Quote:
Originally Posted by Shinhwa
This is why I hate filler arcs because they try to fit it in a timeline that already has a story existing. If it was Touma and Index only then it wouldn't have much of an issue, but this arc pretty much overlapped with the three-stories arc that things really begun not make sense at all for the veteran viewers.
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Huh?
Shinobu finding out that she is responsible for LO being the way she is was pretty touching and Kuroko teleporting Mikoto down was nice as well. Episode 1 of Railgun S showed how it was possible to fly via teleportation with Kuroko, Mikoto. This was the same deal... so I don't see why people are saying she can't teleport... (after taking the plane...)
BTW I don't find it confusing, but I'm not discussing why in this thread... I really don't see how it is any more confusing than anything else which has happened so far...
Considering the fact that this is world-building and that Raildex is a fictional universe filled with a whole universe of a LOT of different people doing different things at different times I do not see how adding what a few more people in the fictional universe are doing at the same time that other action is happening in the fictional universe makes it confusing at all.
This is especially true considering that crazy stuff seems to happen in Academy City 24/7 which means that a lot of problems happen in the city every day all over and around the rest of the fictional world...
That's the point of universe building. If nothing happens at the same time, then it isn't a universe, it's just glimpses of character stories. The point of Raildex (IMO) for Kamachi is to create a fictional universe with lots of vibrant characters which means lots of crazy stuff will always be happening at once because he wants to showcase an entire fictional universe, not some 3 hand-picked celebrity characters in order to make them the most popular characters of all time.
That's a fundamental difference I see in his creation of storylines in this universe.
Assuming every event that happens in this universe is going to be of the same hype, craziness, and form, and with the same emotional content seems contrived IMO which is not only why I can believe Kamachi wrote this, but also why I think having such a different arc like this happening adds a lot to a story like Raildex.
I mean I might have said before I ignore the parts of series I don't like, but there really wasn't that much I didn't like in here.
The more genres of action I see in a fictional world, the more believable it becomes, and that is one of the reasons I really like Railgun S filler because it happens to do this.
The season really came full-circle at the end.
We had mechas like in season 1. They made similar movements like in season 1 at points, but looked cooler here.
We also had the idea that Mikoto wants to work with other people.
I want to argue that assuming that Mikoto is always going to be a loner 100% of the time is silly IMO because if we are assuming that Kamachi is trying to make Mikoto a believable, realistic character, her personality will change over time even if she has a tendency not to trust her friends so much in general.
The plasticity of Mikoto's temperament is what makes me think of her as such as an interesting character.
This arc was about disenfranchised people in the city called STUDY. You can call them nerds and then try to say they are crappy villains because they didn't have some huge evil scheme, but if this is supposed to be a realistic fictional world that could actually exist by some stretch of the imagination, then ordinary people have to exist and not everything can be amazing 100% of the time everywhere in the fictional universe at once. I mean a lot of stuff can happen in it, but not every villain is going to be a final boss character from a story-book.
ITEM and STUDY's appearances here are supposed to focus on the crappiness of the darkness of Academy City. Part 1 of this season was telling the story of the Sisters arc.
That arc was supposed to shock us to our core. Kamijou Touma saved the day because of who he is and he is a very special person. The only one who could have had a chance then against Accelerator was indeed him. He saved Mikoto from the darkness of Academy City and he taught her her current dream to not have to lose anything precious and for everyone to go back smiling.
That's a powerful message, but the first part of the season focused 1. on defeating Accelerator and 2. Mikoto's psychological descent into the darkness of Academy City.
Mikoto was putting up a tough front and wanted desperately to save her sisters, but she couldn't rely on her friends at all. After she finally managed to save them how would she feel? Relieved? Maybe. But she would also be very fragile, and would want comfort and warmth from other people.
She is still a 14 year old girl who wants comfort from her friends. After going through an ordeal that makes you want to commit suicide and someone sacrifices their life for you in order to convince you to keep on living, you aren't immediately going to feel all better. Mikoto here was in this situation and felt very guilty for what she did and wanted her friends to support her.
This is a very valid psychological reason as to why she would ask her friends to go with her. She needed support, because by herself she was only so strong.
Touma was necessary in part 1 because of his stubbornness and his insensitivity to other people's privacy. He was necessary to get her to see things clearly and to continue living.
After that, Mikoto needed her friends to recover from that psychologically. This is why an arc like this feels right at home. It is emotional, and after everything that happened in part 1. of the arc where Mikoto found out about the horrible truth behind Academy City that she ignored before, she finally accepted it and wants to change something once she gets the chance.
From my experience, many people who hate how popular Mikoto is feel that way because of how naive she has always acted after finding out about the horrible state of things as we saw in both parts of season 1. But this arc which was here was necessary because it showed how Mikoto is growing as a character. She now cares about her friends and wants to include them in what she does in her spare time. Her friends know about the darkness of the city because they already faced it in season 1. Maybe it didn't have to do with the underground organizations of the city mentioned in this season like ITEM, but they face some part of the darkness of Academy City so Mikoto felt like it was their right to be able to decide to stop the threat or not because they were her friends. Touma was worried about her and he didn't let her push him away, but her friends are more tactful. For that reason, Mikoto remembers how in season 2 they all agreed that they would help each other because they cared about each other and that one of them shouldn't have to do things alone, to shoulder the burden alone.
Since season 1 the anime has been described as a more coherent version of the manga that fills in some animation and concept gaps. So I don't understand why people are complaining that we are getting a realistic story here that helps revise some of the hard-to-show aspects of a manga series that are easier to show in an anime. I am noting I am not discussing the content of the manga and do not plan to in this post, but want to point out that Railgun reserves the right to make the series more cinematically and emotionally sound. It makes it much more realistic.
Anyway... after this season we finally have Mikoto showing concern for other people's lives and coming to terms with what she did before. She becomes kind to other people who are in the darkness and she matures greatly. This is why I find it weird to criticize the anime for seeming unlike it was written by Kamachi. It's suppose to revise what he originally did to convey his point with a second try after he thinks about it more carefully... He does it in a way that makes it unnecessary to change anything he did before and he only has to add new content, which lets certain arcs like this come about...
Most characters in this series aren't one-dimensional... except for comedic value... and that should be apparent especially here.
In the end, we know people know about the darkness of Academy City, but it still doesn't change anything like before. There is no way to combat it and no way to proceed forward so there are no problems. There is no reason for an underground organization to go after Mikoto and co because they conveniently saved the city for them and the antagonists who were working against them were working alone.
Aritomi and the others were interesting characters because of their motivations. This arc wasn't necessarily focusing on how powerful everyone was (though it had some amazing animation in this episode which I loved); rather it was focusing on concerns that a group of "NERDS," as people are saying, that is victimized by Academy City and that does the same exact thing Mikoto would have tried to do if Touma wasn't there to stop her eventually. What Mikoto did to the scientists was the exact same thing STUDY was doing. They felt disenfranchised. They had their reasons and sure maybe they sounded a little silly for wanting to prove intellect was more important than espers, but in the end that was just why they were the villains rather than something like an anti-hero which was what Mikoto was being earlier in the season.
The point is that Academy City only cares about espers, it victimzes them and non-espers and that now our main protagonists are starting to think about these things. It is interesting because not only are we having world building in the sense that we are learning about characters interacting with Mikoto and Co... we are having world building in the sense that Mikoto and Co. are maturing and changing as characters.
This is on the most part the largest reason why I disagree with most of the criticism about this arc. I like this arc especially for the parts that make the characters involved seem more realistic and that fully extend Mikoto's emotional healing process.
In the end, I wanted to see this arc so badly animated first and foremost because of how amazingly it depicted the trauma Mikoto was going through, and this is first and foremost why an ending second cour like this fits exactly with that theme of the season with Mikoto realistically needing to depend on the love and support of her friends in order to recover mentally and rejoin every-day life.
This arc was in my opinion very well done and I very much enjoyed the entire season because it felt a lot more cinematic to me as I noted earlier than most anime productions especially because it cared about making realistic complex characters that many anime don't do at all. When the characters act linearly in this series, it is pretty much always intended as comedic effect and it is the main reason why seeing a cinematic work like this makes me really appreciate railgun S because it feels really well done and thought out.
This feels a lot more like what Kamachi tries to write in general because it shows what happens behind the scenes with the characters in their development. Anyway, this was a super long explanation of why I liked this season/arc so I'll stop.
One last thing though, I only initially disliked the arc because 1. I didn't know at the very beginning that Kamachi submitted the script for it. 2. I thought it was heading in a direction that made
all of the underground groups in the city handleable by Mikoto and her friends. 3. I thought it was focusing on fan-service instead of character development.
When rewatching it now, even if it did have some fan-service in some parts of the arc, I was clearly wrong about my initial analysis of how the arc was going to turn out. That is why after seeing episode 23 with subtitles and seeing this episode I feel so differently about the arc. I rather thought episodes 23 and 24 were pretty emotional and liked them.
Feel free to disagree with me, but these are the reasons I enjoyed this arc. You might have many reasons you didn't enjoy this arc, but these are the reasons I do enjoy the arc, and the reasons I enjoy the arc far outweigh the reasons I wouldn't enjoy this arc (all of which were answered throughout the arc).
The biggest reason I initially didn't like this arc was because I was expecting another good arc to be adapted. Though I actually ended up liking this arc and that is why I really feel differently also about the beginning parts of this arc which initially just disappointed me.
Edit:
The other biggest reason I appreciated this new arc was that it gave closure to Shinobu's story. This was very much appreciated because it was rather strange beforehand for Mikoto to completely forget about her and was unrealistic. It's why having them add this extra arc in the anime, after the Sisters arc, where Mikoto helps Shinobu and makes her feel better as well, is partly touching and also... a reason to make Mikoto look like a more well-fleshed out character (Where this is the case even if she is still somewhat naive at times).
Also, does anyone else find it ironic that during the ending of the episode Touma was actually in class.
That's kind of hilarious. What are the chances of that?
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