Toaru Kagaku no Railgun is the follow-up series to 2008/2009’s Toaru Majutsu no Index. The story focuses on Misaka Mikoto, or “railgun”, and her group of friends. If the show was done right it could’ve been a fantastic action thrill ride, but instead we’re left with a hodgepodge of mini stories with some occasional action. Off the top of my head I can think of two examples that I could do without: photography day and school festival day. I’m sure the studio knew the fame and following certain characters had and it’s not surprising such episodes exist, I just wish that kind of stuff was saved for something like DVD extras. When Railgun got down to business though it was a pretty fun ride. The action was large, in your face and provided some impressive visuals. Other than the rather lame cliched final battle this show gets a seal of action approval.
The cast of characters is a combination of old and new, and for the most part, works pretty well. Starting off I didn’t think I’d be able to handle the show since lead character Shirai Kuroko, voiced by Arai Satomi, had a fairly grating voice. It grew on me over time, and by the end felt completely natural. As for the two new main characters, Saten and Uiharu, it was really hit or miss. I liked Saten; some of the story arcs centered around her were enjoyable. I was disappointed, however, that her skill level of zero amounted to nothing, and should be taken to heart. I guess I expected there to be some special case as to why she was a zero. Uiharu, on the other hand, didn’t do it for me. First off that row of flowers in your hair is annoying. Secondly I found her personality to suck. It was a bit too whiny and really provided nothing special as far as I’m concerned. This especially came true for me near the end when she became sort of an uptight stubborn bitch.
Toaru Kagaku no Railgun does a fine job of being entertaining, but failed short of becoming a great show. Certain filler episodes and some weak characters held it all back. It also lacked one of the most enjoyable aspects of its predecessor, the Misaka/Touma arguments.
Seto no Hanayome’s story revolves around a young teenage boy named Nagasumi Michishio. One day during his summer vacation, Nagasumi was saved from drowning by a mermaid, Sun Seto, in the Seto Inland Sea. However, under mermaid law, if a mermaid’s identity as a mermaid has been revealed, either the mermaid who was involved or the human who saw the mermaid are to be killed. In an attempt to save both Nagasumi and Sun’s lives, Sun’s family, which is apparently the head of its own Yakuza mob, reluctantly decides that the two are to be married.
Gōzaburō, Sun’s father, however, is enraged about his daughter getting married, especially to a human whom he deems inferior. Between Gōzaburō’s attempts on his life and the madcap antics of a whole slew of antagonists — including the daughter of a rival mobster and a rich male transfer student with an attraction for Sun — Nagasumi is not enjoying a very smooth transition into his new lifestyle.
Kadokawa just LOVES milking their franchises to death huh? Oh yeah, because blind-obsessed fanboys like me eat them up!
I love cars/motor-sport. And I love anime. And yes, this isn’t quite a combining of the two. But that fact that Mr. Wa-Wa-Wa-Wasuemono is on board means WIN in my book. That and it has the name Lucky Star attached to it. Lucky Star Itasha Go-Karts? Hope so!
Track List
1. 私だけを見て (Watashi dake wo Mite)
2. Shy Girls -Amahara Kiyono ver.-)
3. 女の子の本音-天原清乃編- (Onna no Ko no Honne -Amahara Kiyono-hen-)
4. 私だけを見て -off vocal ver.-
As expected from Hikasa Yoko, these songs sound just like Mio. Not that I’m complaining~
Finally done these character songs, now to make my way through the rest of my queue… think I’ll do Kobato. OST next, because Kobato’s song is pretty~
—————————————-
私だけを見て (Watashi dake wo Mite)
Amahara Kiyono (CV: Hikasa Yoko)
私だけを見て もっと側で watashi dake wo mite motto gawa de
誰よりも輝いて魅せるから dare yori mo kagayaite miseru kara
瞳奪って 焼き付けてあげるよ hitomi ubatte yakitsukete ageruyo
その胸の 高鳴りを 聞きたくて sono mune no takanari wo kikitakute
もっと早く時が 過ぎればいいのにね motto hayaku toki ga sugireba ii no ni ne
子供扱いなんてありえないから kodomo atsukai nante arienai kara
逃げたくないよ いつだって nigetakunaiyo itsudatte
凛としたら my way rin toshitara my way
間違いだとしても 歩いていくから machigaida toshitemo aruiteiku kara
一番キレイと云って 笑って ichiban kirei to itte waratte
誰もが息をのむ 華になる dare mo ga iki wo nomu hana ni naru
絶対ジャマなんてさせないよ zettai jama nante sasenaiyo
この胸も この髪も 誘ってる kono mune mo kono kami mo sasotteru
チャンスやハッピーを 待ってるだけじゃ嫌 chansu ya happi— wo matteru dake ja iya
手に入れる為なら なんでもできる te ni ireru tame nara nande mo dekiru
素直になっただけだから sunao ni natta dake dakara
ほっといてよ my way hottoiteyo my way
上手くかわさずに 受け止めてほしい umaku kawasazu ni uketomete hoshii
私だけを見て もっと側で watashi dake wo mite motto soba de
誰よりも輝いて魅せるから dare yori mo kagayaite miseru kara
瞳奪って 焼き付けてあげるよ hitomi ubatte yakitsukete ageruyo
その胸の 高鳴りを 聞きたくて sono mune no takanari wo kikitakute
ねぇ もっと見つめていて nee motto mitsumeteite
そらさないで 瞳から 体から sorasanai de hitomi kara karada kara
素顔の私を… sugao no watashi wo…
私だけを見て どんなときも watashi dake wo mite donna toki mo
このまま燃え尽きても良いから kono mama moetsukitemo ii kara
押さえきれない程の想いも osaekirenai hodo no omoi mo
この胸も この髪も 捧げたい kono mune mo kono kami mo sasagetai
To be honest, it makes me laugh how much people can get addicted to things. Some of my ridiculous addictions? Manga and anime. Not that I watch anime anymore, but come on, lets face it. I am still in love with anime.
How did this crazy addiction start, or came to be?
I blame it all on my cousin. Haha, I was in year seven when he first showed me and my siblings our first subbed (because I don’t really count the ones on TV. I.e Pokemon, Digimon…) anime. And guess what it was? ‘Onegai Teacher’ or ‘Please Teacher’. Haha, what a way to start of my addiction.
I remember when my cousin showed us Ichigo 100% and his friend walks in and gave a horrified look at the computer screen and then to Kuya and said, ‘Kerbs! What are you showing these kids?!’
I remember feeling my face burn when he replied: ‘They’re the ones watching it, not me.’
But yeah… I didn’t find out about manga probably a year later. And oh my God, what that addiction was. I still do read manga on my spare time. (Maybe I’ll post up my list of recommendations later) I fell in love with it straight away. The details, the characters, the storylines! It just amazed me!
I remember last year in one of my tutorials when we were on the topic of how manga and American comics were different. I remember feeling indignation when they started to say that manga didn’t have enough detail, or the backgrounds were scarce and it was a quick read. I wanted to speak up and say ‘That’s absolutely wrong! The plots are unique! Manga caters for all ages and genres…’ and so on. Bu~t I was too shy to speak up.
Anyway, I think that’s all I’ll say on that topic for now.
I recently came upon an idea that spawned from noticing that some people aren’t sure what Vocaloid and Touhou are. As such, I’ve taken the liberty of making a series of posts on the background of the Touhou and Vocaloid franchises. They will touch upon the general information, bios for each character, and possibly any sub-categories for each of the series. I will be making a single post each day, the first one starting tomorrow. I will do the Vocaloid series first to completion, and then I will do the Touhou series, also in completion. I hope for it to be enlightening and enjoyable to each and every one of you who reads it. See you tomorrow!
Here’s a little something special for you as a teaser:
Feel free to use them however you want. Same applies to any further images.
The Tokyo Metropolitan government have announced they are proposing to extend the reach of existing child pornography laws to include a ban on provocative “visual depictions” of underage “nonexistent youths” – meaning, comic, videogame and cartoon characters.
The law in question is the Metropolitan Tokyo youth welfare law. The amendment would mean that a provocative and/or sexual depiction of a character that appears to be eighteen years or younger would be banned.
However, the proposals have met strong opposition from some groups – most notably from manga creators.
Manga is a form of comic, and very popular in Japan. Unlike the perception of comics in the West, manga covers many genres and appeals to a wide range of audiences, including women, children and the elderly.
Some high profile manga creators have stated that the amended law restricts their artistic freedom. The proposed legislation can be “freely” interpreted and would affect manga characters “despite no living beings being hurt.”
Either way, the law would only apply in Metropolitan Tokyo, and not elsewhere in Japan.
What do you think, BWT readers? Does child pornography extend to drawn depictions of virtual characters? Do you think the proposal – if passed – would be a good thing, or a bad thing? And how would someone be able to indentify if an image is underage?
Occasionally, you have a day that re-affirms that everything in life can be fun and enjoyable. The one I just had has made me optimistic enough to number this post, in hopes of more to come.
The day spanned from 9:30 AM to 4:00 AM the next day. Ho boy.
First, I showed up to the Arts Lecture Hall at my university in the wee hours of the morning. Robostrike was organizing a Gundam model building event, and I figured that I might as well try it out, despite not really being a Gundam fan. I had asked him a few weeks earlier if I could participate, and just build one of his models for him. He agreed, and so there I was. Robo was building a Gundam Unicorn model base (this one). Hitnez was there as well, but he was just perusing a model magazine.
Model building is tedious at times, but actually pretty fun. I’m sure I made numerous rookie mistakes (one being accidentally throwing out the sticker sheet), but I did my best to try to ensure that the model I would eventually give back to Robo was an acceptable one. Partway between the building process, I had to duck out to go to lunch with another friend.
Lunch was delicious, as always, because it was all you can eat sushi. The two of us downed numerous plates of the stuff, including my favourite: the salmon pizza. She dropped a lot of bombs on me; a result of the fact that we haven’t really seen each other in a few years; and I returned to the school in a very positive mood.
As I continued the model building, my hair was really starting to get in the way. Thankfully, MapleRose had brought a few hair clips with her, so I used one.
Yes, I really did.
And just to show that I don't care...
In the end though, I finished the Calamity Gundam!
What a terrible first picture of this model
I presented it to Robostrike, and began to walk away to start cleaning up, when he insisted that I take it and keep it, because I was the one who built it. I didn’t know how to respond, and I still don’t, really. Thank you, Robo; I’ll have to pay you back for this soon!
For the rest of the show (of which I watched about ten seconds), I played Mario Kart with the group. I quickly fell in line with the Vacuum Kart team, led by the infamous Lliw. Despite me never using drift boosts, I was consistently second out of a group of seven players, thus proving either my skill, or the vacuum kart’s superiority. I’d like the think it’s the former.
After the show, we all filed into a room in the SLC, which for some reason smelt awful at first. It was loud outside, and louder inside, and in order to talk to the person beside you, you had to yell. Shian didn’t help the situation much by playing what seemed like crappy 8-bit music on an infinite loop throughout half of the night. We settled in at around 10 PM, and left at 3:30 AM. I ended up playing a few games of Dominion. Because we had eight players, Ymerej led one group, and I led the other. My aggressive strategy almost paid off, but once the dust settled, I ended up tied for first in my first game. I played again with Lliw and Nadroj. Lliw was playing multiplayer Mario Kart while we were playing Dominion, and we were switching the DS between each other so that one of us was taking a turn while the other was racing. Despite this handicap, our combined efforts got us in the top placements incredibly often. Sushifaerie set up a game of Cities and Knights (a Settlers of Catan extension), and I got roped into playing, despite not knowing any of the new rules. I ended up losing that game by two points (13-12-11-10 were the scores, I think, with myself being the 11), which I’m going to claim is impressive, considering I didn’t know what I was doing when I laid my first settlement and city.
Finally, when the last game was over, we packed up and began to head home. Shian offered to lend me a manga called Ikigami. I read some of it before going to bed; it’s impressive so far… Very thought-provoking, and caused me to reflect on the themes of the Japanese Religion course I’m taking this term (it’s all about death and dying).
Despite the crippling fatigue the next morning, I’m going to claim yesterday a success. I have to admit though, the highlight of the night was a story time moment between RoseTech and NecroPhantasia . RoseTech has a habit of bringing elicit material to club events, and this show was nothing new. He brought a trio of Doujin (I didn’t catch the series name), that was essentially yuri (lesbian) softcore porn. Like many of the things he owns, RoseTech’s volumes were in Japanese, so he was trying to get those who understand it to translate the volumes. He ended up getting NecroPhantasia to translate a chapter for him:
An innocent bedtime story
Model picdump after the jump
Calamity Gundam interrupting a game of Cities and Knights
Wow i seriously love J.C.Staff, i cannot express how much i like their animation production. Everything they make has its own little spice, Railgun has its own little epicness, ill get to that in a moment once i finish episode 23, so Railgun is going to end soon with an epic final battle. The episode reminds me a little of Tora-Dora, as we all know how epic that was as a series but lets start railgunning.
To More —> Ritsu, i mean Banri-Chan is shown in the beginning of the episode and how out Haruue are old friends,
Telepathy is great,
Ok now i have to kinda refresh my brain a little,
Poor haruue,
It seems that the two are still having problems with each other,
Misaka is bathing in pink acidic water
Kuroko is trying to act cool and walks in on Misaka saying that she made the right choice as a member of Judgement.
Only to get bucketed in the face, ahaha this was absolutely perfect, hilarious,
On another note we also find out something very interesting about Uiharu,
HER SPECIAL POWER AS AN ESPER!!!
is to keep whatever she holds warm, or we should say constant temperature, ok its not anything special but its something.
Ok so misaka gets a call.
Someone got Kiyama-sensei bailed outta jail.
Hmm Uiharu and Kuroko still not on good terms.
Ok here is what Kuroko was able to find, it seems that Haruue’s old Friends are the reason for Poltergeist.
Yeah you get the idea, trigger trigger, chain.
Hmm
AH i see you are running windows, i see the folder my documents.
Oh sorry, uh this profile is Gensei, the “mad scientist” that performed some mad experiments.
Kuroko Orgasmic dream of misaka.
She is geko-tan, well she is sneaking in to the old laboratory of Gensei,
I see she was correct.
Oh what are you looking at…
GAH!
KARROOOOM
Misaka triggers off the security system,
So they have to run.
Wow we find the place of the other child errors.
GEKOTAN-SENSEI!
No not really…
Now we finally know the meaning behind the episode title, all the children were really experiments for level 6 creation, non other than by Gensei the mad scientist. “How many victims did you use?”
Apparently all they needed to do was to overload the minds of espers with a crystal that he has invented.
Hum
Kiyama knows that the only way to awake them was to try and get them pass the overloading point, but everytime they try and awake them they overload and cause the poltergeist. She is almost finished her research on the method to awake them all, but she needs something else.
She needs data on the first sample. But she cant find it anywhere.
Hmm.
Oh she was stalking them. She is going to take them all away now, and help them get better.
Kiyama wants to stop her.
Misaka wants Kiyama to understand that, she isnt saving them by causing the poltergeist effect.
Kiyama
MAR is going to take them away.
Very silent,
Very Silent,
I really like this episode, cause it was very dramatic with Kiyama, and we get to learn a lot more about the horrific past of the mad scientist and the side of the “good scientist”. It would seem like it’s impossible for the good scientist to win here, and save the children.
But enough of that time for the semi-final episode. i would say this is the best episode yet. EP 23
So Telestina let’s Haruue see Banri-chan, and her smile is oh so creepy, im talking about telestina.
hmm Uiharu, is being forced by Saten to go see Kiyama,
Everyone is kinda depressed.
Let’s make that depressed.
Kiyama was sooo close, but soo far, very frustrated. Uiharu says that they should help out all they can and visit the children.
So they meet with telestina who is acting very wierd, kiyama hands over her data on everything she has been researching up till now. She wont let her see the children or Haruue, since they are going to be moved to another location.
WHAT DA FUX?!?!
Her middle name is Kihara, that rings a bell with Gensei.
And now we find our new bad guy.
Hmm it seems our anti-skill are annoyed about the sudden drop of project poltergeist.
Very annoyed.
Uiharu infinite crying. Poor uiharu, thank you Toyosaki Aki for a wonderful display of voice actor skill.
Ah kuroko slaps some sense into Uiharu,
Kuroko wants to see the Uiharu from Judgement return.
Eh why is she in a gundam suit? I thought she was the first experiment, so she should actually be an esper of level 6, but then why is she in a suit…Oh yeah its not a gundam suit lol.
Our Misaka demands to know what she is going to do with the children.
Misaka snaps, and i would as well if i was spoken to like that as well.
Oh my god who is that person?!!?!? J.C. Staff really know how to change her facial expression to make her look the evil roll, thank you J.C.Staff keep up the good work. God dam this sudden character change was the most unexpected turn of events i would ever see in the history of anime that i have seen. I mean a good character change, in a good anime. REALLY reminds me of Higurashi.
Capacity down is on in the area as well…Misaka is rendered useless. Apparently capacity down also has damaging effects on the mind,
Oh god her character change is still hard to catch up on, but no time to think about that when she is shooting some grenades at you.
Misaka absolutely breaks her mind trying to cast some lightning.
Oh misaka loses.
Oh god her face is creepy.
Saved by Kongou Mitsuko, so she isnt a useless side character after all. im guessing her powers are absolute speed or something that got Misaka out of that mess.
Cause apparently blue gundam lost sight of target, and was reported to her.
Misaka is ALIVE!!!!
She wants to get to the children a.s.a.p.
Saten stops her as asks what does she see now.
My favourite part of the episode, she was blinded by saving the children that she forgot about her friends.
Ah see its windows lol. Ahem uh yep Anti-skill is being brought into this as well.
Ah eating onigiri,
Ah yeah Kiyama Sensei, she is chasing down the trailers with the children in her car. GO GO GO! She is one of the characters that i really like, never gives up, and one of the “good scientists”, and kinda just jumps into any idea that seems to work for her lol.
Ah the red coat.
OMG Saten is going to own some face with a baseball bat, its made of metal…so its going to hurt…
Heh.
Ok what kinda of preview is this?!?!?! This is the part that reminds me of Tora-dora, there was no preview lol. Oh well keeps everyone is suspense so nothing can be even spoiled to the thought of images of railgun owning some face. Dear my friends was the first opening sung by Eliza, which is most likely going to be the ending of episode 24. Oh did i mention that Railgun is EPIC!!!!
Ok nevermind…Im thinking that their key to winning this battle against the gundam is going to be their bonds as friends, Tomodachi no kizuna.
Be prepared for the last episode, no i dont think Touma is going to show up, he didnt show up before and there isnt exactly room for him in the “Dear my friends” lol if you get the idea. Anyway expect there to be many extremeness fighting, Anti-skill reinforcement, railgun, and gundam suits. No wait better not use that word lol…
SHINICHI?!
