A Certain MoeMoe Railgun S – Ep.16

Final episode of the Sister’s arc and it was one of the most satisfying endings to something I’ve seen in awhile. It had great closure and also spent more time showing them all moving on past it now that they can rather than being drawn out drama about it. It was very smooth and yeah, it was as good a closure to a story arc as you’re gonna find out there.

What really made this episode for me was just seeing Biribiri be able to fully be herself again, no half-veiled trauma, no thinking about dead clones grabbing at her, nothing. She was even able to be all super flirty and cutesy with Touma, which actually (the latter part on the bridge) was probably the best part of the episode. I mean there was a LOT of her being all cute with/about him this time around, she even made him cookies and visited him in the hospital. One thing I’m glad about is that they removed the scene of Touma groping the Sister, it was distasteful and unnecessary in Index and it would have been even worse here, so it was a relief NOT seeing that. I don’t really like tsunderes but biribiri is a classic true tsundere rather than the modern day style of what equates out to just being tsuntsun aside finally in the last episode or something being anything more than that – and she plays that class style of it perfectly. This episode is a great example of it.Given the next episode is already out I’m keeping this short and gonna just repeat that it was an extremely satisfying ending to a fucking awesome arc – not just in Railgun, but in general.

One thing this season has excelled in beyond what most anime can ever manage to do is creating and maintaining such a powerful atmosphere and feeling for the series consistently. It’s made the show just fucking outstanding up to now and made it incredibly powerful, heavy, and dark. This episode showed that they can put that into lighthearted stuff as well – not just with the latter portion of this episode, but with a couple early-on ones as well. I mean you could really “feel” the weight of all this on Biribiri’s shoulders – and in the last half of this episode it felt almost like a whole different show in terms of the atmosphere. It’s not just the writing and pacing that changed, yet maintained it’s amazing quality, but even the cinematography I constantly used to bring up played a big role here along with set design.

Much more vibrant, much lighter feeling, less constraining camera angles, and so on. Something film sort of created was the ability to manipulate how the audience feels through the way something is shown to them – yet most anime ignores this and goes for whatever lazy or ‘cool’ angles and scenes they can use at the time. Railgun S has taken the more serious live-action film style of these aspects and applied them to anime perfectly. The entire last part of the episode just felt so refreshing and relieving.

I’m really looking forward to how they take that incredible directing, cinematography, acting, and so on and apply it to these TV-only fun episodes coming up. I loved the couple we had already, and those weren’t even completely happy given the situation, so I’m excited to see how it goes. With such talent there’s no way they won’t be incredibly fun. I’m just hoping they don’t go overboard in any fanservicey ways. They’ve come out with a lot of pretty lewd figures and promotional art of Biribiri lately, and I don’t want that translating into the show – it just doesn’t really belong there and the director clearly learned that in season 1 after dropping that angle entirely after only 1 episode (aside from Kuroko).

Also, it was nice to see that extra bit after the credits, with Biribiri winning the Gekota pin from the machine again. Oh, and Touma was pretty good again. I definitely can’t say I hate him – at least not his Railgun S version. He’s still shit in Index.

Anyway, until next time – be power smart and conserve electricity ～biribiri!