It’s shockingly pretty good
Slight change to the format. From now on I’m going to add a quick word explaining what I expected upon reading the title and seeing the main thumbnail (sometimes reading the quick blurb on it) before ever watching the show. Hopefully this will help explain why I pick the shows I do to review. For this one, I saw the word railgun and that pretty much sold me on it. I hoped that some big ass railgun would be involved, or at least a lot of action and explosions. Typical trashy action stuff. While elements of that do end up existing, they are not as prevalent as I had imagined.
A Certain Scientific Railgun follows the story of Misaka Mikoto and Shirai Kuroko and their two friends Uiharu Kazari and Saten Ruiko. Mikoto is a level 5 esper with the power to use electricity and focus it to turn it into the eponymous railgun. She often helps Kuroko, a level 4 with the power of teleport, and Kazari, a level 1 with an undisclosed power, with their Judgement duties (though she’s really not supposed to). Despite being what seems like an idillic near-future city, there’s enough of a crime problem to warrant a peace keeping force called Judgement which is dispatched to apprehend criminals. The set-up is not too different from My Hero Academia, people have special powers, some people use em for bad, gotta have good people to stop em. The situations shown in the first few episodes ranged from a bank robbery to a girl tazing other girls after getting dumped by her boyfriend. I do like the mix of stakes, it helps at least stave off a sense of power creep from the bad guys, though I’m sure that will still ultimately occur. Other than these situations, the anime is really more akin to a slice of life/school anime with the girls mostly just hanging out and getting into hijinks. The end of the third episode did seem to indicate some bigger bad was lurking, with the implication lower level users were acting more powerful than they should be. Definitely nothing novel, but those stories are usually fun to play out, especially in this setting where there seems to be a large social divide between the higher level users and the lower level ones. Also the OP slaps.
This anime certainly doesn’t sound like trash. Badass girl who can shoot explosions, class-warfare undertones, but enough humor to keep things relatively light. Certainly sounds like some good shit. It would be if it weren’t for one Shirai Kuroko. Kuroko takes this anime and keeps it just inside the trash lid. She exists almost solely for fan service and yuri shipping. Most of her actions revolve around trying to bone Mikoto, usually via the use of aphrodisiacs, which are apparently very effective in this world. In three episodes she groped Mikoto’s breasts in the shower, tried to seduce her in their room, and stole her underwear after drinking her own aphrodisiacs by mistake. There’s just enough of these antics that I just can’t quite label this as not being trash. That said, the overall quality is pretty good, and if I have time to continue watching and those horny antics decrease, I could see myself changing my mind on this one. Either way this one’s worth a watch.
Is it trash? YES (but barely)
Rating: ★★★★☆