After the successful To Aru Majutsu no Index anime series, it was expected that the spinoff based on one of Index’s heroines Misaka Mikoto, would be animated as well. That being said, the Railgun series that runs in parallel with Index’s storyline, with several interactions between the two series facilitated through Index’s main protagonist Kamijou Touma. There are some charming characters and intriguing plots in this series, which keeps things interesting and fun, but there is definitely room for improvement here.
Production quality wise, JC staff does a stellar job of maintaining consistent animation quality, with some notably well animated actions scenes, no doubt from JC Staff’s long time experience with more “superpowers” based anime adaptations, such as Shakugan no Shana, Zero no Tsukaima, and the counterpart to this series, To Aru Majutsu no Index.
The main attraction to this show is most certainly the main characters to this series. The main cast, consisting of our main heroine Misaka Mikoto, her roommate Kuroko, “Judgement” member Uiharu, and her class mate Saten, are all charming in their own unique way. Misaka’s tsundere righteous personality may turn some people off, but mostly, she’s a cute and fun character to watch, while Kuroko’s over the top tactics to try and get Misaka to fall in love with her (FYI, Kuroko is a lesbian) is both eyebrow raising yet hilarious. Uiharu and Saten both contribute to the quirkiness of the main cast in their own way, which makes watching the character interactions in this show truly entertaining to watch. Not to mention, the fact that most of the characters in this show have a unique special “power”, such as the ability to teleport or control electricity, makes the entire cast more diverse and intriguing to watch.
There are some good moments of character development as well, surprisingly with Saten and Uiharu. I feel that they both get the most amount of character development in this series, sometimes subtle and other times more blatent. Although Mikoto is my favorite character to this series, objectively speaking Saten get’s the most amount of character development and complexity to her personality.
The story is very arc oriented, with the entire series cut up into three or so arcs, with some filler episodes interspersed in between. Quite honestly, in terms of story, I felt that these arcs felt rather weak in terms of plot, with some very shallow villains (with the exception being the female scientist) that made the major conflicts themselves quite boring, even if the action scenes themselves were pretty good. I will admit that there were some battles with some creative usage of the characters’ powers that made them very interesting to watch.
The great part to this series would have to be how all the main characters interact with what is around them, resulting in some hilarious moments between characters such as Touma and Mikoto, or some laugh inducing moments at the sheer fangirlism of Uiharu.
As for the actual setting, the author of the original source material did a good job with detailing the setting of the story. The integration of quantum physics ideas, although almost certainly not applicable in the ways it is portrayed in this anime, was a nice touch adding some unique concepts and ideas to this series. Not to mention, the law enforcement groups “Judgement” and “Anti-skill” makes the setting more sensible, yet at the same time, adds a whole different aspect to the entire story.
Overall, this show is a fun to watch story with some serious story arcs, with a charming main cast that really gets you into the plot. I definitely feel that some of the filler episodes were unnecessary, but there was a decent amount of character development throughout the show, with a good amount of slice of life moments interspersed in between everything.
Production Quality: 8.5/10
Characters: 8.5/10
Story: 7.0/10
Setting: 8.0/10
Overall Score: 8.0/10
Distant Paradise 