English Dub Review: A Certain Scientific Railgun “Ha det bra”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Yumiya begins toying with Frenda by landing small shots on her during the pursuit, forcing Frenda to really strategize in both avoiding being killed and protecting Saten, though Saten volunteers to act as a decoy to lure Yumiya in. Frenda reluctantly agrees to this and plants numerous bombs on her, though luckily this manages to get Yumiya out in the open without harming anyone but her, destroying the shopping area they’re in and landing a real bad mark on the assassin, so much so that she’s disfigured by the experience and vows to face Frenda again. Saten is monitored at an Anti-Skill facility for a few days, but Frenda tells her that she’ll come by to eat more mackerel. Unfortunately, on the day they plan to get together, Frenda doesn’t show up. Unbeknownst to Saten, she died during the conflict with the other Dark Side organizations.

OUR TAKE

And so ends this two-part prequel to the events of a different show! And it’s actually a rather action-packed AND somber one at that. Honestly, the whole premise sounds like it was made up of components that were drawn out of a hat at random, but they surprisingly manage to make it all fit together rather well, which kinda makes it extra impressive. Two characters who really should not go well together form a pretty genuine friendship and have that threatened by this also seemingly unfitting threat, all to build up a character who already died in the source material years ago, yet it comes out to this intense cat and mouse game involving snipers and bombs and mackerel with a gut punch of an ending. Just…kudos. Definitely one of the highlights of the season and most certainly one of the major moments of this arc, even if it doesn’t seem to play into the overall plot.

I guess the only thing about it that has me scratching my head is how they ultimately deal with Yumiya. Viewers of Index Season 3 know that she doesn’t show up in the arc that these two episodes lead into (in fact the only acknowledgement there is of her is that she was killed and replaced), yet this little mini prequel arc leaves her both alive and with a striking Darth Vader-y design while she seeks revenge. It feels like they’re setting her up for a future appearance to deal with her once and for all, but we know that this is will never come because the last moments of the episode jump past the events of the whole Dark Side organization battle. Wouldn’t it have been easier to just kill her off in the battle instead of having this dangling thread? Still, I can definitely say that Yumiya was a very distinct character and threat who also made a battle between three Level 0s (as in people with no super powers in this city) an exceptional fight.

The events of this episode actually brings us full circle in a way, as they overlap with the first few episodes of the third season of Index that premiered in Fall of 2018 just about two years ago when this long awaited new batch of Raildex content first began. And now, with only five episodes remaining in this season of Railgun (the last of which just aired in Japan yesterday), we’re pulling in for the last of it for the foreseeable future. Next week starts the beginning of the end, as well as actually starting up the real plot of this arc finally, so let’s see how it all wraps up.