Dav also highlighted the above scene, from Vol.2 Ch 13, in her discussion of the challenges and expectations of the forthcoming Railgun anime. It shows why Mikoto is full of love and win and Oneesama. And we see Kuroko falling head over heels for Biri Biri all over again. 超電磁砲は超かこいい！！

And the manga just gets better and better… One of the concerns raised as been whether there will be enough material for an anime series or just an OVA. Having just glanced through the third volume, there should be enough material for one cour (12-13 eps) at least.

And definitely more chances for Mikoto to be oh so cool. I just loved the art in the top left panel above.

In Index, we often got Super Competitive Biri Biri (challenging Touma to fights) and Tsundere Biri Biri (struggling about her feelings for/against him) and both were great. But as the focus of the Railgun series, her portrayal is so much more balanced and we can really see her as the Main Heroine as she fights For Great Justice in Academy City – without all the annoying speechifying to boot!

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If it’s true there’s still always a but – particularly with respect to that old adage: Be careful what you wish for. Kurogane, rightly, sounds a cautionary note:

But god. I hope it’s not the same staff as Index…. although I have a pretty damn good feeling it will be.

Is Kuro-chan being way too pessimistic?

Afterall, as DiGiKerot points out, the structure and dynamics of Railgun are completely different from those in Index:

I guess the story of a girl who can fire coins at hypersonic speeds and her crazy, teleporting lesbian stalker room mate strikes people as being awfully more exciting than a show about a girl who knows everything about magic but can’t actually use the stuff and a guy whose power is cancelling out other people powers.

In addition, Railgun is based on a manga, a much more visually attuned medium that should translate better into anime, compared to Index which, I understand from BAD ASS LIGHT NOVEL READERS, is based on a rather exposition heavy light novel series. Even if it’s the same staff, they’ll be working with very different source material. At which point I was tempted to say: "What could possibly go wrong?"

But, as we all know from anime, that’s the prelude to disaster. And I’ve been told, nay, learnt from bitter experience to never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups. There is a fair bit of exposition in Railgun around concepts such as AIM or synthesia. Understanding all this important as the key to how our heroines win their battles in Railgun comes down, especially after the first volume, less to overwhelming their opponents with their higher level power but through creative and sometimes surprising application of their respective masteries of teleportation and electro-magnetism.

Now that our prayers for Biri Biri anime appears to have been granted and that I am not yet willing to manage my expectations downwards, I will join Kurogane in beseeching the anime gods to have the better (JC)staff to produce this anime.

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Kuroko (aka ‘Desu-no chan’ LOL), in particular, felt incomplete, unwhole. Thinking back, it wasn’t so much that she was diluted but that a facet of her personality was very deliberately and surgically spliced off – the crazy yuri jealousy which was the source of so much merriment when I was reading A Certain Scientific Railgun. Manga Kuroko’s jealousy is definitely one of her charm points, she just isn’t the same without it.

At least we got some of her perviness back. Washi eloquently described how the Index poster in Megami 105 distilled all his favourite things about the Index anime. Another big reason why the aforementioned poster is Good, for me, is because who’s not there: Touma. Which is why I suppose I prefer the Railgun manga so much more -he’s just an occasional cameo supporting chara.

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