and heavy I can’t help it.

At this point, Mikoto is essentially broken – she’s even having delusional conversations with herself. If this continues too much longer – or she at least doesn’t finally have someone else helping her (which Touma will hopefully be involved enough to be that person) and making her mental weight a little bit lighter, even just a tiny bit, she’d just lose sight of herself entirely. Sure, she kind of already has, but it’s far from permanent right now, but seeing her be right on that line is genuinely hard to keep watching. She needs a break and so do I, this shits fucked up.

I mean this is now at least the second time she’s had to watch one of the Sisters be killed in front of her eyes; first the train crush and now this. And both of them were, coincidentally enough (albeit this time not to her knowledge) one’s she’s actually interacted with at that. Of course it’s totally bad regardless which it is, but that just makes it even worse for her. And that’s just 2 of the over 10,000 now that she knows have died already and will keep dying. She’s only 14, knowing this stuff- let alone SEEING these things, it’s fucking incredible she’s managed through this far at all, but I don’t know how much longer she can last mentally and given us seeing clear signs of that area cracking pretty seriously I just want it done. She’s an amazingly strong person, but even her mental state and body has it’s limits.

Just like in episode 12, Mikoto wasn’t very prevalent in regards to screentime – however they did this very well this time around. In episode 12 it felt kind of handled poorly, but here it felt like she was purposefully shown so little to really get across that feeling of isolation and make her scenes so much more powerful. If she was around more in the episode I feel like the scene of her breaking just wouldn’t have got to me like it did.

Aside that, as I do like commenting on the direction of the episodes pretty often – It’s worth mentioning how the transitions were from perspective to perspective. I think it was really cool how we’d see what’s going on with, say, Accel and the Sister, then it’d go to the camera – which lead us back to Biribiri at the facility, which then had her noticing the camera’s feed and – going through that – ending up back with us live at Accel and the Sister. I’m not explaining it well, but you know what part I mean if you watched the episode. It was really cool and felt very smoothly done. It was a great way of maintaining 3 fully separate yet connected situations going on in different places without making it feel disjointed at all. I’m genuinely happily surprised every episode by just how fucking great the episodes are made in every single aspect – I know this and yet every week when I see the new episode I feel just as wowed by it as the first time.

This episode was the hardest yet to get screenshots from. All the ones I have almost I want to delete too, they are just all fucked up and depressing.

Aside all that, I was happy to know that the sister from the previous episode was the one that survived, though I feel like that’s backwards; the one who shot the grenade was the one that died, and they showed that as being her. I may have gotten confused at some point, but it’s not like it’s such a big deal. I don’t think there’s an error in continuity here, I just feel like I missed something pertinent in one of the fighting scenes.

Last episode covered Touma’s scenes that aren’t all that relevant a little too much, but this week felt better about it. He was around but, like I mentioned before – I’m fine with him being around, just not with us seeing material that’s fully straight out of Index and not all that relevant. This time felt like every scene of his was necessary, and like I’ve also mentioned before, he’s fine in this kind of role. It’s almost refreshing seeing him not be an awful protagonist and instead being a secondary role.

Oh – and Accelerator. I know he supposedly evolves into a good character later on, but even with this flashback I’m just not seeing it. Yeah, he was less blood thirsty and refused to kill humans or what he considered as such. However, he still seemed to have a lot of fun fucking her up. I can’t say that’s much better – and just speaking based on that flashback it seems like he was already a shithead. An earlier episode had another flashback of him being a prick too, the type that would totally enjoy hurting others. So, sure, maybe he’s not someone who would have went and murdered 10,000+ for fun PRIOR to the researchers fucking his head up…but he still would have enjoyed kicking the shit out of them, and that still makes him a shitty person and an edgy-as-all-hell character. Of course, given Railgun and, in a rare instance of me praising it, Index, have both shown to consistently develop and explain their casts very well, I have no doubt there’s more to it that was probably prior to the research. I just wonder if we’ll ever find out about it within Railgun or if that will be Index/LN only stuff.

Speaking of the flashback though, it was nice to meet the first clone he fought and see how silly she was; which is kind of odd given they are supposed to not have emotions in them at that point. Not odd in a “this is inconsistent lore” way, but odd like “I wonder why the clones had some feelings, was the program glitchy or just not complete?” or something. Either way, the few seconds of her not fucking bleeding out from basically shooting herself were fun, though that stuff I just mentioned cancelled that out pretty fucking quickly. I don’t think watching what is essentially Biribiri dying all these horrible deaths will ever get any easier, and I don’t look forward to having to rewatch this episode when showing my brother the new episodes next time he’s around.

Anyway, see you next wee- well, actually, see you in a few days hopefully, as the new episode is already almost out! Thanks for reading, and remember, be power smart and conserve electricity ~biribiri!

Have a fun and happy picture to end things on;