Friday, October 29, 2010

To Aru Kagaku no Railgun OVA

The Railgun gang is back in an all new OVA adventure where... Mikoto feels like she's being watched and becomes paranoid.

Mikoto's vigilante-ing ways have finally caught up to her.

Summary:
The OP sequence has the four girls shooting videos of themselves with old school hand held film video cameras. Wasn't Academy City supposed to have futuristic gadgets instead of antiques?


The shot was ruined because Saten was too slow.

Mikoto feels someone is watching her, but she can't find out who or what is causing these feelings. As Mikoto starts to lose sleep and become paranoid about someone spying on her, Kuroko, Uiharu and Saten band together to find the culprit. Through a bit of online sleuthing, Kuroko's group discovers that Mikoto isn't the only person experiencing these episodes and they delve deeper into the mystery.

You know, it's considered courtesy to enter by knocking on the door instead of teleporting straight into the room.

Just to remind us that Railgun has girls who are not flat chested.

On a Sunday morning, Mikoto finally decides she can't take it anymore and goes to find the culprit herself, and Kuroko's group also spring into action. Mikoto finds a side alley near her dorm and gets the feeling again. Using her electromagnetic sense, Mikoto tracks the source of to two Anti-Skills standing in another nearby alley. Mikoto isn't sure if she's found the source, but Kuroko appears and points out that the female Anti-Skill named Jonan Asa is the culprit. Jonan is a researcher from an academy noted for developing ability users, and Kuroko and co have discovered that Jonan wrote a paper about broadcasting signals to make people with high electromagnetic sensitivity uncomfortable. Kuroko then confiscates a transmitter device from Jonan to prove her point. Having been exposed, Jonan sets off a flashbang to escape. Jonan runs to the river, takes over a speedboat and tries to escape from the city, but Mikoto and Kuroko appear on a bridge and Mikoto uses her railgun coin to blast the boat onto the bridge. It turns out Saten (with Uiharu's support) has been following Jonan so that's how Kuroko and Mikoto found out where Jonan was.

That's actually a nice way to travel in narrow metal-abundant alleys.

Kuroko just loves to give people a feel.

Another masterpiece by Miss Collateral Damage.

Back at a lounge somewhere, Mikoto thanks her friends for their help by treating them to fine cakes and giving Kuroko a massage. Kuroko explains that Jonan was dismissed from her job recently and was probably frustrated that she didn't develop a level 5 psychic despite the school's reputation. Jonan then decided to take things out on Mikoto, who is the most famous Level 5 there is. Kuroko, Saten and Uiharu compliment each other on the effort, but Uiharu accidentally reveals that Kuroko was shadowing and spying on Mikoto while she was at school or at the dorms. This leads Mikoto to give Kuroko some shocks as punishment.

So it turns out Kuroko was partially responsible for Mikoto feeling that she's being watched. However, I thought Kuroko stalked Mikoto all the time, so shouldn't Mikoto be used to it?

The ED sequence is just some still pictures of the characters.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Not the worst episode of Railgun we've seen, but certainly not the best either. This episode had a little bit of everything Railgun: there was a Touma cameo; Saten going off about urban legends; some 4-koma fun in the OP; a bit fan service here and there; and Mikoto blowing stuff up with her Railgun coin and causing collateral damage. There is no mistaking this OVA for anything other than Railgun.

Amongst all of the "Railgun-ness", there was "find the villain" story where Mikoto is descending into paranoia while her friends put on their sleuthing hats to find the cause. Have to give J.C. Staff some props for going with a "serious" story, but unfortunately it wasn't that well put together. "Mikoto feeling she's being watched" isn't exactly the most compelling crisis, but furthermore the villain was disappointing and the whole process of tracking down the villain and the explanation at the end didn't make much sense. Too much mumbo-jumbo that I was too tired to try to understand. I'll cut them some slack though since this is just one ~30 minute episode, so it might be harder to build a good story. Then again, they could have just gone for something more on the comedic side which might have turned out better.

Overall this was a decent episode of Railgun, but not too impressive.

No comments:

Post a Comment

 

blogger templates | Make Money Online