English Dub Review: A Certain Scientific Railgun “Precognition”


OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Miyama begins working with Kuroko and Uiharu to stop the incidents he predicts before they happen, likely saving several lives in the process. They theorize that Kuroko’s teleportation is able to interfere with the predictions because, while Miyama’s precognition is three-dimensional, Kuroko’s teleporting is eleven-dimensional. That’s eight more dimensions, so it’s gotta be better! There’s probably some scientific basis in it, but the point is it’s working, so much so that everyone else in Judgement is piecing together that they’ve been working with a precog. This comes in handy when Miyama comes to them with several predicted incidents happening near each other in a park, with the accompanying photos showing a lot of fire.

Kuroko and Uiharu gather a few dozen Judgement members to investigate, but they don’t find enough in time to stop the fire itself, though they do piece together that there have been plant ampules likely injecting flammable substances into the trees to make them giant fuses. Miyama ends up straining himself coming up with more predictions and ends up hospitalized, where he remembers that a classmate accused him of causing an accident that happened to her by telling her it would happen. This was also when he saw a prediction of his pet stray dog, Perro, dying in the park fire, and so approached Judgement for help without telling them he just wanted to save his dog. When he wakes up, he rushes back to confess about the dog, who is still stuck in the fire after all the people have been rescued. Kuroko is more than happy to save Perro and gets him to a vet.

In the aftermath, the ones who left the ampules confess that they thought they were just making the cherry blossoms stay in bloom longer, using a technique they got from an Indian Poker card. Miyama has gotten his classmate that used to hate him to keep Perro for awhile, though Kuroko believes that his ability will continue to get stronger and that he’ll likely be using it to help others when it does, since she sees a lot of herself in him.

OUR TAKE

Despite it being right smack dab in the middle of summer, it’s time for this show to switch to fall uniforms! There is actually a reason for this, relating to how this series lines up with the main Index Timeline. In between the points in this episode where Kuroko and Uiharu change outfits, there’s a major arc that occurs in Index within that same time period, in the last stretch of episodes in its second season. Going back and watching those episodes, Kuroko and Uiharu DO appear, though away from the main action. With that in mind, I was actually surprised that there wasn’t much overlap with it here, though the episode makes a point to explain why this matter with Miyama didn’t lead to involvement there despite him being a pre-cog (in fact, it’s almost like the story felt the need to address it for the people who would be wondering about it). It kind of reminds me of the times Marvel’s Agents of Shield would briefly reference an incident going on in one of the MCU movies that was going to come out at the time, but it usually wasn’t anything major. And while it doesn’t really add much to know what Kuroko and Uiharu were up to in retrospect, it is a neat little detail.

Though while I enjoy getting into the useless minutia of spin-offs interacting with the main story, this episode was actually pretty strongly written all on its own, specifically in how it develops Kuroko. While I’d never especially HATED her, it was kind of disheartening that the one openly gay character in the franchise thus far tended to border on assault with Misaka, the object of her interest. But the other aspect of her that’s consistently given focus is her commitment to Judgement and enforcing order and justice. And since Misaka is nowhere to be found this week, that just leaves Kuroko’s justice side to get focus. She and Miyama form a genuinely endearing bond as he overworks himself to both save lives and save his dog’s life, while Kuroko’s ability ends up being the perfect solution for saving people who were originally doomed. Precognition stories do often go towards the theme of destiny or choice, as well as whether or not someone cements the future they predict or if it was going to happen all along. Thankfully exploring that doesn’t end up feeling tacky or derivative, but a rather compelling story about two people who are eager to pursue justice for those who they protect. Anyway, next week is an episode about bust sizes! I can feel the whiplash already.