English Dub Review: A Certain Scientific Railgun “Bust Upper”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Indian Poker cards continue to be a popular thing in Academy City, with Saten picking up a ton of parlor trick cards to learn how to do a bunch of cool moves. The economy of the craze has also evolved a bit, since while it used to be simply people trading amongst their friends, there are now traders that hold onto the most rare cards for sale as street vendors. Though there is legend of a specific card out there that was the dream of a genius scientist to increase one’s bust size. This catches the attention of Misaka, as well as Saiai from ITEM, who both bitterly fight over the card…only for their stand off to screw up the vendor’s selection of other cards, forcing them to buy them all off of him.

They also decide that, since they have a common goal, it would probably be in their best interest to help the other try out the stack of cards they just bought in double the time. Sadly, after multiple hours of napping and experiencing other people’s dreams (some with the same anxieties as them), they come up short, though Misaka finds an odd dream about a girl with black and white hair. But what they don’t realize is that the card they wanted was actually snatched up by a crow and ended up with some random girl, who seems to have made good use of it.

OUR TAKE

The Dream Ranker arc continues, though at a bit of an odd pace. We don’t really have much in the way of a pace or a structure just yet, but that may be simply because we’re still learning how the setting is being impacted by how popular the cards are. As usual, Saten acts as a good example of how the trend is really taking off, though that also makes me wonder if she’s going to face some bad side-effects like she did previously in the Level Upper arc from the first season. We do seem to be seeing a bit more of a sinister side to the cards with those girls from last episode who were manipulated into setting the park on fire with the ampules they thought were just for the cherry blossoms. And if they’re the focus of the arc, I’m sure there’s more to them than just some fun craze. Though I have to say, in terms of how the cards are made in universe, it’s kinda easy to get cards mixed up since they only come out in different colors, which makes them really easy to mix up.

But yeah, the arc right now seems to be pretty much just small character vignettes, some without all of the main cast present. The start of the arc had Misaka hanging out with Misaki’s bestie, then we had Kuroko and Uiharu dealing with an issue that only ended up tangentially related to the cards, and here we have Misaka accidentally teaming up with a member of ITEM, in fact the only member who she didn’t have a direct fight with last season, so there’s a bit of tension there. We also get a pretty interesting and clever way of using the cards to get the perspectives of several seemingly unrelated characters, which eagle eyed viewers will be able to recognize pretty well. Some are characters we’ve seen before either in this show or one of its related shows, while others seem to be set up for stories to come. Although, and I’ve put off mentioning it, the story for this episode is a bit…difficult for a grown man like me fully invest in. And that’s while knowing that this was written to appeal to grown men while being about teenage girls, which is…gross.

Either way, Dream Ranker is certainly not the super tense story that the Daihasei arc was, but maybe we needed a cool down to close out our nearly two year explosion of Raildex animated content. We’ve only got a handful of episodes left to go in this season and we’ve barely scratched the surface of where this arc will likely take us. Plus, the Team Railgun/ITEM match ups aren’t over yet, as next week we get Saten making a crossover friend of her own. AND it’s a set up for another Index storyline, which means I get to take up space talking about that like I’m that Charlie Day meme!