English Dub Review: A Certain Scientific Railgun “Railgun x Mental Out”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Misaka restores the data of the site Uiharu found, which identifies Misaki as being involved with the weird things happening to Misaka and her friends. She uses this to track Misaki down and confront her on what’s going on. As revealed last episode, Misaki and her assistant Keitz have taken hold of Misaka 10032, but we learn from her perspective that she actually took her to keep her safe, and that erasing Uiharu’s, Saten’s, and Kuroko’s memories was to cover her tracks and keep them out of the fight. Turns out she’s not connected to MEMBER, and in fact she’s been investigating them and their interest in the SISTERS experiment, specifically using it to gain control of the Misaka Network. Misaki used her powers to get rid of whatever virus the nanomachine may have put in 10032. She’s also found out the one running the plan, the man who orchestrated the Sisters’ creation in the first place, Gensei Kihara.

Misaka’s not pleased with this explanation, especially since Kongou almost ended up a casualty in all of this, but Misaki tells her that simply trusting people wasn’t an option, which is easy to say for someone who can read and control minds. Now they’re teaming up because it seems there’s a chance Gensei will be at a certain facility they’re headed to, so there’s no way he could possibly plan for their arrival. So while Kuroko, Uiharu, and Saten piece things together, Misaka and Misaki charge in to take Gensei head on. Though after a bit of bickering, they decide to split up. But it seems Gensei has planned for them showing up, smugly worried that things might be going way too easily.

OUR TAKE

Funimation continues to slowly chisel through their ever piling back log of unfinished dubs, this time returning to A Certain Scientific Railgun after a two month pause, which…yeah, I really needed a refresher of the seventh episode to fully get back in the swing of things. Then again, this episode was also a bit hard to follow when I watched the sub, so that probably didn’t help it being the first one after such a long break. It mainly comes down to how the flow of events of Misaka going to see Misaki and having everything explained just kind of skips past the expected connective tissue of simply showing her get there and start talking. Instead we have to go through multiple oddly placed flashbacks as transitions that just ended up making me feel like I had skipped a scene or too. This was just very weirdly paced, is all I’m saying.

That said, the tension between the two Tokiwadai Level 5’s helps to make up for it, as we get to see how Misaki operates in her investigations and how her ability has shaped her worldview of people. Gotta admit, if I had the ability to make people tell me what they were thinking and change that to my whim, trust really wouldn’t be a factor, so her mindset does make a twisted sort of sense. Also explains why she’s such a queen-bee, cliquey kind of girl in her school life persona. It also plays nicely off of Misaka’s more direct approach and how utilitarian her abilities are, but how she’s managed to find trust in people around, partly because she CAN’T just read their minds. And that bit near the end showing how Misaki clearly doesn’t work out was pretty hilarious too.

But now we begin this arc’s latter half, which is a direct confrontation with Gensei Kihara, someone who fans of the franchise might already recognize by his last name. People who’ve seen Railgun Season 1 and Index Season 2 might notice this is the same last name as two separate antagonists from those shows, not to mention the stuff about the Kihara family that’s further expanded on in the light novels so far. Needless to say this arc is headed towards a battle that is close to the core of the major conspiracies in Academy City. And that battle begins next episode, whenever the hell Funimation gets the time to dub it. I’m sure it won’t take longer than another couple of months, give or take.