Toaru Kagaku no Railgun

The student-filled Academy City is at the forefront of scientific advancement and home to the esper development program. The seven "Level 5" espers are the most powerful in Academy City, and ranked third among them is middle schooler Mikoto Misaka, an electricity manipulator known as "The Railgun."

When strange incidents begin occurring throughout the city, she finds each crime to be connected to the elusive "Level Upper," a legendary device that allegedly increases the esper level of its user. As the situation escalates, it becomes apparent that there is more to the Level Upper than meets the eye, and that Academy City may be a far more twisted place than the glamorous utopia it appears to be.

Toaru Kagaku no Railgun focuses on Mikoto and her friends—and the dangerous situations they find themselves in—as they get caught up in the matter of the Level Upper. As Mikoto says, "There's never a dull moment in this city."

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Misaka, Mikoto Main

Satou, Rina Japanese

Shirai, Kuroko Main

Arai, Satomi Japanese

Saten, Ruiko Main

Itou, Kanae Japanese

Uiharu, Kazari Main

Toyosaki, Aki Japanese

Kamijou, Touma Supporting

Abe, Atsushi Japanese

Index Librorum Prohibitorum Supporting

Iguchi, Yuka Japanese

Kongou, Mitsuko Supporting

Kotobuki, Minako Japanese

Kiyama, Harumi Supporting

Tanaka, Atsuko Japanese

Tsukuyomi, Komoe Supporting

Koyama, Kimiko Japanese

Himegami, Aisa Supporting

Noto, Mamiko Japanese

Cook, Justin Producer

Nakayama, Nobuhiro Producer

Kananiwa, Kozue Producer

Kawase, Kouhei Producer

Reviews

Apr 5, 2024

someguy5644

Recommended

To Aru No Railgun is centrally a character study of various personalities and their interpersonal dynamics as middle schoolers living in an advanced society. Some of these characters have abilities called Esper powers which allow the majority female cast to be not only appeal to the male audience by being cute girls but also by way of combat sequences. Seeing the absolute intensity of Mikoto's electrical abilities and Shirai's teleportation is very enjoyable. These girls get up to a lot of things not merely related to class at school. The plot while simple is coherent, lore relevant concepts make sense. It's not particularly interesting stuff ... but it's all used effectively to act as a vehicle for character expression. You might find yourself thinking certain things sound dumb, oh that name could have been better, or certain interesting details being underutilized by for example being quickly used to resolve the episode instead of made more substantive and meaningful. I was able to excuse most of this because of the characters, and this is where To Aru gets the majority of its value. The central cast is very loveable all with their own arcs, and even side characters get development treated with the same level of care. This is propped up by excellent art design and writing that has real heart behind it. There are sincere emotional moments here and its mostly delivered convincingly. Railgun gets an 8 because it nails character roundedness and likeability, has real emotional sincerity, is beautiful to stare at, but everything else fails to be nearly as impressive.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Dec 10, 2020

cja1994

Mixed Feelings

The show can simply be summed up in one phrase: FILLERS ON FILLERS ON FILLERS!!!

If you're looking for a show with action, keep it moving. I will admit that the action scenes in the show are amazing and really good, but god are they far and few between. I came into this show expecting action, and I think it is fair to say, probably within the first six episodes, there were maybe sporadic fight scenes that lasted less than a minute.

The lack of action would not be so bad if the show was not so god damn boring. Episodes 12 and 13 are really good ... and action packed, and the 2 or so episodes leading up to them are pretty good too. The show finally gets a plot, and when the show knows what it wants to do, it is really good, but when it doesn't this show is almost painful to watch.

I think the show suffers from the same problem as Cowboy Bebop in that the show is just too long for it's own good. Similarly to Cowboy Bebop, there are good and phenomenal episodes, but for every good episode, there are far too many bad and boring ones, that just don't justify the series being as long as it is. I literally skipped about 10-12 episodes of a 24 episode season and feel that I missed nothing, which is pretty similar to what I experienced with Cowboy Bebop. Maybe i am just not into these "character driven" anime.

I think the show also suffers from the problem of the character development not naturally flowing from the plot (well if a plot existed) of the story, What I mean by this is rather than having an overall plot for 24 episodes, having events happen, and having character development flow from those events/flashbacks, the show has a very different formula. The show instead has 6 stand alone slice of life episodes meant to develop characters, 3 episodes of plot, 6 more episodes of stand alone, slice of life, character development, and then 3 more episodes of plot.

The sad part is that there is an episode where the show actually does a good job of having a fight scene with the main villain of the arc, the villain is defeated, and then we see a flashback of what led to the villain's motives, and it all flows and makes the entire episode interesting. However instead of doing this, the show unnecessarily feels the need to give every side character a full episode of development, with absolutely no plot in the episode, no relation to the overall story, and at times, no relation to the whole universe of students with superpowers. The show is just flat.

So if you're into episodic slice of life anime with a sprinkle of supernatural powers, then this is for you, but if you want a show with an actual plot involving things like mystery, action, or literally anything, then do not watch this show. Everyone says season two gets better, so we will see, but my belief is that it shouldn't take over 24 episodes for a show to actually get good and get going. I honestly do not understand how this anime has such a high rating....

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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May 6, 2020

ZombieSniper15

Not Recommended

how should i put this? the show is anything but what you'd expect considering its about the railgun... for starters there's quite a few episodes where shes shown for less then 60 seconds for the entire episode... shirai almost has more screen time to be honest and to top it off most episodes are bland at best. not to mention we keep getting the same mood ruining scene over and over where shirai tries to fondle or show affection to misaka who wants nothing to do with it, usually just in time to ruin a serious scene for the show. probably the worst is the ... story is wild and has almost no direction. they repeatedly add an entire episode to portray one character that pops up again for maybe 30 seconds. honestly i don't know what they were thinking when they made this highly disappointing. what aggravates me most is the characters cant get their act together like the enemy is obvious and the whole team is like "noooooo it couldn't possibly be them i mean they do seem like.... but nooooo" so the villain has to almost come out and say hes evil. this coupled with there always being one character that's too emotionally attached is just a horrible way to write this show. all the characters know whats happening and just ignore the fact almost outright, its preposterous. do better next time railgun for peats sake

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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	watch order ilayia - Oct 7	23 replies	by Vmml_WHill »» Oct 10, 4:19 PM
	Poll: Toaru Kagaku no Railgun Episode 23 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 5 ) removed-user - Mar 12, 2010	214 replies	by 5hadow17 »» Sep 28, 2:12 PM
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