English Dub Review: A Certain Scientific Accelerator “Third Number”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

As the DA goons attempt to kill Accelerator and Esther, Hasami’s corpse rises the stretcher and “activates”, kicking ass to protect Esther, her “Adonai”. Accelerator also does his part, but abusing his powers open up his still healing head wound, allowing one of the DA people to get away. On the way out, he runs into another one of the Misaka clones, 10046, taking her hostage. But their overzealous actions and recent failures draw ire from their backers, one of whom is Nakimoto, who is on the Governing Board of Academy City. He contacts Hishigata and the two decide to cut DA loose before it interferes with their ongoing plans, employing a squad called Scavenger to hand out the pink slips with an assault on their headquarters.

Accelerator recovers, but is given news by another Misaka clone of 10046’s capture, while Yoshikawa informs him of what she could find about DA, AKA Disciplinary Action. Without Nakimoto hiding them in the shadows, all of DA’s background and secrets are surfacing on the net, revealing them to be made up of former Anti-Skill personnel. Though Hishigata plans to use them one last time to get ahold of 10046.

OUR TAKE

We got some tweaks to the OP this week, which seem to be indicating the shift of antagonists to this new Scavenger squad (who are another small band of cute girls with quirky personalities and powers like every minor villain group in this franchise) and the addition of Houto to the good guy team. Speaking of, I’m a little disappointed that she isn’t Hasami, since we know her backstory and struggles and it would be interesting to see her try to essentially find a new life after death, while right now, Houto seems to basically be a robot with a flesh body. Also kinda funny that she refers to Esther as “Adonai” (Hebrew for “my lords”) as a sort of substitute for “Master”. When you grow up Jewish like me and hear that word several times at every service you go to, you almost expect this anime to double down and start having Esther throw Star of David ninja stars.

Also, a pleasant surprise to see another Misaka clone in the mix, especially since it’s one that we haven’t properly met yet. Since Accelerator stopped killing the clones for the experiment at 10031, there’s still a little under ten thousand running around, as seen in Index Season 3, where Misaka ran into one of them in Russia. The interesting thing about them is that they all have the same memories, but are individually different people, so you can kinda cheat by bringing an unused one on as a “new character” without having to worry about a new design or catching them up on the important backstory. Kind of a letdown that her first role in this is as a damsel in distress, but maybe she’ll be more active once saved. And actually, start giving them different designs too, please.

But R.I.P. to DA, who is due to be phased out of the story in favor of villains more favorable on the eyes. The group WAS pretty limited in their potential as just zealot police, so I guess it’s good that they’re shooing them away after only the first third of the season. Though that means they’re really going to have to put in the work to make this Scavenger group worth getting the spotlight now. Simply having brightly colored hair and neat looking attacks is not going to cut it on its own. That said, I’ll be watching it all anyway, so do your worst I guess.