English Dub Review: A Certain Scientific Railgun “Clone Dolly”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Misaka and Misaki race towards what they believe to be Gensei’s target, a supercomputer called Exterior which connects to Misaki’s Mental Out ability, with her even using it remotely to force open a traffic jam like the Red Sea. As they head there, Misaki remembers her past experiments when she was younger. This is where she met Dolly, the very first Misaka clone who was very weak and didn’t have long to live. Regardless, she and Misaki became fast friends, which only made it hurt all the more once Dolly passed away. Enraged by the scientists’ cavalier attitude towards Dolly’s death, Misaki began to overtake their minds and soon took control of the Exterior project, which was originally supposed to give others access to her power. Even weirder is that it’s actually made up of a part of her cerebral cortex that was cultivated into a giant brain.

Upon arrival, it seems that Gensei hasn’t touched Exterior, but Misaki can’t imagine what else he could want. She then gets a call from Keitz, saying that he was forced to take Misaka 10032 out of their safe house, but it’s probably a trap to lure Misaki out, so Misaka goes to confront him instead. Yet as it turns out, Gensei was already in control of Exterior by synching up its brainwaves with his own using Level Upper (long story short, it boosts Esper abilities). With that, he can also turn off the safeguards on the Misaka Network and even inject a custom virus to knock out the remaining Misakas. But all of this was simply a ploy for their real target: Misaka Mikoto herself. He’s actually wanted to lure her out and use the network to activate her dormant power in order to see if she can become a Level 6.

OUR TAKE

Gotta say, I’m bummed that we didn’t end up going back to a regular weekly release schedule, having skipped last Friday. But given that Funimation still has close to 70 individual episodes of their Winter season to get to and can barely squeak out five episodes per week in current conditions, I’m honestly just glad that Railgun is getting as much priority as it has. We’re still making good headway towards finishing this arc and catching up with the sub, which doesn’t resume until late July, so there’s still plenty of time to fit the remaining five episodes into that month and a half. Also surprised that relatively obscure stuff like this is getting priority over Black Clover and the last two episodes of My Hero, but I’m sure there’s reason behind that.

Anyway, this episode’s main contribution seems to be further exploration of Misaki’s backstory, which has some not unexpected parallels to Misaka’s own. She is, after all, also a Level 5 with a versatile and powerful ability, so it would make sense that she went through similar experimentation from Academy City’s corrupt researchers in sketchy and, frankly, ludicrous projects. For Misaka, it was having 20,000 clones made of her to be used for slaughter against Accelerator, while Misaki had a piece of her brain turned into a giant computer to give her ability to others. It’s safe to say that being a Level 5 in Academy City pretty much means you’re going to be really messed up at some point by whatever the board wants from you. Also, speaking of clones, we have yet another Misaka clone who is separate from the established 20000! So, on top of Last Order and Misaka Worst, we now also have Dolly, who I guess was more like a 0th clone. But hats off once again to Brittany Karbowski for bringing a unique voice to this and showing her range, whereas the other Misakas are typically given other voice actresses in the Japanese dub.

And we of course have to talk about the cliffhanger of Misaka being the target all along just so she can now possibly be imbued with the power that Accelerator once reached for, the legendary Level 6. Given that we have seen Misaka after this story takes place and she is completely normal, I don’t see this plan working out for Gensei in the end, but it’s still a hell of an image to leave us on and have us think about for however long it takes for Funi to put out Episode 11. Or you can go watch the sub and find out, but where’s the fun in that?