English Dub Review: A Certain Scientific Railgun “Strange Coincidence”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Shortly after the Daihasei festival, Saten is harassed by a strange girl who bothers her to hand over some of the mackerel she bought at the store, but ends up bonding with her after coming over for dinner. Unknown to Saten, this girl is Frenda Seivulen, member of ITEM, one of the Dark Side organizations. The two of them become fast friends, texting a lot over the following weeks, including about Indian Poker cards. Incidentally, this also gets the attention of SCHOOL, another group who believe the cards might serve their purpose of finding the Tweezers, a device they’ve been searching for. This leads to them kidnapping Saten when they think she’s obtained a card with information about them, when really it’s just a card that improves her chopstick handling skills. Frenda happens to be nearby when this happens and uses Hamazura rescue Saten from SCHOOL, but they send Yumiya Rakko, their sadistic sniper, in retaliation, thinking that Frenda’s involvement means they’ve hit paydirt.

OUR TAKE

Frenda is a character who has had her story revealed in an odd way, even in this franchise. For people like me, who primarily watch the anime, she first showed up in the second season of Railgun, but her first appearance in the novels was actually the story that included her death (that actually only recently got adapted in Index’s third season). Yet for whatever reason, it seems like the author immediately regretted killing her off so quickly, and so started fleshing her out in the Railgun manga. This and the next episode are actually a prequel for that first appearance, which I guess is why Frenda is getting so much focus here, to make her inevitable death that much sadder by connecting her to Saten. And all told, it’s a bit of a weird choice, almost like it was picked by Mad Libs. The prequel’s focus is…Frenda! The character she’ll bond with before dying is…Saten! They bond over…buying mackerel at the supermarket! And they’re attacked by…members of SCHOOL! It all feels so random.

But then again, it’s not an especially bad story either, even with that in mind. You do feel like the two girls are forming a genuine friendship, even over a pretty strange thing, and the fact that viewers probably know that the two are both friends with two Level 5s who hate each other does add an air of tragedy to things, even without being aware of Frenda’s eventual death (which itself is also handled pretty weirdly now that I think about it). And the two are both the least powered member of their respective teams, so maybe the decision to pair them up was based on that too. We also make good on meeting one of the characters Misaka had a dream about last episode, Rakko, who turned out to be a rather unhinged killer and, while also being a Level 0 like Frenda and Saten, looks like she’ll be a pretty formidable opponent, though apparently not enough that we’ll be seeing her much in the story that this is meant to be a prequel to. I still have no idea why Frenda of all characters was thought to be this deserving of so much retroactive focus, but we’ll see how all of that ends up next time in this story’s conclusion. In the meantime, I have at least a week to think of more good Frenda-based puns!