By Kazuma Kamachi and Motoi Fuyukawa. Released in Japan as “Toaru Kagaku no Railgun” by ASCII Media Works, serialization ongoing in the magazine Dengeki Daioh. Released in North America by Seven Seas.

It has been noted several times that Academy City, where the events of this series take place, is providing young teens with power development so that they can, in essence, become superheroes. They are ranked all the way from Level 0 (Saten falls here, as well as Touma, though he really doesn’t count) up to Level 5. And our heroine, Misaka, is one of seven people in the entire city strong enough to be a Level 5. Of course, we’ve seen a few other Level 5s along the way. Accelerator. Mugino, leader of ITEM. And we just met Misaki and her mind-controlling in the previous volume. And it has to be said: Misaka is easily the most down-to-earth, sensible, and normal of all these overpowered lunatics.

And part of the reason for that is that, unlike most of the folks I mentioned above, Misaka isn’t lonely and doesn’t drive people away. She has a social life. She has her best friends. Yes, OK, Saten teases her, and Kuroko wants to assault her every chance she gets, but they’re still her support system that keeps her going through the tough times. Note how she tried to limit contact to those three during the Sisters Arc, where she was contemplating a) murder, and b) suicide. Unfortunately, Misaki is shaping up to be the next big antagonist, and can manipulate people’s memories. And Misaka finds out what this really means when her friends… no longer remember her.

I give credit to Misaka for taking this in and then quickly dealing with it. She’s in the middle of a crisis, one of her sisters has been kidnapped, and while I’m sure she’d love to argue with Kuroko till she’s blue in the face, there just isn’t time. But her face as she accepts what’s happened is simply depressing. Luckily, Misaki hasn’t had a chance to get to everyone, and Kongou is able to help her and give her a few words of comfort… well, anti-comfort, really. Kongou says she’ll try to get information, but Misaka absolutely shouldn’t trust it, as she may be ‘gotten at’ by the enemy.

Kongou, by the way, has two friends that we met in the previous volume, who are usually referred to as ‘those two guys/girls’ by anime fans. They’re the friends of the person who actually gets the dialogue and situations, there to show that they have their own backup and support system. And Kongou’s friends are sweet, adorable minor characters. They even joke in the first chapter about how they have no idea what it’s like to be really angry. Except… why do those two minor characters have such a large picture on the cover? That’s right, this is foreshadowing. And there are no minor characters in Railgun, there are only a bunch of awesome women who will beat the crap out of you. Watching Wannai and Awatsuki get furious and hand the minor mook (who’s a sexist to boot) his ass is a joyous thing to see.

Things are getting quite complicated as we move further into the school festival. At first we thought Misaki might be behind everything, but now it transpires there are multiple groups of villains (a favorite tactic of the author in the main Index series). Will Misaka be able to rescue her sister, restore her friends’ memories, win the athletic competitions and speak with Touma without n blushing and stuttering? Well, we’re caught up with Japan, so you’ll have to wait till April to find out!

By Kazuma Kamachi and Motoi Fuyukawa. Released in Japan as “Toaru Kagaku no Railgun” by ASCII Media Works, serialization ongoing in the magazine Dengeki Daioh. Released in North America by Seven Seas.

First off, in case I forget to actually review the book, this was a fun volume of Railgun. The Sisters arc was wrapped up, we started a new one about the city-wide athletic festival, and there’s lots of awesome, heartwarming, and funny.

Now, let’s talk continuity, aka “Wait, when the hell did Kuroko get put in a wheelchair?!?!”

First, a brief timeline:
1) A Certain Magical Index Light Novels: April 2004-present. The “Sisters” book came out in September 2004, and the “athletic festival” books (which didn’t focus on Misaka entirely) in April-May 2006.
2) A Certain Scientific Railgun (manga): April 2007-present. It runs in a monthly magazine.
3) A Certain Magical Index (manga): May 2007-present. Also in a monthly magazine.
4) A Certain Magical Index (anime): October 2008-March 2009. This includes the “Sisters” arc, from Touma’s perspective.
5) A Certain Scientific Railgun (anime): October 2009-March 2010. Note that the manga had only just barely started the Sisters arc (from Misaka’s perspective) when the anime began. Which is why you didn’t see it.
6) A Certain Magical Index II (anime): October 2010-April 2011. This has the athletic festival from Touma’s POV, but likely won’t crossover with the Railgun storyline much.
7) A Certain Magical Index (film): February 2013.
8) A Certain Scientific Railgun S (anime): April 2013-present. Judging by the OP credits, this *will* have the Sisters arc, including the battle with ITEM.

For the most part, the Railgun manga has been pretty good about letting casual readers follow along, and explaining things as they go. The only time the storyline ever really connects with index is during the Sisters arc, and other than that, Railgun has its own plots and its own problems. There are, of course, little bonuses for those who follow the books. ITEM are given a major role in the Sisters arc as the child soldiers Misaka battles, right around the time they were becoming very important in the Index books proper. (This is why Rikou, who really wasn’t all that active in the battles, gets a larger picture on the cover than Frenda, who was. She’s more important later.)

Around Vol. 7 is where the continuity starts to snarl, though. First of all, the anime, needing to fill up episodes since they couldn’t animate the Sisters arc (as the manga hadn’t finished it yet) introduces Mitsuko Kongo much earlier, and gives her different plotlines to play around with. Not that the manga is ready to introduce her, it doesn’t really have the time to. So Mitsuko’s introduction takes about 2 chapters, where she sets herself up as the rich rival character and is very quickly humbled. (This actually has the added benefit of making her more likeable, and I thought she was pretty cute.)

And sometimes the manga simply has to abandon even explanations, and just trust the reader will go “OK, something happened.” The athletic festival takes place about a month after the Sisters arc ends, and somehow Kuroko is now in a wheelchair (and Uiharu is blaming herself for the injuries.) What happened? Well, the 8th Index novel, in which Kuroko, as a member of Judgement, goes after a fellow teleportation expert who is trying to steal valuable plot macguffins. In the midst of this, she nearly gets killed, and thus is now in said wheelchair for the duration of the festival. Unfortunately, the series is not called “A Certain Perverse Teleporter”, so Kuroko’s story is just elided away.

There’s also lots of other little things: Accelerator appears again, and seems to be crippled (from Touma’s beating? Actually, no.) and also not, apparently, in any trouble for the experiments. Actually, the manga does a nice little flashback showing how Accelerator was manipulated by scientists just as much as Misaka was, and makes you ponder if “I was only following orders” might be a valid excuse for someone so young. It gets to the point where when we see characters who actually ARE appearing for the first time (such as the “Queen”, or the Aztec girl at the end of the volume), we wonder if they’ve been in the main source and we missed it.

More accurately, I wonder this. Most casual readers likely are fine with reading this typically exciting and fun Railgun volume. But Kuroko’s injury and its out-of-nowhere appearance has been mentioned as confusing, so I thought I’d talk about it a bit.

Oh yes, and Saten is still awesome. But you knew that.

By Kazuma Kamachi and Motoi Fuyukawa. Released in Japan as “Toaru Kagaku no Railgun” by ASCII Media Works, serialization ongoing in the magazine Dengeki Daioh. Released in North America by Seven Seas.

As we get into Vol. 5 of Railgun, it strikes me how many sociopathic killers are really in this series. It’s a whole lot. Misaka has found out about the experiment where 20,000 of her clones are killed off in order to force a Level 5 to get even higher, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Academy City and its dedication to science clearly continues to have a dark and sordid underbelly, and I doubt that the enemies this time will be as misguided but ultimately likeable as in the Level Upper arc.

First we have Accelerator, this arc’s “Big Bad”, who just finished brutally murdering Misaka 9982 at the end of last volume. The real Misaka is understandably upset by this, and does her best to try to make Accelerator see reason, or at least beat the shit out of him. This is especially true when she hears his motives are simply power, thus making the killings even more appalling. There’s a short battle, but a) it becomes clear that Misaka is severely outclassed by her enemy, and b) the clones stop things fairly quickly, pointing out that if he defeats the real Railgun now, that sort of ruins the experiment.

So now Misaka knows about the experiment, and has to stop it. The clones are of no help at all, as they don’t value their own lives so can only point out how easy it 9is to build new ones. She briefly has the help of Shinobu, a scientist who is trying to fix things after realizing that the clones are more than just lab rats. But for the most part it’s just Misaka straightforwardly trying to destroy the experiment by destroying every single site where it takes place – all 10 of them, supposedly used to combat muscular dystrophy. Yes, it’s Misaka the terrorist. Given that the hero of the main series, Touma, tends to solve problems by simply punching them very hard, it’s somehow fitting that our heroine is cut from the same cloth – if there are no more labs, there will be no more experiment.

Of course, things aren’t made that easy, as we also meet ITEM, the anti-terrorist group sent off to take Misaka out. These are basically child soldiers, with a slightly older leader, and are, like Accelerator, rather blase about all the people they have killed. The team is actually balanced nicely between two hotheads who glory in killing and torture, and two cool stoics who seem more blase about the whole thing. Naturally, it’s the hotheads who get most of the focus, and as we see a 10-year-old girl brag about the number of people she’s killed, we are reminded again what kind of environment this is.

And so in the end Misaka thinks she’s won, but somehow I doubt it. Blow up 10 labs, and 10 more will spring up. This is about defeating an entire scientific culture, and that will take far more than electroshock therapy. Luckily, we have an exciting cliffhanger, where… she sees Touma at a vending machine! Gasp! (This is actually more exciting to those who have read or seen A Certain Magical Index, as the two stories now join up, all of the past two volumes having been prelude.) Will she ask Touma for help? Or just be tsundere at him? It’s been a while since we’ve seen that side of her…