English Dub Review: A Certain Scientific Railgun “Dragon Strike (Jaw of the Dragon King); Promise”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Toma and Sogiita prepare their last attempt to stop Level 6 Misaka, with Sogiita using his power to open a path for Toma to run through and use his right hand. While inside, Misaka tries to destroy herself to neutralize it, only to see Toma charge ahead and…lose his arm in the process. Yet, somehow, several multi colored dragons spring forth from the stub, apparently being enough break down her power and return her to normal. And his arm grew back! Wait, what? But hey, the day is saved, 10032 is in the clear, everyone gets their memories back (for the most part), they get to have fun with the rest of the festival, and Misaka gets to dance with Toma at the bonfire like at the end of the arc in Index.

Meanwhile, Misaki looks through Gensei’s mind for clues on how to help 10032 and finds something unexpected, leading her to send Kuroko away from Mitori and collect her herself. What she found was that Mitori was actually Dolly’s friend before her, apparently even trying out the abuse and deadly experimentation the researchers were doing to her until she realized the orders were coming from the top of the governing board. Eventually she was recruited by Gensei for his plan. To make up for this, Misaki takes Mitori to find Dolly’s “sister”, although really it’s a clone of Dolly, who is herself a clone already, with all of Dolly’s memories. The byproduct of the experiment that birthed her. So now Dolly’s two friends can finally be together with her.

OUR TAKE
Yeah, about the dragon. Fans who watched the first season of the core series of this franchise, A Certain Magical Index, MAY remember the ninth episode of that show where Toma ALSO lost his arm and had it turn into a dragon that ate his opponent. One might think, understandably, that after several seasons and spin-offs with several seasons, that there would be more known about this weird part of his power by now. Well, get ready for spoilers because the truth is!…we still have no idea. Those are the only two times that power has been used and in the vast Raildex cinematic universe, that is all we have to go on. Sometimes Toma can make dragons when his arm is cut off. Though apparently all of these dragons happen to have names that don’t really answer anything either. Is it a Deus Ex Machina? I guess because it was established before that it isn’t, but it still feels like it came out of nowhere to an extent. So I don’t know what to make of it other than it looked cool.

Still, it proved to be a good way to provide a thrilling climax to the arc that already was building itself up quite well. We got more insight into the sinister experiments in Academy City, learned more about Misaki as a character, met EVEN MORE CLONES OF MISAKA, got to view the Daihasei festival from another angle, and even saw something close to what a fabled Level 6 looks like. That’s quite a lot to pack into what I initially thought was just going to be a disposable side story of the Index arc. Not to mention how much it sets up for both Railgun and Index to explore further down the road. And with the added awesomeness of how amazing the animation and fights have been, it’s probably fair to say that this is the crown jewel of all the recent Raildex season arcs. But there’s still a chance to top even this, as there is one last arc in this season to cover. It’s good that Funimation released these episodes back to back, partly because they work as both a conclusion and a coda for the story, but also because it finally catches them up with the subs, which just resumed broadcast after two months off. So, with nine episodes left in this production cycle of Index related media, the bar is high provide something even better than what we’ve seen here. I for one am not going anywhere until this season is done with, because I am in it for the long haul now.